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As a member of K’s Choice, Sarah Bettens made music that got airplay on radio stations around the world.

As popular as K’s Choice became, both domestically and in Bettens’ home country of Belgium, it somehow felt disingenuous to her, however. The music she was making propelled the song “Not an Addict” to the top of the charts on both continents, but something was lacking within Bettens herself.

Eventually, K’s Choice came to a halt four years ago when Bettens and her brother, Gert, decided to pursue individual solo projects. At the same time, Bettens came out to the public and to her family as a lesbian. In that revelation, she found a renewed sense of freedom within her art as well, she told The Daily Times this week.

“It was huge, and it was all happening around the same time,” she said. “I’m pretty sure my fatigue in K’s Choice was directly linked to not being happy in my personal life and blaming it on that. But then I met my current girlfriend, I made a solo record and I came out, and not just to everyone else — to myself as well. It was a process to me, too.

“It was huge, like a huge weight had been lifted. I feel like I really started to understand the songs whereas before, I would look at K’s Choice songs and the songs I had written for somebody else, and I would think, ‘Wow — that’s so about me, and I didn’t even know it.’ Now, I’m very much aware of who I am, and my level of happiness and togetherness and balance.

“It’s almost hard to describe the sense of newness and adventure that came with making that first solo record,” she added. “There were some major coming-out moments, songs that I probably had wanted to write for 20 years but hadn’t been able to up to that point.”

Today, Sarah Bettens has come full circle. She’s preparing for the release of her second solo album, “Shine,” and is ready to join her brother in the studio for another stab at K’s Choice. She’s found a loving partnership and is the mother to two children in Johnson City. She’s at peace, in a way that she’s never been before.

“I kind of feel like every time I make a record, I grow a little bit and get a little bit closer to who I really am and the music I want to really make,” she said. “I keep narrowing it down, and I hope I have that feeling until the end of days and I’m sick of making records and don’t want to do it anymore. I think I’ve become a better musician and a better songwriter over the years, and even though it’s never been hard for me to speak directly, I think I’m getting much closer to myself as a person.”

Bettens first became active in the Belgian music scene in the late 1980s, when she formed her first band, The Basement Plugs, with her brother. They played primarily cover songs, but after a few years, the girl with the stellar voice — a sort of hybrid between Melissa Etheridge (minus the whiskey-and-cigarettes roughness) and k.d. lang — was “discovered,” and her first single, a cover of Hank Williams Sr.’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” was released under the name of Sara Beth.

When a record company offered her a contract for a full album, she convinced executives to sign her brother as well; the two formed the band The Choice and released its first CD, “The Great Subconscious Club,” in 1993. Gradually, The Choice built a following across Europe and attracted the attention of American bands for whom the brother-sister duo opened — Morphine, The Proclaimers and the Indigo Girls, who invited them to America for a series of dates.

Over here, a name conflict with another band named The Choice caused the Bettens siblings to change the group’s name to K’s Choice; not that it mattered — their 1995 album, “Paradise in Me,” spawned the song “Not an Addict,” which spent 30 weeks on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart. From 1996-97, the band spent a whole year in America, opening for such bands as Alanis Morissette, The Verve Pipe and Tonic. Additional albums and more tours followed, including appearances on the Lilith Fair, but in 2003, Bettens said, the siblings knew it was time to part ways.
It was a scary time for her, she added.

“It was very, very different — not only had I never made a record without him, I had never lived my adult life without him,” she said. “We started when I was 20, and we had never really done anything huge separately. When we decided we were going to make solo records, we were both in that mind-space of needing something different. It was definitely not wanting to be away from each other, but we both knew that would be the biggest adjustment.

“After 10 years, no matter how much you like your job or how much fun you’re having, it’s good to have a change of pace sometimes. We needed that change, that sense of adventure and a chance to start over, and we were both really curious about what we would do if we worked separately. My brother’s new record is coming out in a couple of months, too, and even though his first one was comparable to mine, this one is so different. Once we were able to let loose from each other, we tended to go different directions.

“But I know we want to work together again, and I know we’re going to make another K’s Choice record,” she added. “For sure, the break has been super-beneficial for both of us, and it’s made us feel like new again.”

Growing into her own, Bettens also feels like “Shine” is a step along the evolutionary path for her, both musically and spiritually. Making it was more relaxed and fun than “Scream,” her 2003 debut, and it has more of a spontaneous, live, rocking feel to it, she added. In the meantime, she’s continuing to write songs and to live her life. It’s not always easy, being an openly gay woman (as well as a foreigner) in the American South, but even that, she said, presents her with a sense of purpose.

“It’s different than coming out in Santa Cruz, Calif., that’s for sure, but a lot of good things have come out of this,” she said. “We live in a conservative part of the world, and it’s a challenge to say the least — my girlfriend and I don’t walk hand-in-hand in the grocery store, and that’s a shame, because nowhere else in the world do we even think twice about that. It’s something that our kids have to deal with, but it’s been surprisingly easy for them. There have been no major problems, but there’s still huge, huge prejudice.

“While we’re here, though, I like to see the positives in it. It’s been a great place to live, and in our own small way, in this community we live in, I bet we’ve made a difference a little bit. Some people hate us for what we do, but even if it’s one of my kid’s friends who’s gone camping with us or hung out at the house ... even if he grows up to not be totally close-minded ... then maybe fate has put us in a place that’s a little bit of a struggle for a reason.”