‘Dance Moms’ Star Kendall Vertes Opens Up About Abby Lee Miller’s Refusal To Release Her Music

Kendall Vertes is continuing her music career, no thanks to her “Dance Moms” coach Abby Lee Miller. Nineteen months after the release of her debut single, “Wear ‘Em Out,” the 14-year-old rising star is prepping to step back onto the music scene.

Saturday, ahead of the final “Dance Moms” competition for Season 7, Kendall is expected to premiere her video for the single “Where Would I Be Without You.” With hopes of releasing an album soon, Kendall recently spoke to International Business times about her career and what really happened between her and Abby.

Luckily for fans of Kendall’s upbeat first single, the reality star tells IBT her second won’t be a complete deviation. “Where Would I Bet Without You,” however, does have some personal themes. “It’s about my friends and the journey that we’ve been on together. It’s mostly the show girls just because I’ve been with them for mostly my whole life. It just talks about their highs and lows,” Kendall shared.

While Kendall is moving onward and upward in her music career, she did touch on her failed partnership with Abby, who helped help produce her first video, which beat out Taylor Swift’s ever-popular “Bad Blood” on iTunes music video charts in June 2015.

As showcased on Lifetime’s “Dance Moms” in Season 6, Kendall and her mother, Jill Vertes, dissolved their partnership with the coach after she refused to release Kendall’s album.

“She was with me for a year and she was really excited to manage my music career. She was the one who introduced me to singing lessons and releasing a single and then after I hit No 1. that was basically it,” Kendall said of her and Abby’s partnership.

“I did record an album, but she wouldn’t let me release. She does stuff like that. I just had to say, you know what, I need to focus on my own career and I can’t have you stop it. I just kind of dissolved my contract and now I’m away from her.”

Post breakup, Kendall says she’s still in the dark as to why Abby held back her tunes. “We basically just had to let the whole album go to waste,” Kendall continued, revealing she spent an entire summer in California recording tracks that never saw the light of day.

“It took a long time, it took a lot of work. She didn’t tell us why she did that but she did it anyway. I just have to move on because when I recorded it I was very little and my voice sounded very different from right now so I wouldn’t be able to release it right now anyway.”

While the split definitely caused some tension on the show, Kendall says she feels she made the right decision. “Abby is a little sad that she’s not doing my music but she kind of did that to herself... I don’t know how she feels about that but I’m OK with it because she didn’t really want to release my music.”

Kendall still studies dance with Abby every day as part of “Dance Moms,” which is currently airing on Lifetime.