ABC/Kelsey McNealIf you’d told Bebe Rexha last year that she’d spend most of 2018 holding down the #1 spot on the country chart, she wouldn’t have believed you. But the success of her Florida Georgia Linecollaboration, “Meant to Be,” is just one of the little surprises that helped to inspire the title of her debut album Expectations, in stores today.
“My life in general, I’ve always expected things to go a certain way,” Bebe tells ABC Radio. “And I always expected to, like, be married by now and have kids and I think just life is so unexpected.”
“I never thought I would have a song with Florida Georgia Line, and have such an incredible country song, so life is just really interesting,” she adds. “You don’t really know what’s gonna happen.”
While Expectations is a pop album, Bebe says there are definitely a few tracks on it where “there’s a little bit of bleeding in from the country world.”
“I feel like I’ve been really inspired by it,” she explains. “I feel like country music is very real and honest and raw and it’s like storytelling, and these are definitely, like, real things that have happened to me.”
In fact, Bebe says she’s enjoyed her experience in the country music world so much, “Meant to Be” probably won’t be her last country collabo.
“I love the energy [of Nashville] and I just love the country community,” she gushes. “There’s so much love, and it’s kinda funny, but I feel like I have a little less stress when I write country music.”
“It just feels so much more free…it’s so much more about the lyrics and the story and I love that,” Bebe adds. “And it feels like, I dunno, like more therapeutic to me.”
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