Something aboutRuthie Collinshas always drawn people in.
“Even from a young age, total strangers would just come up to me and spill their biggest secrets to me,” admits Collins with a laugh during a recent interview with PEOPLE. “I’ve always just been like, ‘Yeah, come on. It’s safe. I don’t judge.'”
Perhaps it’s the authenticity that seems to spill from the singer/songwriter’s greenish-blue eyes or the way her truth comes through each and every lyric she sings, or maybe it’s the fact that Collins, 37, is one of the few that isn’t about to put a filter on the mental game the world seems to be going through as of late.
Ruthie Collins.Alexa Kinigopoulos
“We’re all just trying to get through this crazy time,” admits Collins, who first broke on the country music scene in 2014 with the release of her self-titled, six-song EP. “We’re all just showing up every day telling ourselves that everything is fine and that we are OK. But we’re not OK. As a society, both culturally and consciously, we’ve gone through this crazy thing, and we are all dealing with it in our own way. And I think we’re all just doing our best to show up as best as we can. Sometimes you just have to fake it, you know?”
“Everything in my life was falling apart and I blamed it all on the fact that country radio wasn’t playing female artists at the time,” Collins says of the reality of her life a few years back. “Everything that was happening in my life was just being blamed on the injustice of women in country music.”
“Hyprocrite” Cover Art.Alexa Kinigopoulos
Yet eventually Collins says she “just got sick of that narrative.”
“I had actually started to annoy myself,” she laughs of the younger version of herself. “I knew there had to be one thing in my life that I could just focus all of my attention on. "
That focus soon became directed towards the multiple bright spots of her life, including the publishing deal that allowed the girl with the big dreams to make a living out of writing songs.
And soon, the tide began to turn.
“I realized that your attitude really does magically control your life,” says Collins, who ended up releasing her groundbreaking albumCold Comfortin 2020, smack dab in the uneasy opening months of the pandemic. “So, I really dove into that appreciation and started thinking about the things that were going well, instead of the things that weren’t going well, and it changed everything for me.”
Nevertheless, there still have been times when Collins put on a bright smile when the tears were welling up in her eyes, a truth that serves as the backbone of her current single “Hypocrite,” which is included on her new deluxe albumCold Comfort +.
“‘Hypocrite’ is about that thing we all do, where we pretend we’re totally OK when the sky is actually falling down all around us,” Collins says quietly of the song she wrote in the spring of 2019 about an old boyfriend in a 1973 Airstream in the driveway of her best friend,Runaway June’s Natalie Stovall. “Sometimes, you just have to admit that you are having a tough time and that you need somebody.”
And as we go into 2022, Collins is in fact getting to know a new man that she started dating this past October. And even more importantly, she is getting to know herself more than ever before.
“I definitely come from a line of really strong, independent women who are also the most feminine creatures you’ll ever meet,” says Collins, who is currently planning a tour across the United States in late spring/early summer. “It’s a strange dichotomy. I really want to be a strong, independent, feminist woman, but also, there’s nothing that brings me more joy in life than baking fresh bread.”
Collins laughs, and then continues.
“I’m one of those weirdos who have a really hard celebrating myself. But yeah, I’ve worked hard. I want to celebrate. I’m ready to realize that right now, my personal and professional life is pretty amazing.”
source: people.com
