Before she was a tabloid Jezebel straight out of central casting, LeAnn Rimes was a pint-sized country star. The Mississippi-born Rimes had a handful of huge hits (“Blue,” “How Do I Live”) and sold millions of albums when she was still a teenager.

Rimes, now 33, found the transition to adult stardom a rocky one, in which attention paid to her personal life far outstripped attention paid to her albums. In 2009, she and actor Eddie Cibrian left their spouses and eventually married each other, a seismic event chronicled on her 2013 comeback album “Spitfire,” and in the pages of Us magazine.

Rimes recently signed a new record deal. An edited transcript of our conversation follows.

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“Spitfire” was a very personal, autobiographical album. Is the in-progress new album a continuation of that?

Absolutely. [This is a] completely different point of view, completely different place in my life. There was a lot of heartbreak and a lot of confusion, a lot of love on that record, but just from a different perspective. This album has a lot to do with love for myself, and appreciation for myself. It's taken a lot for me to get there. I talk a lot about family on the album. I've never heard a song written from a stepmother's point of view, about their family.

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Can you move people with an album? Did people look at you differently after “Spitfire,” and say, “Oh, now I understand.” Can you see a movement in your direction?

I think I see some movement in [the reporting of] truth. It was my honest account of what happened in my life. I'm not the only one who's ever been through that situation. I don't know if a lot of people in that situation have the guts to even talk about it. I don't know if I would've had the guts to fully embrace all of that if I hadn't gone through it as publicly as I did.

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It's probably hard to have a sense of humor about tabloid stuff.

I have a wicked sense of humor anyway, but when it comes to people lying about you and making money off it? It's not human. I've gone through many different feelings about all of it. It still gets to me at times, but it's for hours, not days or months. When you start to really know who you are, you don't question it when you read what someone says about you. We live in an epidemic of self-hatred. I see it daily with people coming at me, and they do it to everybody. The hatred is really stemming from them not liking themselves. When you look at it that way, I feel so much empathy and understanding for those people. It takes a burden off my back. I don't take it personally.

Allison Stewart is a freelancer.

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