'Country Strong' Star Leighton Meester Calls Live Singing 'Terrifying'

'It's an incredible adrenaline rush,' she tells MTV News.
By Kara Warner, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Leighton Meester
Photo: MTV News

For her role in "Country Strong," Leighton Meester stepped out of her stuffy "Gossip Girl" stilettos and into the cowboy boots of Chiles Stanton, a beauty queen-turned-aspiring country singer who initially suffers from stage fright — something Meester can relate to.

When MTV News caught up with the actress/singer recently, we wondered how often she gets anxious about performing.

"Every time," she said. "It's terrifying and it's just, it's an incredible adrenaline rush. It's not bad, by any means, it's just terrifying."

Does she have any horror stories to share? "No, I've had good experiences, I've never done what Chiles does [in the film]: get up onstage and not a single note comes out. That hasn't happened. For her, that was another aspect that was incredibly fulfilling. She changes. She starts off a certain way and she ends up completely the other way. She grows up."

As far as Meester's singing career goes, she said she hopes to go on tour herself one day and promised that she's hard at work on her album.

"I would love [to go on tour]. I performed last night, actually," she revealed. "I got up with this band, Check in the Dark, that I've been working with. They make their own music, and they've been working with me on a bunch of stuff I wrote while I was away in Europe this summer. So I got up there and played a couple songs."

So about that album: When will it be released?

"I don't know. I recorded three songs recently. I have, like, 20 more to do," she admitted. "So I don't know when that's going to happen. I just really want it to be perfect. I'm not in any rush. It's all in my heart, and I'm really happy how it's going. I've been very inspired, even with this movie, how I write."

Thanks to a recent stay overseas, Meester said she came back chockfull of potential album material.

"I was doing a movie in Budapest and Paris and was so lonely and writing all this music, and when I got back to the States, I got set up with this band," she said of teaming-up with Check in the Dark. "And they're perfectly complementary to it and they understand, somehow, my girly emotional side."

Check out everything we've got on "Country Strong."

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