‘Gossip Girl’ star Leighton Meester on why she quit making pop music

If you’ve been waiting for the day that Leighton Meester steps back into the booth, it’s time to let that dream go.

While the Gossip Girl star has seemingly been leaning into the spotlight again with highly anticipated roles in streamer hits like season 2 of Apple TV+’s period drama The Buccaneers and the upcoming second season of Netflix’s hit series Nobody Wants This — which happens to star her husband Adam Brody — one thing that she’s firmly not getting back into is her short-lived pop music career.

“I just didn’t feel like I sang that well in those songs,” Meester, 39, recently shared with Bustle of her venture into pop music in the late aughts. “That’s why I stopped doing that style of songwriting, because I didn’t feel really good when I would sing it. That was something that I figured out in my 20s.”

Her music “career” launched in 2009 with her collaboration on Cobra Starship’s “Good Girls Go Bad.” Meester went on to release singles “Somebody to Love” and “Your Love’s a Drug” in the same year, before starring in the 2010 film Country Strong, in which she plays a beauty queen with the potential to become a rising musical star.

Meester didn’t release music again until the drop of her self-written debut album, Heartstrings, in 2014. The album featured nine songs.

Although the Single Parents star saw a recent surge of popularity with her music due to an unexpected shoutout from Flavor Flav, she’s not interested in revisiting her singing past. Meester is more invested in taking care of her two kids and working on projects in which ” there is that feeling of: there could be a future there,” she told Bustle.

Her onscreen “Leightonaissance” includes her upcoming role as Abby in Nobody Wants This. Fans quickly fell in love with the rom-com series when it launched in September and introduced the world to filter-free podcast host Joanne (Kristen Bell) and the hot rabbi who steals her heart, Noah (Brody). And now, thanks to Meester’s casting, there’s even more excitement around the show’s return.

Meester’s Abby will be Joanne’s “middle school nemesis who is now an Instagram mommy influencer.” You read that right: Veronica Mars and Blair Waldorf are going head-to-head.

Show creator Erin Foster — who acted on shows like The O.C. and Castle before creating and starring in VH1’s satirical reality show parody Barely Famous, told Bustle she was “blown away” by Meester’s table read.

“I don’t think people understand how funny she is,” Foster said, recalling how Meester had the cast and crew laughing with her improv. “At the same time, she managed to make her feel like a real influencer, who is very sincere about how ridiculous her life is.”

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Joining Meester in season 2 is Miles Fowler (Bottoms), who will play Lenny, Noah’s “Matzah Ballers teammate who gets set up with Morgan (Justine Lupe).” And seeing as how Morgan has a very weird thing going on with Noah’s brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons), we foresee a lot of very awkward interactions… and we can’t wait.