Frankie Ballard Rebounds From ‘Dark Time’ With New Single

Frankie Ballard didn't have the smoothest breakthrough into country music, but the artist is back on track with his new single, 'Helluva Life.'

When Ballard first entered the country scene, he landed two singles, 'Tell Me You Get Lonely' and 'A Buncha Girls' on the Top 40 chart, but the songs never really took off as he had hoped.

"If I'm honest, it was kind of a dark time for me. It was tough," Ballard tells CMT. "Your second single comes off the air, and you're left thinking, 'What's going on here? Is this me? Is it the music? I mean, what is the issue here?' And I felt by talking with radio guys that it wasn't a me problem, you know? I had a lot of friends out there. I just wasn't sure the music connected."

'Helluva Life,' Ballard's highest-charting single, brought back memories of his youth, but it also took the singer back to that dark time when he didn't know if he could make it in the business.

"It took me somewhere. It's such a cool message -- that you've got to appreciate what you have in your life," he says. "And it even goes so far as to say you should appreciate the bad times because they make the good times better."

He adds, "It was incredibly parallel with what was going on in my life. It's such an appropriate thing for me to be releasing as my first single off the new project. I thought my first single was gonna come out and, ka-pow, be off to the races, but that didn't happen. But at the end of the day, I feel very blessed to be in the game and to have a new single."

Ballard's upcoming album, 'Sunshine & Whiskey,' is set to release on Feb. 11.