Taylor Momsen had reached a point in 2018 in which she thought The Pretty Reckless were done as a band after depression, set off by the death of Chris Cornell, sent her into a downward spiral. She quit the band shortly after, with no fanfare which is why you may not even know that it even happened.
Momsen told Kerrang that she fell into a deep depression after Chris Cornell committed suicide in 2017, barely leaving the house. She said it got even worse when the band's producer, Kato Khandwala died after a motorcycle accident in 2018.
Taylor said, “I didn’t think about quitting. I just quit. It wasn’t a thought, like, ‘I don’t want to be an artist anymore.’ I didn’t think, ‘I’m done with this and I wanna go do something else.’ It was like, ‘I don’t want to do anything.’ I quit life. I didn’t leave my house, didn’t leave the couch, didn’t talk to anyone."
But music, as it often is, is a healer. After a long break, Taylor felt like she got to a place where not only could she really listen to music again, but that she found that she needed it. Taylor explained, “At first I couldn’t listen to music, I was too upset -- everything brought back a memory to me that I wasn’t ready to handle. I finally got to a place where I could listen to music, and I went back to the beginning again. I started listening to The Beatles." She followed that with other favorites like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who and AC/DC and "finally, I was able to listen to Soundgarden again. And that led to me finally being able to pick up a guitar and to write."
The new Pretty Reckless album, Death by Rock and Roll, is due out February 12th.