Kimberly Perry | Friday Night TakeoverKimberlyPerry is celebrating her first birth of the year with the release of her debut solo project, Bloom, available now. The EP is the first of three big arrivals this year as the 39-year-old prepares to welcome part two of the project in the fall, and her first child this summer.
LISTENNOW: Kimberly Perry on pregnancy cravings, new music, and the song she believes Carrie Underwood is 'jealous of'
The former member of The Band Perry, recently joined Audacy’s Rob + Holly to share her excitement for all the new arrivals in her life, starting with her first child, who she admits she was surprised to find out was a boy.
“I always just assumed I was going to have a girl first, that was just in my brain,” she shared, admitting she and her husband had zero doubts they’d welcome a baby girl. That is, until Kimberly’s cravings started telling her otherwise.
“I did have this instinct from the moment we knew we were pregnant, I was like, ‘This is a boy,’” she laughed. “I didn’t drink beer, but I was craving beer and nachos [at] all hours of the day — even for breakfast — and I just knew [it was a boy].”
While a baby boy wasn’t part of the “plan” for her first-born, Perry and her husband, JohnnyCostello, are embracing the blessing she fully credits to a higher power.
“I wasn’t disappointed when it was confirmed [a boy], I was like, ‘I think God is being really good to us right now,’ because I realized I had already put so much pressure on my relationship with her, when I thought it was as her… [Having] a boy feels like the pressure is off.”
While the pressure surrounding the arrival of baby boy may be off, the pressure was on for Kimberly over the last year as she worked to re-emerge in the Country music scene as a solo artist. “I had never really gotten to write with the Nashville creative community,” she said of one of the struggles of coming back as a solo artist after being in a band with her brothers, Neil and Reid. “All of our first two records it was just the three of us [or] we had these family friends, the Henningsens, who wrote a lot of our projects just on the tour bus with us.”
She continued, “I didn’t know if they [the songwriting community] would welcome me in. It’s such a tight knit community and I’d love to be a part of that.”
Kimberly quickly found she had nothing to worry about as she was welcomed into the songwriting community and experienced sessions that “were part-therapy, part hanging out with your besties and then writing.”
“It was so cool to find friendships and creative collaborations almost immediately,” she said.
With new connections, successful writes under her belt and fresh ideas, Kimberly says she’s been able to start her solo career with a “different kind of self-confidence.”
“Coming back, my womanhood has grown,” she said. “I’ve just gotten so much more confident and I think that’s translated to my artistry, so, I’m so happy to be here.”
The translation is clear with the lead single from, Bloom, titled, “If I Die Young Pt. 2,” a sequel to The Band Perry’s 2010 single, “If I Die Young,” which went #1 in December of the same year.
While Perry was careful not to “take anything away from anybody’s experience with the first version,” she focused on the new perspectives she has a a woman who has experienced much more than the young girl she was when she wrote the song.
“So much has happened in over a decade since I wrote the first version,” Perry said of her decision to write a part two. “Country music was a dream of mine when I wrote Part 1… We were dreaming about a lot as I wrote that first version and here, over a decade later, I’ve lived so much life — highs and lows… There was just so much in the lifeline of the last decade, I felt like the story needed updating because life is sweeter as we live it.”
While Perry is clearly “blooming” in new ways since she tackled Country music with her brothers, she still enjoys reflecting on the moments and that planted the seeds for the journey she finds herself on now. One memory in specific Perry took time to remember was selecting the song, “Better Dig Two,” which was a fan favorite single from the group’s Pioneer album.
“I remember where I heard it for the first time, I was actually in town [Nashville]…. I just immediately knew, I was like, Carrie Underwood is going to be jealous that we’re cutting this song,” she laughed. “It felt like the demo was like a chorus that she would love to sing and I just loved the sentiment of it.”
One of her favorites from the past, she joked that it won’t get the same treatment as “If I Die Young” saying, “I think that one is dead as a doornail.”
“The girl in that song — the psycho side of Kimberly was very specific that those two graves were going to be in the ground.”
Hear more from Kimberly by pressing play on her full interview with Audacy’s Rob + Holly above.
Words by Monica Rivera Interview by Rob + Holly
