It was the first of February 2023 when Ashe decided she was done.
“It was a terrible decision to make,” Ashe, 31, tells PEOPLE about canceling all of her shows for the year. “I was so nervous that it would be interpreted as ungratefulness for all of this.”
The Nashville artist otherwise known as Ashlyn Willson just came off of what she once called “the biggest season of her life and career” thanks to the insane success of her hit song “Moral of the Story” and album Ashlyn in 2021 and Rae 2022. But despite all the attention and praise she was getting professionally, Ashe said she personally felt burned out and exhausted.
“There was hatred and insecurity,” she says of the feelings she felt at the time. “I couldn’t tell the world everything was great, because it wasn’t.”
What he was incredible was the relief Ashe says she felt as she stepped further away from the spotlight and into the calm and serenity her soul craved. “I sat in that silence for six months,” she says. “I led a completely isolated, domestic, very quiet life. I hardly called anyone.”
And it was during this time that Ashe began to wonder if she would ever pursue music again. “I kind of said, ‘Well, it’s been a really great run and I’m very grateful for that, but maybe now life is going in a new season or a new direction,'” Ashe remembers.
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Luke Rogers
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But the love she had for music since she was 19 began to return when Ashe was invited to write with fellow singer/songwriter Suki Waterhouse. “I showed up for the session and it was the most amazing feeling in the world,” Ashe remembers. “I realized that I make I still love this.”
The healing then began through the words and songs that now feature on Ashe’s upcoming album Wilsonwhich features an unforgettable version of “I Wanna Love You (But I Don’t).”
“My therapist had me do this exercise pretty early on in the whole disappearing act where I was actually writing letters to Ashlyn the artist Ashe,” she recalls of the beginnings of the song she finished with fellow songwriters Collin Pastore and Jake Finch. “I wrote this letter and it was so savage and mean. I had no idea I was carrying all this resentment and anger. And then I wrote something like [a letter] from Ashe to Ashlyn. I had no idea what was beneath the surface until I put pen to paper.”
At that moment, Ashe’s creative floodgates began to open.
“All these things that I was just working through with my therapist and my journal first came out in music, where I can make the best sense of my life,” Ashe explains. an incredibly healing experience and really scary, because I knew I was going to say things I’d never shared with people before.”
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Some of these ‘things’ surfaced in the song of the same name, “Ashe”.
“I never thought one would see the light of day,” Ashe admits. “It was all just processed by me. I feel like our best version of ourselves is when we go back to who we were as little girls, so free, before all our puberty and insecurities and the pressures of the world.”
Now, as Ashe tiptoes back into the spotlight, she says she’ll be very careful about her mental game this time around. “I use all the tools I put in the toolbox while I was gone,” she says. “I still have to pull them out every day. Every time I post a photo of myself or something, I have to remember who I am.”
And who is that person who loves music.
“Making music and writing songs is part of my DNA and what has always brought me so much joy,” says Ashe, who recently got engaged to musician John Canada in Sea Island, Georgia. “How sad it would be to let it go because you didn’t work on yourself and didn’t give yourself time.”
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Source: HIS Education