Jennifer Hanson Back at "'73"

Jennifer Hanson photo courtesy of Universal South.

March 11, 2008 - Jennifer Hanson made a rather auspicious debut in 2002 with her song "Beautiful Goodbye," which helped her earn a nomination for an Academy of Country Music award as Top New Female Vocalist.

Since that time, she's had even more success as a songwriter. She wrote the Bucky Covington hit "A Different World" and The Wreckers' successful "Leave The Pieces." Now she's got a new song of her own — "'73," with a very personal storyline. The song alludes to the year of her birth, 1973, and how the divorce of her parents has a bittersweet role in her life.

The recording is "my story kind of told in pictures," Jennifer says. "I was home visiting my mom in California, and I found this picture of me and my mom and my dad when I was about a month old. It really struck me how in love and how happy they seemed back then, because that's not really the way that I remembered things, because I was so young when they got divorced."

As Jennifer flipped through a photo album, she felt her childhood was unfolding before her eyes. Her dad remarried and had two more kids, but there were no more photos featuring Jennifer with both her parents until her high-school graduation.

"It kind of put everything into perspective for me that that one decision — not staying together — kind of set my life in a certain pattern, and that was real powerful to me," Jennifer says. "What I realized was that my brother and my sister wouldn't even be here if they had stayed together. So ''73' was born as a result of that moment of reflecting."

Jennifer shoots a video for the song tomorrow in Nashville.