“Everything was just skyrocketing in the right direction,” Ennis admits in a new interview with PEOPLE. “And then, all of a sudden, it felt like the rug was pulled out from under me.”
“It got a little dark for me for a little bit mentally,” Ennis, now 28, explains. “In the music industry, there’s so much that we can’t control and there’s so much that happens that doesn’t go our way a lot of times. But for me, being out on the road and seeing the fans react to my music is what kept me going. And when that was taken away, it kind of got dark for me.”
Seth Ennis.Ford Fairchild
So dark, in fact, that Ennis says he found himself consulting with his manager about pulling the plug on his solo career entirely.
“I just had to look myself in the mirror and figure out what my expectations were and why I even had them for myself in the first place,” he remembers. “I’m a competitive person and I do have big expectations for myself. It was never where I was getting super depressed or anything. It was just that I was really, really bummed.”
“He showed me some numbers from a streaming service, and even though I hadn’t released music in a long time, there were still fans that were listening to the music,” Ennis says of the realization that occurred earlier this year. “It really reinvigorated me as far as putting music out.”
This past April, Ennis went on to share a heartfelt post on his socials, explaining to his fans the real reasons behind his extended absence, along with his renewed drive to create his own music once again.
“They deserved to know where I had been and what was in my head,” remembers Ennis, who also released a single “I Still Do” that same week, which snagged over 100,000 streams. “I had this statement thing all typed out and I was kind of nervous about it. I felt like people had forgotten about me. And then to see the outpouring of love and support from not only the fans, but people in Nashville too, it was really special and fired me up. Sometimes you just need to be reminded — especially in this business — that you have people that love you.”
Ennis' irresistible new single “U-Turn,” premiering exclusively on PEOPLE, essentially serves as a brand-new chapter in the solo career of Ennis, despite it being a song he has held in his back pocket for quite a while.
But from there, it went nowhere.
“I felt like the energy was lacking a little bit,” Ennis remembers. “When we parted ways, the label was super dope and gave me a couple of my masters back and ‘U-Turn’ was one of them.”
“A lot of times, we listen to a lot of people in the industry and at the end of the day, the only people that matter is the people making the music and the people listening to the music,” Ennis declares. “For the last two years, I’ve gotten messages from people wanting me to put ‘U-Turn’ out, and now I am listening to them…and I am.”
source: people.com
