Cassadee Pope names topic that made her switch from country to pop rock music

Country musician Cassadee Pope is returning to her pop rock roots for her new album Hereditary.

Pope, 34, revealed that subjects she wanted to write about wouldn’t belong in the country genre, which made her return to the genre she fell in love with in her teen years.

“I never was super down the middle country, it was always a bit more pop-rock country,” Pope told Us Weekly.

“I think my whole career, if you look at it and you really listen to the music and you see the branding and even how I dress or how I used to dress, I never fit into one genre or style,” she explained.

The Voice star highlighted drug addiction as a topic she couldn’t sing about in country music.

“Having loved ones who struggle with substance abuse and addiction, it’s not something that I’ve ever felt like I had the verbiage to talk about,” she shared.

“In country music, I just couldn’t find a way to write about it in a way that made sense in the genre. I’m sure so many people can and have, but for me, it just wasn’t clicking, and so once I was able to strip all the barriers of country music songwriting and what would work and what wouldn’t work, it just opened my mind up to so many different subject matters, and this was one of them,” she added.