When Cassadee Pope and longtime boyfriend Sam Palladio began dating at the end of 2017, they learned how to juggle time away, due to their busy careers. But now, with both of them at home for at least five months, due to COVID-19, with no end in sight, the couple is learning how to actually live together for an extended period of time, in their new home they share.
“I wasn’t nervous about it,” Cassadee told Everything Nash. “I don’t think he was either, but we didn’t realize how crazy this was. We bought this house together last year. We didn’t really get into it until November, and even then Sam was filming his Netflix Christmas movie, the sequel to Princess Switch. I was playing a bunch of shows, and I wasn’t really home either. We had Christmas here, but his family was in town from England, and everybody was here. So we didn’t really have much time in the house together. Fast forward to March. He was in L.A., about to shoot a pilot that he got and they sent him home. They were like, ‘Okay, we’re sending you home for three weeks at least because of this virus.”
Cassadee’s relationship with Sam is only getting stronger while they are home together, although she admits it was a bit of an adjustment.
“We realized, ‘Oh my God, we haven’t really, fully lived together yet,” Cassadee conceded. “We’ve been in this house here and there every couple of nights, but we’ve not been living together like this, especially not 24/7 at home. So it was kind of like bootcamp living together. We had to work out some kinks of things like, ‘You need to not leave stuff everywhere,’ and I need to not be testing him about how long he’s going to leave that coffee mug there and then get really mad when it’s there for a week.
“It was interesting,” she added. “But we are really good at communication, and I’ve got a lot of tools from therapy, so they came in handy. Now we’ve found a groove. It’s been really a big growing thing for us, and really brought us a lot closer.”
The Season Three winner of The Voice is releasing her new record, Rise and Shine, her first acoustic record, on August 7. The project was completed while off the road because of the coronavirus pandemic, a bright spot in an otherwise daunting season of life, when Cassadee is unable to perform.
“I had a lot of shows, but this year they weren’t tours,” Cassadee shared. “Looking at the money that I could have been making that I’m not making this year is pretty hard to see. But, the output that I would be doing or spending is nowhere near what I would have been if I were going out on the road. So it doesn’t even out. It definitely doesn’t even out, but I kind of try and look at it in a silver lining way. And I know I don’t have it the worst, so it obviously sucks, but I’m going to be fine.”
Pre-order Rise and Shine by visiting Cassadee’s website.