Jo Dee Messina Shares Heartfelt Message In 'Just To Be Loved'

Jo Dee Messina kicked off the weekend with her “first [new music] in a long time,” an upbeat anthem that she previewed for crowds of concertgoers at recent shows. “Just To Be Loved” made its long-awaited debut on Friday (July 7).

“You are perfect just the way that God made you. The person He made you to be,” Messina said to an applauding audience in a reel on Instagram on Thursday (July 6), capturing onstage moments as she stirred anticipation for the upbeat single. “I get it. You got your red hair, brown hair, green eyes, blue eyes. A little big in the hips or whatever, like this. I get this from my mom. That’s DNA. But the person inside, who you are, is what He created so perfectly, and it’s not worth changing.”

Messina released “Just To Be Loved,” starts by telling a story about a girl whose life turned complicated as she began to hate “things that made her beautiful,” and began to change who she was, “just to be loved.” Messina’s lyrics encourage “you’re perfect, you’re priceless…Don’t be somebody you’re not/ Just to be loved.”

“You're loved just the way you are/ Beautiful just the way you are/ Don't change who you really are/ Just to be loved …Well, you're perfect, you're priceless/ There's nobody that can deny it/ Don't be somebody you're not/ Just to be loved”

Messina’s latest single adds to decades of fan-favorites (particularly for 90s country fans), including “Bye-Bye,” “I’m Alright,” “Lesson In Leavin’” and, of course, “Heads Carolina, Tails California,” which inspired an award-winning single by Cole Swindell (Messina later joined Swindell on a remixed version of “She Had Me At Heads Carolina”). Listen to “Just To Be Loved” here: