Ingrid Andress says that even though her disastrous National Anthem performance last summer was her “worst moment,” it also ultimately changed her life for the better.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the singer is opening up about her controversial performance, as well as her decision to come clean about her alcohol abuse problem and check herself into a treatment facility.

“I just remember being like, ‘I don’t care,'” Andress says, remembering the day of her July performance at the 2024 MLB Home Run Derby.

“I felt so much like an object that it just didn’t matter. I had completely missed the plot.”

The singer says that by then, she was used to drinking heavily before performances, saying she liked the “numbness.” But, she adds, “up until then, I had never let it get in the way of my performance.”

Almost immediately after the fact, her pitchy, shaky performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” started causing commotion online.

Andress says she didn’t immediately realize how poorly her rendition of the anthem had been received — she recalls telling a friend over the phone that she thought it had gone okay — and her team tried their best to keep the online comments from reaching her.

But by the time she got back to Nashville, “hungover and disoriented,” the singer says that her team was starting to suggest that comment might be necessary.

In a social media post, Andress admitted that she’d been intoxicated when she took the field, saying “I’m not gonna bulls–t y’all, I was drunk last night.” She also said that she planned to check herself into a rehab facility to address her unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

“I didn’t run that statement by anybody,” she now says. “I needed to let people know it’s not just this one incident that I messed up. ‘I need to get better. I’m at such a low place, I’m not gonna lie about it.'”

Read More: Why Ingrid Andress Had Been MIA Before Disastrous National Anthem

Her anthem performance churned up controversy in country music and beyond: Andress ended up being one of the most-Googled musicians of 2024. Looking back, she thinks the reaction to her misstep was a little outsized, and that she might have been comedic relief for many during a stressful news cycle (Donald Trump, then in the middle of his campaign for presidency, had survived an assassination attempt two days before she took the stage).

“I felt like America’s punching bag. I became a way to unite America,” she says. “It was like, ‘At least we can all agree that this girl botched the anthem.’ I’ll be the punching bag for sure, but I didn’t commit a crime. It felt very extreme for what the situation was.”

Within hours of her statement, Andress says she was on board a plane to a treatment facility where even a sympathetic flight attendant had seen the video of her anthem performance.

“It broke my heart,” Andress says, recalling how she felt reading the response to her performance online. “I had to stop reading comments because I couldn’t handle how deeply it hurt.”

But while checked into rehab, she made some important discoveries about herself and the way that her nonstop trajectory to success had negatively impacted her mental health. She also worked through some personal difficulties that had been impacting her even before her anthem performance, such as a hard breakup and a decision to part ways with her longterm manager.

Ultimately, the experience made her more bold when it came to a career revival. “Fear of failure? I’ve already been there,” she points out.

Read More: Ingrid Andress Slays the National Anthem as She Returns to the Stage

The past week has been nothing short of redemptive for the singer. She returned to the stage last Friday (Feb. 28) to perform — you guessed it — the National Anthem before a Colorado Avalanche hockey game. She was confident and sure-footed during her performance, and the crowd was in her corner as they cheered her on through every high note.

This week, Andress announced a new single called “Footprints,” and she is also planning a stage comeback. She chose a special place to book her first shows in nearly a year. Andress is playing two cities in Colorado, the same state where she grew up.

The singer announced her “exciting news” in a social media post, putting dates on the calendar for Aspen and Denver in early April.

“Haven’t played a show in a minute but what better way to kick everything off than the Colorado way,” she writes in the caption of her post.