Jessica Simpson’s return to the music scene came complete with a unique rendition of one of her favorite songs — showing a stripped-down, vulnerable version of the singer not previously seen in her bubbly pop singles.
In a cover of “Particles” by Nothing But Thieves, she sings, “Baby, tell me if I’m being strange, and if I need to rearrange my particles, I will for you, my particles, I will for you.”
In the accompanying music video, the 41-year-old sits alone in a room lit with flickering candles amongst stained glass, singing into a microphone.
“The whole idea of music heals is a very real statement to me,” she wrote in the description of the video. “This song healed a broken piece of me.”
The song comes after cryptically alluding to the release on Twitter, which followed a more serious thread of tweets about her past experience with addiction.
On Nov. 1, Simpson shared a tweet, along with a photo, that read, “This person in the early morning of Nov 1, 2017, is an unrecognizable version of myself. I had so much self-discovery to unlock and explore.”
She followed up with a series of posts discussing her addiction to pills and alcohol, blaming a lack of self-love and self-respect for her behavior.
She opened up about her addiction last year in her memoir “Open Book,” in which she details her struggle with addiction as a way to cope with trauma.
The memoir release also came with six songs from Simpson, the last time anyone heard a musical peep from the singer. Before that, her last full-length album was more than a decade ago.
Now, though, she’s back and better than ever, saying “Particles” is a song that saved her when she was in that darker place.