Beautiful. Stunning. Gorgeous. All adjectives one can use when describing Jessie James Decker’s outer beauty, but take a look on the inside and the word that comes to mind is gold. It’s no wonder the “Lights Down Low” singer chose that for the title of her latest EP.
Jessie’s excitement over her new collection of songs is palpable. The 28-year-old, with a personality to match the title, opens her heart on the five-track EP. The collection offers a mix of songs, including her latest single “Lights Down Low,” the inspiring Maren Morris penned “Too Young To Know” and the true to life title track, “Gold.”
“Oh my God, we’ve been working so hard on this thing,” Jessie tells Nash Country Daily. “It was just crazy trying to figure out what five songs we were going to put on this EP. We just felt like it was the perfect combination of songs. It’s easy listening, you know, I have those moments where I’m belting and singing and showing off a little but for the most part, I feel like that’s where I have evolved as a vocalist. I used to think that’s all I had to do all the time was just do these big vocal power house moves where I’m showing off my runs and this is how high I can sing, that I never focused on that lower register of my voice. Through this EP I really am showcasing a different side of my vocals that I’m really proud of.”
A strong showcase of her songwriting skills, a task she loves more than performing, is also evident on “Lights Down Low” and “Girl On The Coast,” Jessie’s only solo-penned effort on the EP. The tune, written about a moment in time when she needed a momentary break from her life, turned out to be her favorite on the album.
“I wrote it in the car on my phone. I write everything on my phone,” explains Jessie. “My kids were screaming in the backseat, we were on the way back to Nashville from visiting my mom in Georgia. They were screaming, they were just making me crazy and my happy place is thinking about our beach house in Florida. You know that Blake Shelton song, [“Some Beach”], well for me I was like, ‘I just want to go to the beach. I just want to lay out on the sand. They’re driving me nuts!’ So I wrote the whole song in 15 minutes. I don’t know where it fits musically, it’s an interesting song, but I felt like it was so cool it didn’t matter. It’s just so easy listening. Even if I didn’t write it and someone else was singing it, I just know I would still enjoy it”
Jessie isn’t the only stellar songwriter on the album. The songstress enlisted the help of songwriters Jeffery Steele and country’s current “it” girl, Maren Morris. After a few writing sessions together, the pair immediately hit it off. That relationship resulted in Maren giving “Too Young To Know” and “Shoot Out The Lights” to Jessie for her EP.
“I was introduced to her a few years ago before she blew up,” Jessie recalls. “We wrote together a couple times and I just liked her, I thought she was so cool. As she left my house after we had written a couple of songs, I just thought to ask her if she had anything for me for a record. So she sent me a bunch of songs and one of the songs, ‘Too Young to Know,’ was emailed to me and I just lost it. I was like, ‘This is huge, this song is beautiful.’ She’s like,’You can have it, you can have it.’ So then a year later I’m like, ‘Hey Maren, can I still have that song, like are we good?’ And she goes,’Actually, I’m thinking about putting it on my album, I just got signed.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, okay. I mean, good for you, that’s really exciting! If you wrote the song than just take it, just take it.’ Well then I kept going back around and I went knocking on the door again when I heard her record was done. I was like, ‘Maren? Is that song available?’ She was like,’Okay, I didn’t use it. You can have it.’ I was like, ‘Yes!’
Gold is the culmination of events in life where Jessie finds herself today—married to Eric Decker, wide receiver for the New York Jets, mom to two kids under the age of three, a fashion and beauty entrepreneur, a singer and a songwriter. It’s all in a days work for the singer and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I am just—the perfect word is grateful—I am just so grateful. I get to go to sleep every night with my two healthy, beautiful children in their beds and a man next to me who loves me more than anything in the whole world. I get to do what I love for a living, and I have such a support system of a wonderful mother and father and family. I just feel so blessed. So this is about enjoying those moments and it just being gold. It’s the tone of where I’m at and I’m just grateful, it’s gold.”
