Ty Herndon is preparing to release his upcoming album Jacob on July 15 and his current single “Til You Get There” is already being enjoyed by the masses. However, getting to this point in his career was a journey for the musician after facing his own trials and tribulations including drugs and even contemplating suicide. It is clear with his new album that it is time for him to heal and see where his journey will take him next.
“This album represented me getting out of the back row and getting my shit together,” Herndon admitted to GLAAD’s Anthony Allen Ramos in a new interview. He said that he worked through a “horrible” relapse and battled “not wanting to be on this Earth anymore.” He took these last 18 months to express his story through music.
With “Til You Get There”, Herndon said that he needed a song that talks about lessons learned, but isn’t sad. “It has a happy ending,” he added. “It says ‘hey, looking back, I’m so blessed and beyond disbelief at the miracles that have happened in my life.”
The return of his music also gave us a new video for his song “God or the Gun”, which is also on Jacob. This song continues his journey of healing and how the power of his words helped him with his struggles.
During the pan pandemic the country star learned how it would be like to not have music. He said that when the music went silent in his life, so did he.”I learned that I was putting all my eggs in that basket – that all of my success, worth, and value depended on my next project,” Herndon reflected. “I was constantly swimming upstream, running backwards, chasing a dream that was put in me that goes along with this gift. What I never realized was that there are levels of success beyond the music chart.”
It’s no secret that coming into the business isn’t easy and there seem to be a different set of rules for queer artists. Herndon learned that if you want to be in the business, you shouldn’t worry about being gay, straight or anything in between. “Take your butt to school and learn about songwriting – be the best at it,” he said bluntly. “If you’re authentically you, you’re living to the best of your ability to do what you want with your life.”
In addition to his new music journey, Herndon also shares that he is “crazy in love” for the first time in his life – and his new love interest is someone he knows well.
“I thought I was singing to my future husband, and maybe that person is going to have as much love for me as I have for them, because I have a lot of it to give and it’s pretty amazing to feel that way,” he said. “I thought I was singing and writing this for whoever that person was, but once it was done I sat back and it hit me like a brick wall; I wrote a love letter to myself.”
He shared his struggle with People and dove deep into his mental health journey and healing with his therapist, “Being able to speak into your story, and having people understand the good, the bad, and the ugly of it – looking at those pages [in People] was one of the most freeing moments of my life.”
Herndon continued to be very candid about his mental health journey and talked about how he wanted his story out there the way he wanted to tell it.
“I wanted to tell the truth and that means owning your shit 30 years later,” he said. “I don’t think anybody wakes up one day up and say, ‘I’m going to fuck up my life today’, right? That just doesn’t happen. That’s not the decision you make.”
He said that getting arrested and going through drug addiction was the “biggest frickin’ devil spitball that ever hit him”.
“I mean, you couldn’t write that out in the movie – that this little good kid from Alabama would walk into that hornet’s nest,” he said about his mental health. “I walked through hell for 25 years and still have some hit my head up pretty high, because I could walk in a room out-sing seeing anybody – and that was my confidence. [I now know] that I able to walk in a room and be an equally confident person.”