As Jessica Simpson continues to release some of the best music of her career (sorry/not sorry, “Irresistible”), she’s begun promoting Part 2 of Nashville Canyon, her two-part EP series. As the lead single for the “second half,” she’s opted to unleash “Fade.” And, not unlike “Leave” (another one-word diss track), the lead single from Nashville Canyon, Part 1, “Fade” possesses a similar air of “fuck you” defiance that’s specific to a disappointing ex (in this case, obviously, Eric Johnson). And yet, without that disappointment, it’s highly possible that listeners wouldn’t have ever received the likes of new Jessica Simpson music. Or at least not music such as this (no, instead, her fans might have been subjected to another Christmas album).
Although Simpson had made the attempt at “getting back to her country roots” with 2008’s Do You Know (the last right proper studio album she released, for 2010’s Christmas record, Happy Christmas, doesn’t quite count), it’s only been with her recent relocation to Nashville that she’s tapped into something more genuine than ever—not just on the country front, but in terms of her overall musicianship. Indeed, the offerings of Nashville Canyon, Part 1 make up her most candid, unvarnished work to date. In short, the pop star that millennials came to know in the early and mid-00s has flown the coop (or, more accurately, fled Los Angeles). In fact, it was while at a birthday party in Nashville for her oldest daughter, Maxwell, that Simpson realized both music and the city were calling her back to them. And it was after moving there that she fully crystallized the revelation, “I found the freedom on my own/Remember who you are/Forget who they told you to be” (these being lyrics from “Breadcrumbs,” the first track on Nashville Canyon, Part 1).
Soon enough, she was self-financing (thanks to that sweet Jessica Simpson Collection money) the recording of what was to become this unique duo of EPs. And, in truth, this approach to making music only seems to further prove that there’s no money in it anymore, and that one really does need to have a clothing and/or makeup empire to keep doing it (even though Rihanna didn’t seem to get that message just yet). Of her lengthy absence from the music industry (or what’s left of it), Simpson stated on The Today Show that she knew she would always come back to it, it was just a matter of finally “feeling the call,” as it were. And what better way to be called back to it than by the old adage, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” (see also: Taylor Swift, a fellow Nashville acolyte and enthusiast). In any case, there’s no denying that Simpson was being completely real when she also mentioned during the same interview, “Music saved my life, Nashville saved my life.”
To be sure, channeling her pain into Nashville-inspired music is what resulted in the saucy “Fade.” A mid-tempo kiss-off the opens with a jingly-jangly kind of sound (complete with the involvement of a tambourine), awash with acoustic guitar (courtesy of production, yet again from JD McPherson). In fact, the overarching similarities that the sound has to post-Rubber Soul The Beatles can’t be ignored. Elsewhere, there’s even something “Slide Away”-esque about her sentiments (which is why Simpson also could have title the track “Fade Away”), effectively echoing Miley Cyrus’ urging, “So won’t you slide away/Back to the ocean, I’ll go back to the city lights.” More than that, the dissolution of a relationship that Simpson thought would last is also present on Cyrus’ verse, “Once upon a time, it was paradise/Once upon a time, I was paralyzed/Think I’m gonna miss these harbor lights/But it’s time to let it go/Once upon a time, it was made for us/Woke up one day, it had turned to dust/Baby, we were found, but now we’re lost/So it’s time to let it go.”
This is something Simpson has most certainly done—and had to do in order for her own self-preservation—after finding that Johnson was “as empty as [his] promise.” This presumably referring to “the promise” he made in announcing that standard marriage vow that now only promises to “forsake all others” (a.k.a. not stick it in all others), but also to do everything to ensure the “till death do us part” aspect. Johnson obviously didn’t do that, and it led Simpson to come to the conclusion, “You can just wait on me/But I won’t be around/Watching you fade on me/Your words mean nothing now.” Not only does said chorus allude to Johnson not being truly present, but also the idea that he assumes he can just rematerialize at any time and Simpson would still be there, waiting.
Needless to say, that’s no longer the case. Instead, Simpson has remembered the identity she’s suppressed for so long, returning to the one thing that she has always called “home”: singing. In this regard, it almost feels as though she is referring to music when she sings, “I want my heart to feel held safe/I know that home is a feeling/And not a place.” Though it certainly looks like home is a tangible place to her inside the studio she showcases for the accompanying video to “Fade”—which is basically the same as her other studio-shot videos, including “Leave,” for the tracks from Nashville Canyon. In fact, you can see Simpson wearing the same outfit and sunglasses in “Fade” that are briefly flashed to in “Leave.” Along, of course, with the same studio musicians that helped her get her voice back, literally and figuratively.
To that point, Simpson commented on how these recording sessions marked the first time she ever worked with live musicians in the studio. In the past, she had always worked, essentially, “in a vacuum” by wearing headphones and listening to backing tracks while she sang. This being yet another reason why “Fade” (and Nashville Canyon in general) has so much more pronounced power and chutzpah to it than anything Simpson has ever come out with before.
