Jennifer Hart‘s debut EP, 1992, is out on September 30. The six-track record, co-written entirely by Hart, includes her viral “Half the Man” track, along with a reimagined version of the same song, plus “Heart’s Done Breakin’,” and more.
“I am so excited,” Hart tells Everything Nash of the project. “I feel like I’ve been waiting since 1992 for this to happen. So it’s been a long time coming. This EP is very me, so I’m so excited about the messages in the songs, and the sound. There’s a lot of nostalgia in there, so I’m very excited for everybody to hear it.”
A talented songwriter as well as a singer, it was important for Hart to have a hand in writing all of the songs on 1992, not to showcase her abilities, as much as to give listeners a deeper glimpse of who she really is as an artist and a person.
“I feel like I’ve been in a writing season for the past couple years, so being able to write a ton of songs, and narrow it down to what I feel like I want the world to see as my baby really feels like a huge accomplishment. I feel like people are gonna get to know me, but I also feel like people are gonna be able to relate to every single song. And I think every single person has experienced what I’ve written in these songs. So I’m excited to see what people think about it.”
Included on 1992 is the sweet love song, “18,” inspired by seeing the love story her parents lived out while she was growing up.
“’18’ is about wishing that you met your special person sooner so that you could have loved them longer,” Hart explains. “My parents have had an incredible marriage. They actually just celebrated 34 years of marriage, and I’ve always looked up to their relationship and I’ve wanted something similar. So just being the kind of person that always desired marriage, that song is really about that. Like, if I could have met my person sooner, I probably would have.”
Hart’s entire life and career changed with the success of “Half the Man.” It put her on a fast trajectory to finding success within country music, a series of steps that she knows might have taken much longer without that song.
“It’s scary to think about,” Hart acknowledges. “I don’t know where I would be. I mean, that is the song that got me my record deal, got me my publishing deal. So honestly, without it, I think I’m confident that I probably would’ve got there at some point. But I think it might’ve taken a lot longer if it weren’t for that song. That was one of the first songs that I’ve written that really meant something to me.
“I was always afraid to connect to my real emotions in writing sessions with other people,” she continues. “I was scared to tell them what I was going through and be very vulnerable. So that was one of the very first songs that I wrote that was completely real. I think it was meant to happen that way.”
Hart has been open about her emotions and feelings in songs, but she has also been publicly open about her struggle with anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, something she has battled for much of her life.
“I was diagnosed at ten years old with, OCD, Tourette Syndrome, social anxiety, general anxiety,” Hart says. “These days I still struggle with a lot of the anxiety, whether it comes to social environments and atmospheres, or just anything random. I can have anxiety and I don’t even know why. I could be stressed, lack of sleep, whatever it is. I try to ground myself. I’m in counseling once or twice a week still. I think it’s very important, and it helps me a lot. I am in prayer.
“I have a huge support system of people who can help calm me through it,” she continues. “I drink tea. This is something that I’m not sure that’s ever gonna fully go away completely. I think people in general deal with anxiety, even if they’re not diagnosed with it, but I think I learn to cope with it. I have a lot of grace for myself and I love being able to relate to people who struggle with it as well, ’cause I’ve been dealing with it for 20 years.”
Hart knows she could keep that part of her life private, and not share it with the world. But it’s her desire to help others that leads her to keep speaking out about her personal struggles.
“It is normal,” Hart stresses. “One thing that is very important to me is, when I was ten years old, going through all of that, there wasn’t social media, which I think was good and bad, Good in the way that you don’t have a lot of people to compare yourself to, or a lot of standards that we do have now. But I do think people are so open about anxiety these days that it would have been helpful to know that someone else was going through this. I did feel completely alone, and it has always been one of my goals to make sure that there’s not a ten-year-old kid at home who feels like they’re the only one going through it. So that’s a big reason why I spoke up about it.”
1992 is available at JenniferHartMusic.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Monarch Publicity / Robby Stevens