Jessica Simpson Shares the Surprising Reason Daughter Maxwell Prompted Her Return to Her Nashville Roots (Exclusive)

It was just ahead of her 11th birthday, and Jessica Simpson’s daughter Maxwell had something to tell her mom: “I really want to go to Nashville.”

As Simpson, 44, recalls in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, “She said, ‘You know that song by Hank Williams, 'I Saw the Light?' It’s my favorite song and I want to go where the light is. I want to be there on my 11th birthday, it just feels like that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

The family went to a ranch in Franklin, Tenn., just outside of Nashville. Instead of singing "Happy Birthday" that morning, Maxwell asked her mom, “Will you wake me up to 'I Saw the Light?' ” Notes Simpson, “I got chills all over my body.”

“My daughter led me back to Nashville," she says. "That’s where I recorded my first gospel record at 15 years old and I had to come back. My daughter, her wanting to see the light, showed me the light."

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There, she worked with a group of songwriters and recorded her new EP, Nashville Canyon, Part 1, a collection of sultry rockabilly tunes, which drops in full on March 21. (The first single, "Use My Heart Against Me" drops Feb. 21.) 

Her new music (her last album was 15 years ago) comes just as she begins a new chapter. In January, she and husband Eric Johnson, with whom she has three kids, Maxwell, 12, Ace, 11, and Birdie, 5, announced their split after 10 years of marriage.

“I have definitely gone through the darkest time being held by the most light in an odd way,” she reflects. “I’ve grown up so much. I am strong. Maybe I’m just meant to love a lot of people in my life.”

In this week's issue, Simpson also shares her favorite songwriters and some of the tunes that have inspired her to make new music. Everything from "Amazing Grace" — “the most important song in my life and the one I sang on my 17th birthday when I got signed to Columbia Records" — to Janis Joplin’s "Piece of My Heart."

“I’m kind of the heart that is out for the taking so if you take some of my heart, I grow some more,” she says.

Her new music also grew out of her 2022 bestselling memoir, Open Book. "After I put out the book, I was like, 'The sky’s the limit for me,'" she says, "but it was also – whoa, people are responding to me as I am. Not who I should be or could be and that gave me the courage to come back to music."

For more from Jessica Simpson, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.