Rimes performs on 'Leno' (Photo: NBC)LeAnn Rimes has a new single out--any guesses as to what the subject matter of it is?
Okay, we'll end the suspense. It's called "Borrowed" and it's about her affair with now-husband Eddie Cibrian. Anyone surprised out there?
Rimes performed the new song, the first single off her upcoming album Spitfire, on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno Tuesday night. The lyrics are very obviously about entanglement with a married man: "I wanna hold out, but I hold on / Even though I know it's wrong / Cause I don't want to give you back / I don't wanna give you back / You’re the best I ever had / So I don't want to give you back / But you’re borrowed."
Rimes has discussed her involvement with Cibrian--both were married to their respective spouses when the affair began--extensively in the media over the past few years. She accordingly took on the subject with Leno, admitting the song is about Cibrian and that "it's a very intimate look at a very rough moment in my life."
"I actually still get embarrassed talking about it, even though I've written a whole album talking about the situation," she told the talk-show host. "I did go through a very public affair...I think a lot of people think it was done with complete abandonment and it wasn't."
Rimes doesn't let herself off the hook: "I call myself pathetic in the song," she explained to Leno. "I love using that word because it was the only way I knew how to describe myself. Because at that moment I was pretty pathetic."
The singer also talked with Leno about other much-discussed events of the past year, including her 30-day stint in a treatment center. "The last four years have been super compressed with stress and anxiety...I didn't know how to deal with it all. So I needed the tools, so I went in to take care of myself. That's it."
She also took a wry shot at Cibrian's ex-wife, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Brandi Glanville, whom she is in a constant on-again, off-again feud with. "There's no reality in a reality show," she quipped, to much applause from the audience. "I know that's not my reality...I should feel flattered that I'm that interesting--that I can be such an amazing storyline on a reality show!"
Rimes concluded, "I've come to this point, and it's good. You take the bad with the good...I think I've learned a lot in my 30 years."
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