Lindsay Ell and Bobby Bones Are Still ‘Great Friends’ Following Split

Lindsay Ell and Dancing With the Stars champion Bobby Bones dated for a little more than a year, before breaking up in the fall of 2017. But while the couple might not be romantically involved anymore, Ell reveals their friendship is still as strong as ever.

“We were friends before we started dating, and thankfully, our friendship was still there afterward,” Ell told PEOPLE. “We were like, we’re not going to throw this out the window just because everything happened. And so we’re still great friends, and I want him to win and he wants me to win.”

Ell doesn’t regret her time with Bones, but she is unsure if she would date a celebrity again.

“When you go through things like a public relationship, it just gets tricky,” Ell conceded. “How honest do you want to be? What can you really say? When you look at Taylor Swift, she doesn’t care, and I love that. I love that she just writes what she writes from the heart. And I find that so empowering as a female songwriter and as an artist — to be able to just be like, ‘This is me.’”

Ell might not be dating Bones anymore, but she isn’t dating anyone else either. The Canadian is far too busy with her music career, which just earned Ell her first ACM Awards nomination (for New Female Artist of the Year), to worry about finding true love.

“I don’t know how you meet somebody in this town, especially when you’re gone all the time,” admitted Ell. “Then it’s also finding somebody who’s cool with me being gone for the next two weeks … ‘Love you, bye!’ But I’m also a firm believer that the right things happen in the right time, and eventually something will happen in that department.”

Ell might not have time to pursue romance, but she does have time to work on new music. The singer is back in the studio, after releasing The Project in 2017, with Sugarland’s Kristian Bush once again producing the record.

“As I’m turning 30 [on March 20] and entering into this new chapter of my life, I feel more myself than I ever have,” Ell maintained. “I’m more confident than I ever have been. I know who I am. And going into the studio to record my second album, I think it’s a really cool time for me to be turning 30 because I have a lot to say, and I’m not as scared to say it as I was even two years ago.”

Photo Credit: Getty images/John Shearer