July 1 [7:55 EDT] -- A decade ago, singer Meredith Brooks was working in a trio with ex-Go-Go Charlotte Caffey, but now she's doing pretty well on her own.

The Oregon native has cracked the "Billboard" chart with "Bitch," the first single from her new album, "Blurring the Edges." Brooks says the song grew out of her reading of the writings of psychiatrist Carl Jung, and out of a conversation with her friend and co-writer Shelly Peiken.

She called me up one morning," Brooks told MTV News. "She was in her car and she said, 'Oh, God! I've just been such a bitch this morning and can't believe my boyfriend didn't kick me out of the house.' And I was like, you know, this is what I had just been going through in my life saying that's a part of us that we all have to accept.

Brooks said that instead of squashing this bitchiness, she came to accept it, and explore it, and found a top ten hit in it.

I even find that part of myself sometimes is this pearl, this seed of creativity or strength [1MB QuickTime] or what we've had such a negative meaning on. So I was giving her that speech or whatever and the next thing we knew, we were writing the song," the singer said.

Brooks kicks off a solo tour on August 8 in Washington, D.C., and later that month will climb aboard the Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair tour, which kicks off without her this weekend.