Ingrid Andress is definitely back. The singer-songwriter took a much-needed break last year, after a drunken performance of the national anthem became the glaring sign she needed to enter rehab. Andress did the hard, hard work on herself, returning last week to perform a flawless rendition of the same song that convinced her to finally deal with her alcohol addiction less than 24 hours later.

“Don’t get me wrong — I was terrified,” Andress admits to Variety, speaking of being back in the spotlight to sing the national anthem again. “When my team and I were first talking about it, I was like, ‘Well, I’m never singing it again,’ and it was off the table. Then weeks went on and I thought about it more. I was like, ‘No, I need to do this. I’m terrified to do it.’ And honestly, if I mess it up twice, it’s really hard coming back from that.

“You can’t mess it up two times in a row,” she adds. “So there was a lot weighing on it, but I’m really happy that I did that, because it feels like that chapter of my story has closed and I can move on, and get back to songwriting, and back to who I feel like I really am.”

We’re back baby. Thank you @Avalanche 🏔️ pic.twitter.com/h9PLVQR8CJ

— Ingrid Andress (@IngridAndress) March 1, 2025

Andress knew she hadn’t done her best when she sang the national anthem last year, but she had no idea how bad it was until the next morning.

“It was kind of like in and out of where I thought it went okay, but I also was like, ‘I could have sung it better,’ and then blah, blah, blah,” she remembers. “I just didn’t care. I didn’t realize how bad it was until the next morning. I woke up with that pit in my stomach of like, ‘I [messed] up and I need help.’”

Andress’ first performance was met with immediate backlash, thrusting her in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Still, in hindsight the 33-year-old is grateful that it happened.

“I feel like botching the anthem was the sign for me to be like, ‘Hey, we need to stop and figure out what’s going on,'” Andress admits. “Because I knew that I wasn’t in a good place, but I didn’t know what to do or who to talk to about it. I just didn’t know how to slow down because I’d never had to before. In a way I’m thankful it happened, because I feel so much more present now, and a lot happier. I feel like botching the anthem was necessary for me to reset my life and just my brain in general.”

Not all the comments were negative, fortunately. Andress’ inebriated state at the time certainly contributed to her performance. Still, the song is already notoriously hard to sing, even for someone sober, which plenty of her artist friends relayed to her in the immediate aftermath.

“It was nice to feel supported by the music community,” Andress acknowledges. “I got an outpouring of texts after the incident, of people saying, ‘It sucks. This is part of the job that’s not fun, but you’re gonna get through it.’ It was nice to receive that support from fellow artists and friends in general. And obviously there were a lot of people who were not okay with the situation. I took all of that to heart, and I realized how sensitive I was to people’s commentary. I’m just glad they took away my phone in rehab so that I didn’t have to read all of it.”

Andress’ relationship with social media has been forever changed by her time in rehab. It’s just part of the work she did on herself, making her stronger than ever as she returns to her favorite things: making music and performing.

“I know that there’s a lot of positive, and there’s a lot of people still coming at me,” Andress says. “But I’m at a point now where I’m just so happy and proud of myself that I got back out there and did it, it doesn’t really matter what anyone’s saying. Because I was more doing it to close that chapter in my life, to prove to myself that I could do it than to show everybody, like, ‘No, I actually can sing.’ The internet’s always gonna have opinions, but I am at a point now where I just enjoy doing what I’m doing regardless of what anyone says.”

Andress just released a deeply personal new song, “Footprints.” Find the song, and all of Andress’ music, at IngridAndress.com.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the CMA