- - Shoshana Bean Went Through a 'Devastating' Breakup. It Led to the Best Album of Her Career (Exclusive)

Dave QuinnJanuary 10, 2026 at 2:30 AM

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Shoshana Bean at the 2024 Chita Rivera Awards in New York City -

Shoshana Bean tells PEOPLE she channeled heartbreak from a private, intense breakup into her most vulnerable album, Only Smoke

The independently produced album focuses on emotional clarity, accountability, and self-worth, marking a shift in her songwriting

Bean says creating the album helped her heal and is now preparing for her next Broadway role in The Lost Boys.

Shoshana Bean knew something extraordinary was happening just a few songs into writing her new album.

The Grammy Award-winner and Tony-nominated stage veteran — best known for her powerhouse turns in Broadway productions including Hell's Kitchen, Waitress and Wicked — had begun working on the project in the aftermath of the "surprisingly devastating blow" of a fast, intense relationship that ended abruptly. And though the romance was never public, its emotional fallout was profound and it pushed Bean back into songwriting with a level of honesty she hadn’t reached before.

"I was like, This motherf----- is about to give me the best album of my career," the 48-year-old multi-hyphenate tells PEOPLE, laughing now. "It was all worth it."

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That heartbreak became the backbone of Only Smoke, Bean’s most vulnerable and revealing body of work to date — and, she says without hesitation, her best.

“I don't want to hide behind big singing. I don't want to hide behind big production. I don't want to be dishonest so that I can preserve some kind of persona," she says. "I was thinking about the songs that have stuck with me my whole life... the common thread is always the humanity of them that everyone can relate to. This needed to be the most transparent storytelling I’ve ever done."

From its opening moments, Only Smoke feels stripped bare. The album — Bean’s seventh project overall, all independently produced, she says, "brick by brick"over the course of 17 years — trades vocal theatrics for emotional clarity, leaning into intimacy, accountability and self-examination.

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Longtime fans may recognize the emotional throughline: nearly all of Bean’s albums, she notes, were born from heartbreak. But this time, the difference was where she aimed the lens.

“I really wanted to make sure inside of the writing of these songs that it wasn’t just, ‘You’re a bad guy, you’re a bad guy, you’re a bad guy.' Because I have to own some decisions and choices that I made," she explains. "So I decided to be more accountable instead of pointing the finger."

"That was new for me — and I won't lie, it's hard work to turn the mirror on ourselves and really examine our own patterns and behavior," Bean adds. "But chasing someone else's stuff and their choices and blame, it gets you nowhere."

Songs like “Forward” reflect that shift, capturing a woman reclaiming her power without denying her pain. But the album’s emotional centerpiece may be “Hard Woman to Love,” a song Bean says is often misunderstood.

"People hear that title and think I’m saying I’m difficult to love or be with. And certainly when I wrote it, that's what I was thinking. 'God, I guess I must be tough because you don't stick around.' But the line in the bridge is basically saying, 'Wait a minute, my greatest offense was that I gave you the best of me.' And if that’s my crime, I’ll take it."

For Bean, the song ultimately became a declaration of self-worth, not self-blame.

"I realized I should have been harder to love," she says. "We all deserve to vet who we pour in to our lives; who we give our energy to; who we allow into our bodies. Because we all are so very, very special and our love is sacred. So being 'hard to love' means someone actually has to show up with integrity and honesty. that's something to be proud of. That's a badge of honor. I'm a wild spectrum of all kinds of colors and depth and deep waters. I'd rather be hard to love because then I know that anyone who's capable of loving me how I deserve to be loved really has earned the right to be here."

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Shoshana Bean performs onstage during the 2025 Apollo Theater Spring Benefit at The Apollo Theater on June 4, 2025 in New York City

That emotional excavation unfolded largely in Nashville songwriting rooms, where Bean found herself opening up — sometimes painfully — to collaborators like Melissa Fuller she had just met.

"It's really a spiritual divine experience when you land in these rooms meet someone who has a seedling of an idea that so perfectly resonants with what you're going through at the moment, and you're able to contribute to that and then ultimately end up with something that feels like it speaks to your whole entire heart," she says, of the creation process. "But I learned that, as good as the songs were capable of being was only equal to as honest as I was willing to be. So I really let down my boundaries and just vomited up all my stuff."

One of those sessions produced "Let Me Believe,” a haunting piano-and-vocal track that remains intentionally unadorned. "We knew it needed nothing," she says. "No backgrounds. No extra instruments. Just the truth."

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But as revealing as the album is about heartbreak, Bean says its deeper subject may be learning how to release shame.

"The last song we wrote was 'Only Thing Left,' " she says. “I wanted to write a goodbye letter. And I realized the one thing I hadn’t addressed was my shame. Because I didn’t understand that that’s what shame felt like. I thought I was owning responsibility, but really I was just beating myself up for choices that were already over."

The song, written just a week before recording began, marked a turning point. "That was me saying, 'It’s over,' " she recalls. "That's what that song is. It is like, 'You're the last piece of this puzzle. You can go now. Let me be free.' "

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Shoshana Bean attends the 77th Annual Tony Awards at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on June 16, 2024 in New York City

Sadly, the timing of the album’s creation added another layer of emotional complexity.

Bean began writing Only Smoke while earning rave reviews for her role in Hell's Kitchen, Broadway’s Alicia Keys musical. She'd sneak away to Nashville during sick periods and days off.

It meant processing heartbreak amid what should have been a high period in her career, including her first Tony nomination.

"This was supposed to be this season of celebration; one of the greatest of my life. Yet at all these exciting events, I was half in a daze, exhausted from processing all these emotions through these raw writing sessions," she tells PEOPLE. "I was miserable, and yet pretending to be happy. It was a weird juxtaposition, and it just goes to show you have no idea what's going on behind closed doors."

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Still, the album itself feels like a culmination — not just of heartbreak, but of healing. The closer, "Montana," was written alone during a monthlong stay in the state and came to her in one emotional rush after a horseback ride that left her feeling “high vibrational."

"My producer, David Ryan Harris, said to me, 'The only thing left for you to do is to go away, get quiet and see what comes out of you by yourself," Bean says. "And 'Montana,' it just poured out of me. It knew what it wanted to be. It knew what it wanted to say. It wrapped up the whole past two years of yucky stuff in a really big warm hug."

Today, Bean says her heart is no longer fractured.

"I'm totally healed," she says. "I credit the album process with that. Every bit of writing and recording healed me. Which is why, on the other side of it, there’s really nothing left but gratitude. The process of excavating and looking back and sifting through the wreckage of everything that happened in order to write this album has been my healing."

As for love, she’s at peace with wherever it may or may not fit next. "I’m really good being alone," she says. "And if someone can come in and elevate this space, great. If not, I’m okay.”

"I’m really neutral about love," she adds. "I think that’s how I know I’m healed."

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Shoshana Bean attends The American Theatre Wing's 2025 Fall Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street on Sept. 8, 2025 in New York City

For now, she’s focused on her next project, a starring turn in the Broadway musical adaptation of The Lost Boys, beginning previews on March 27 at the Palace Theatre in New York City and opening on April 26. And she's allowing Only Smoke to find its audience, while trusting that the honesty she poured into it will meet listeners wherever they are.

"When I first started writing this album, I was asked what kind of record I wanted to make," says Bean. "And sonically, I didn't care. All I knew was that I wanted to be as transparent as I could and tell good stories. To hear that that’s how it's landed makes me really happy."

Only Smoke is out now on all streaming platforms, and for sale wherever .

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”