Jelly Roll shared his most recent album, Beautifully Broken, in 2024, and the 40-year-old country star is currently working on a follow-up project to the hit record. In a new interview on The Hot Hits with Nic and Loren, Jelly Roll shared a few details about his new work, confirming that it will be a whole lot different from anything he’s ever released before.
Jelly Roll and the podcast hosts had been discussing therapy when the genre-bending singer was asked if going to therapy makes him a better songwriter. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s a great question. I don’t know. That’s a good question… I hate that you asked me such a stumpy one.”
Loren said that she and Nic often “talk about how songwriting is a sort of a form of journaling,” before explaining, “If you kind of know yourself better inside, I imagine that the journaling in the songs would be easier to get out.”
Jelly Roll agreed with one caveat. “I got to be careful that they don’t become preachy,” he said. “You know what I mean?”
“This new album’s going to be a big test of that because what I’m writing right now is dramatically different than everything y’all ever heard,” he revealed, explaining that the project is “going to meet me more where I’m at in my life.” Over the past several years, Jelly Roll has risen to fame with songs about the struggles and obstacles he has overcome in life, and because he’s now in such a good place and “very connected,” he’s “struggling” to write the “hopeless songs” is he known for.
“When I was hopeless, I couldn’t write another song. That’s how I started coining the phrase therapeutic music,” the Nashville native explained. “I wrote so many hopeless songs because that’s the only emotion I felt… You know what I’m saying? There’s things that lead to this hopelessness, you know what I’m saying? I should identify and work through those.”
The “Save Me” singer noted that how he was feeling while creating his recent projects likely connected with the legions of fans he now has. “There’s this thing when you’re writing from a broken place that people that are in broken places relate to,” he continued.
Jelly Roll also addressed his recent weight loss, sharing that his next album will reflect the fact that he’s feeling lighter both emotionally and physically.
“I think this new album, I’m definitely writing from like a dude who’s in year 10 of marriage and has a daughter going to college, and I’m definitely writing from a way more grownup perspective,” he said, “writing from the perspective of a man that’s 120 kilos (264.5 lbs) lighter than he was.”
Jelly Roll, whose real name is Jason Deford, had previously shared similar sentiments about his next album while speaking to Miles Adcox on Adcox’s Human School Podcast, saying that it will be a “bold swing” and will reflect his current mental state. He hopes that his fans will be up for the journey, noting, “I hope they follow me because I’m taking us on a ride. Always have been bold when it was time to be bold musically, I thought, and it’s time to be bold.”
