It's been 40 years since Trisha Yearwood decided to put the pen down. Her career has been spent transforming other songwriters' work and making it her own. But for her own, she decided to keep that buried away for decades. Why? Apparently, some guy made Yearwood feel like she should stick to singing and leave the pen and pad to someone else.
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Recently, Trisha went on the TODAY show (as captured by PEOPLE) to promote her upcoming album The Mirror. The record is set to come out in July and will be the first time in her career she's written her own work. For the longest time, though, she would avoid doing it out of insecurity. Back in her college days, 19 years old, Yearwood was working on poetry in her notebook. However, when she got feedback, it wasn't exactly what she hoped and shut down.
Trisha Yearwood Sings Her Own Songwriting for The First Time on New Album
"Bless his heart. I'm sure he probably wouldn't even remember ever saying it, but... I was 19 years old. And I gave him a bunch of poetry. Everybody in Nashville's writing. I was in college," Trisha recalls. "He just said, 'Yeah, you're a good singer, but you're not really a writer.' And I just let it be the truth for 40 years."
Now, at 60 years old, Yearwood reaches something of an epiphany. She realized that she didn't have to stop completely just because one person wasn't feeling it. Ever since, her confidence has skyrocketed accordingly. "I had this kind of 'a ha' moment. I turned 60 last year, and I highly recommend it. Everything sort of opened up," Trisha says. "I just thought, 'That doesn't have to be the truth about me just because somebody says it.' And I started writing for me."
It's not implausible that her work wasn't great, a lot of college poetry can be flimsy. Moreover, not everyone is good at everything. But Trisha definitely should've kept trying regardless. It's good that she's deciding to make up for lost time. "People in my life said, 'You should make a record of this,' and so here we are. It's crazy," Trisha adds.
"For the last 30 years I could always go, 'That's a really personal song, but I didn't write it, so it's not about me.' And now everything has a little piece of me in it. I always felt like as an artist, I chose songs that I made mine. They were mine when I was done with them. But it's just another layer when you actually have a hand in writing the song."
