Jessica Simpson has revealed that pressure to look a certain way led to a decades-long addiction to pills and booze.
In her forthcoming memoir Open Book, the singer recalled flying to New York City at 17 to meet with reps for record labels.
“I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ for Tommy Mottola at Columbia and he wanted to sign me,” Simpson, now 39, wrote. “And then he said, ‘You gotta lose fifteen pounds.’”
She recalled immediately starting to take diet pills, “which I would do for the next 20 years.”
Simpson released five studio albums and two holiday collections between 1999 and 2010. She has since focused on her eponymous clothing line, although Simpson plans to release six new songs to coincide with her memoir.
The mother of three also blames her addictions on painful memories of six years of sexual abuse by a family friend’s daughter that started when she was 6 years old.
“I was killing myself with all the drinking and pills,” she admitted. After a Halloween party in 2017, Simpson told friends she needed to stop drinking. She has been sober ever since.
“When I finally said I needed help, it was like I was that little girl that found her calling again in life,” Simpson wrote, according to excerpts published this week by People. “I found direction and that was to walk straight ahead with no fear.”
Open Book is out Feb. 4.