Brooke Hogan is all about subverting people’s expectations, whether it’s breaking out of the shadow of dad Hulk Hogan, or progressing past her image as a pop singer.
“People always want to box you in and say well, what are you?” Hogan tells ET in a recent sit-down. “You have to be country, or you have to be pop, and I am like, what if I was raised on a bunch of music? What if I just love music?”
The 27 year-old singer is moving in a new direction these days, hoping to break on the country music scene with her new EP, out Sept. 4.
“Country, as I got older, it started making sense,” she explains. “Being a songwriter, it started to mean more to me and this just was pulling me in that direction.”
That direction pointed her towards Nashville, a city the singer has called home for four years now. Hogan says the city, the country music capital of the U.S., definitely influenced her new music.
“Pop is fun and R&B is fun, but I do love to write music and I love to write songs and this seemed like the place that I could really harvest my craft,” she says. “What I love the most about this town is that they protect themselves from media and from becoming one of those cities [like Miami or L.A.] where you could get bothered at every corner. You know, it’s not about being friends and doing music. Here it is still very grassroots and I like that.”
Hogan’s breaking into the country scene with new single “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend”, which the singer says is about the early stages of a relationship and “that process of, does he like me, is he going to say it first?”
“I’m using my writers as my therapists,” she laughs. “I might as well lay down on the couch and be like ‘These are my problems today’.”
Her writers might hear about her boyfriends, but dad Hulk Hogan wants nothing to do with his daughter’s relationships, according to Brooke.
“He doesn’t like me with any boys,” she admits. “I’m still 12 years-old in his mind.”
Hogan’s new EP, I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend is out Sept. 4.