Jennifer Nettles does some deep self-exploration on many songs on her new Playing With Fire album. A song called "Way Back Home" is for her son Magnus, and it includes a message she hopes he'll appreciate one day.

Magnus is just three years old, and Nettles admits he thinks every singer in makeup he sees on television is his mother. Yes, he's pointed at Beyonce and shouted "Mama!" So the depth of these lyrics will likely be lost on him for a decade or two:

"Burn the maps to this place / I don't need one anyway / I could find you / By charting the lines to every smile on your glorious face." 

Nettles wrote "Way Back Home," and she confirmed that she is talking about her son when she begins the second verse.

“I want to be an example for my son — of authenticity and of asking the right questions and of questioning just what you think what you’re supposed to do," she tells Taste of Country. The ballad goes beyond a song from mother to son, however. Themes of rediscovery pop up on many of the songs from Playing With Fire. This song is about Nettles' most recent journey.

“This part of this journey that I’m on in trying to come to terms with this new person that I am after becoming a mother, you know. I feel simultaneously completely vulnerable and also made whole and brave by becoming a parent.”

Find songs of individual empowerment elsewhere on an album that gets serious and drifts dark at various points. "Drunk in Heels," "Stupid Girl" and "Three Days in Bed" are also very personal and very revealing. Nettles is "digging around with what it is to be authentic, and to be my whole self and to not just put on the happy face."

Look for Playing With Fire in stores and online on May 13. The album features her current single "Unlove You" and a duet with Jennifer Lopez called "My House."

J.Net on her Duet With J.Lo

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