Multi-platinum-selling country singer-songwriter Ingrid Andress discusses surviving infamy after a disastrous national anthem performance, making new music, including the new track “Footprints.”
Ingrid Andress talks about the making of Lady Like
Ingrid Andress, the country music star who sang the national anthem before the MLB Home Run Derby, talks about the making of Lady Like.
- Country singer-songwriter Ingrid Andress struggled with the pressures of fame and the music industry, leading to a public breakdown during a performance of the national anthem in July 2024.
- Andress has released a new single, “Footprints,” and performed at the Grand Ole Opry, but acknowledges she is still on her journey to healing and self-discovery.
In July 2024, almost six years to the day after signing a contract with Warner Music Nashville, multi-platinum-selling country singer-songwriter Ingrid Andress’ life was hanging on by a thread because, though very much her own person, she was living inauthentically.
The award-winning artist was preparing to sing the National Anthem at Globe Life Field, the home of Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers, during All-Star Week’s home run derby. The vocalist, after imbibing a few too many alcoholic beverages to calm her nerves, performed a universally panned version of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
The derision she experienced not only sent her packing to rehab. It also highlighted how exhausting and uncertain the quest for stardom had left her.
On a Saturday afternoon nearly eight months after her tumultuous anthem performance, she’s seated in a Grand Ole Opry dressing room before a two-song performance later that evening, in conversation with The Tennessean.
Just a week prior, redeemed and undaunted, she was back on the ice at Denver’s Ball Arena, singing the national anthem before the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche defeated the Minnesota Wild 5-2.
A ‘clever-minded lyricist’ bristles at the rules of Nashville’s industry
The “Lady Like” singer owns up to five years of discomfort in country music and the music industry in general, leading to her July downfall in Dallas’ suburbs.
She recalls a Fall 2019 stop in Kansas City on a radio tour for her eventual double-platinum-selling country ballad “More Hearts Than Mine” as being the first moment where a multitude of the stresses both unique to her life and that of being a woman attempting to succeed in country’s mainstream began to trouble her.
Before signing her label deal, she was a 23-year-old songwriter enamored with using her clever-minded lyricism to work a job that saw her days oftentimes completed by noon and achieving relatively quick success with not a country radio hit, but Charli XCX’s “Boys,” a critically-acclaimed and global top-10 hit in 2017.
However, shifting her work into a performing artist was rewarded with a seemingly never-ending series of early morning wakeup calls followed by 6 a.m. breakfasts of donuts and office-brewed coffee at radio stations while playing acoustic versions of an intensely personal love song that would eventually take 10 months to peak on country’s radio charts.
“Sitting under fluorescent lights while appearing very put together to look like you’re pouring out your heart and soul while sitting in front of a radio guy (who seems) to not care about you is tough.”
She offers a reflective point punctuated by joking incredulity at how absurd it feels in retrospect.
“I didn’t get into music to follow the rules! I wanted to write songs that expanded (expectations) by finding creative nuances. While I appreciated that people believed that all of these rules and traditions held the country music industry together, I also didn’t think that it was a realistic expectation to believe that people who don’t always have it together and are trying to figure out their lives could always follow so many rules.”
‘I wasn’t doing well…’
Expanding expectations didn’t happen for Andress in the songwriting room. Instead, that notion found its way to how her singles fared on country radio. Her biggest hits, like “More Hearts Than Mine” and the Sam Hunt duet “Wishful Drinking,” averaged roughly a year on the charts before breaking into the top 10. During that time, she also routinely toured twice a week worldwide while doing those previously-mentioned radio tours, plus releasing three EPs and two albums worth of material.
By Aug. 2023, Andress realized that slipping from feeling like a rising star to dealing with the grind of being just another spoke in Nashville’s music industry machine causes a “loss of perspective on reality and eventually everything.”
Within a month, she cites losing a live-in boyfriend and ending the professional relationship with Rogue’s Blythe Scokin, the only manager she’d worked with in her career.
“My songs were doing well, but I wasn’t doing well,” says the performer about feeling like living her job had superseded her enjoyment of her existence.
Eventually retreating to living between Colorado and Nashville, she took 11 months away from the industry to attempt to heal herself but instead fell prey to “poisoning (her) body with substances.”
July 2024’s appearance at Texas’ All-Star Game festivities was meant to get back into the saddle of promoting her career. However, while putting on a false public face of undaunted optimism, her unresolved traumas made themselves apparent while attempting to steady her nerves.
‘Feeling creatively and emotionally healthy and alive…’
On YouTube, the 90-second clip of what transpired when she walked onto the diamond at Globe Life Field and started to sing has nearly three million views and yielded thousands of negative comments.
“I wish I had listened to my intuition (and not performed) because, on many levels, I was so confused, lost and unlike myself at that moment. America seeing how far gone I was from the center of my humanity was not okay.”
The month Andress spent in rehab represented her “making an honest return into (her) body” by processing everything that had transpired in the past half-decade.
“I was an independent and successful person who, though it appeared I had my life together, was humbled by running into a dark time. This type of thing can happen to anyone, including me. Realizing liking feeling numb put me in danger. Admitting I was overwhelmed, needed help and then getting it allowed me to take the steps back to feeling creatively and emotionally healthy and alive.”
‘Footprints’
Moving forward, Andress feels her life will be spent conquering her fears and healing her traumas equally.
“As a songwriter, my best songs come from being a human with real feelings who writes things that meet people where they are at,” she says about returning to a place where her soul feels grounded and reconnected to her body so her subconscious isn’t left to guide her life alone.
Specifically, a vulnerable new piano ballad, “Footprints,” centers on being the oldest of five children who, instead of being the college scholarship-receiving soccer or volleyball-playing daughter of successful athletes, decided to pursue being a singer-songwriter.
“Leaving home to pursue my dreams added to the anxiety and fear of failure that already exists in my family. However, I wrote ‘Footprints’ to show my siblings that it’s okay to follow how the universe will sometimes intervene in your life.”
“You can follow my footprints / But you don’t gotta fill my shoes / It’s just a path for you to follow If you so choose,” she sings.
Her final statement to the Tennessean offers a parentheses where a period almost stood in her career.
“For better or for worse, I’m still not doing super well, but I am doing ‘it’ and you can do ‘it,’ too.”
