Katharine McPhee Talks Early Career Disappointment, Never Having a ‘Major Hit,’ & Why She Came Out of Recording Retirement

Katharine McPhee got very honest about her music career in a recent interview while promoting her new holiday album.

The 38-year-old entertainer and her husband David Foster recently released their holiday album Christmas Songs, which they say is just part one of a full album that will be finished in 2023.

This marks Katharine‘s first album in years and it brought her out of recording “retirement.”

“I really haven’t desired to do much recording. Literally last year, I think I was on a red carpet and I said, ‘Oh, I’m a retired recording artist; I’m not recording anymore.’ Because I really didn’t want to, and I haven’t wanted to. So, this was sort of like a spur-of-the-moment decision,” Kat told Yahoo Music.

In the interview, Katharine also talked about being disappointed when her recording career didn’t take off right after American Idol and how she’s never had a “major hit.”

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“Listen, if you’re a new artist, an unknown artist, and you sell half a million records on your first album, it’s a huge success. … But of course when you’re coming off of a platform like Idol, the expectation was a million and above,” Kat said. “I remember feeling a lot of pressure and being disappointed. I kind of also knew, though, that I wasn’t getting the right lift-off. I don’t feel sorry for myself or anything like that. It’s just kind of how I see it. I’m very practical about it.”

She added, “I didn’t want to take an indefinite break from singing; I just didn’t really find a place in the recording industry. I’ve made a lot of albums. I made my first album, which was actually critically really well-received … and I had a lot of celebrity attention post-American Idol. But I never really got that major hit. I had little tastes of success, this, that, and the other, and I had a great touring situation where I was going out and performing live. And so that was great, and I loved it.”

“But I think that I just have been one of those singers that is capable of doing a lot of different genres,” Kat said. “I can sing R&B. I can sing country. I did a little show called Country Comfort where I played a country artist. I played a Broadway star [in Smash]. There’s a lot of different genres in which I can cover, which is great, but can also be challenging in the recording world. It’s like, ‘What kind of album do you want to make?’ And I never really knew the answer to that. The last artist album I made was a standards album [2017’s I Fall in Love Too Easily], and that’s probably closest to who I am — which is why Christmas songs are easy and great for me.”

Kat has high standards when it comes to music that she’s going to record and she usually says no to most things.

“People send me songs and I’m like, ‘Nope, that’s not going to be good enough!’ I don’t want to do a good song; I want to do a great song. And sometimes those are really hard to come by. So anyway, my point is, I never really felt like I had a place in the recording industry. … Maybe I’ll be a late bloomer and put out an album when I’m 40 or something, and have a massive hit like Natalie Cole did [with the Foster-produced Unforgettable… with Love] when she was later in life. Maybe David will be that secret recipe. We certainly had a great time making this Christmas album together,” Kat said.

Kat and David had some special guests at their recent shows.