Kimberly Perry stopped by The Bobby Bones Show for her first solo visit since The Band Perry broke up, to talk about why she did a part two of “If I Die Young,” and reveal the true reason why the band split up.
Earlier this year, The Band Perry, comprised of siblings Kimberly, Reid and Neil Perry, announced they are breaking up. Then news broke that Kimberly Perry was going solo. Nothing dramatic happened, they just felt like they needed to go their own way. At the start of the pandemic, they had already been living in L.A. for three years and ended up moving back to East Tennessee to live in the mountains. At that point in their careers, they had spent a lot of time together on a tour bus and didn’t really know who they were outside of the band. Kimberly, as the oldest sibling, felt like she had a responsibility since none of them had expanded themselves. Creatively they were doing a lot of different things, but the energy they were pouring into the band didn’t truly feel like themselves anymore.
At the end of 2020, they made a lot of music in Dallas, Texas together, which at the time they thought would be the next The Band Perry album but ended up just being a fun experiment to get to know each other better. That time ended up being a catalyst for Kimberly. She met her husband and they eloped to Las Vegas eight months after they met. She is now pregnant with their child and due in late August.
Since The Band Perry got their start, their career has gone in a million different directions. She takes credit for some of those decisions, but others weren’t in their control. When things weren’t working, she took a step back to figure out how they could rise from that moment, and realized they needed space. It was always about music and business; they are now focusing on being a family. Now that Kimberly has gone solo, she said it’s been amazing to have hands on all the steering wheeling in her career.
Their song, “If I Die Young” came out in 2010, 13 years later Kimberly has released the sequel to it, “If I Die Young (Part 2).” The idea came after she had met a friend for coffee who asked where the motivation for the original song came from. She then asked, “What if you did an updated version of the girl in the song 10 years later who didn’t die, what is she doing now, is she happy with her decisions?” Kimberly didn’t want to rob anything from the original song, and said it was a little scary at first figuring out how to make it good, if not better than the original and not sound like a novelty song.
Kimberly feels like coming back into the country space is like a homecoming for her. But she does not want people to misinterpret that she released “If I Die Young (Part 2)” to try and get her foot back in the door, she came back because to her core she’s always been a country artist, and she feels like she is living her most authentic life now. Kimberly’s first solo EP, “BLOOM” will be out June 9th.