Kenny Chesney Talks Split With Renee Zellweger

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Kenny Chesney, Renee Zellweger
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FIRST PUBLISHED: October 13, 2008 3:10 PM EDT
LAST UPDATED: October 13, 2008 4:46 PM EDT

LOS ANGELES, Calif. --

Kenny Chesney has gone on the record about his breakup with Renee Zellweger.

Chesney told Newsweek, that his split with Zellweger, which occurred in 2005 when their marriage was annulled, inspired his new album “Lucky Old Sun.”

“It’s the root of the record, for sure,” Chesney said. “In 2006, I was probably as emotionally and mentally exhausted as I’d ever been. And that was due to a lot of things — having the foot on the gas pedal constantly, and my breakup with Renee Zellweger. I got in a plane and went down to the Virgin Islands. I was completely by myself. I didn’t want to be around anybody. So the next thing you know, it’s me and a pen and I sat down and wrote a lot of lines of this song, ‘Nowhere to Go, Nowhere to Be.’”

The country star, who has always been fairly reserved in speaking about the split, told the magazine it took a great deal of time to get over the end of the former couple’s romance.

“It was horrible. It took a while,” Chesney said. “Years. It’s been since 2005.”

The impetus for opening up publicly about the breakup had to do with Chesney actually writing about his split in song form.

“It’s my life. I’ve been in a lot of states of mind in the last three years. In that way, it’s a pretty honest record,” Chesney said. “I’ve let myself be more emotionally vulnerable in some of the lyrics. I think that was good therapy.”

Chesney said he is over the breakup, but as for how he expects Renee will feel when she hears the album, he is unsure.

“I have no idea. I don’t know. It’s unpredictable,” he said.

And he is unlikely to find out, as the couple doesn’t keep up regular contact.

“Well, every now and then. I don’t want to say this whole record is about her,” he said.