Jessica Simpson’s long-awaited country album is due out September 9, her father Joe tells Usmagazine.com.

“It’s going to be a great year,” he told Us at a taping of Pete Wentz’s new show F’N MTV in Hollywood Thursday.

“It’s 9-9 — she’s into nines this year,” he added. “We hope it’s a wonderful joy. It feels really good. She is extremely happy.”

The video for “Come on Over,” her first single, debuts on her Web site Saturday.

“Next week it’ll be on CMT,” Joe said.

Joe said his daughter — who turned 28 Thursday — is perfect for country music, calling it “the heartland of America.

“We forget on the East and West coasts that there is a whole country in between,” Joe said. “That’s our home, and that’s Jessica’s home.”

Look back at Simpson’s sexy – and scary! – style over the years.

Asked why she recorded a country album, Jessica told Billboard earlier this year: “I am a country girl. I grew up in Texas, and country music was what I listened to.”

Citing Martina McBride, newly single Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Reba McEntire as inspirations, she said, “I think there is a strength in female country artists.”

This weekend, Simpson is headed to Lake Tahoe, where beau Tony Romo is playing in a golf tournament.

“We’ll probably rent a boat and go out on the lake on Saturday,” Romo told Us.

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Jessica Simpson turns 28 today.

Look back at the singer’s sexy — and scary! — style over the years.

So what’s beau Tony Romo getting his birthday girl?

He’s not sure!

“I have to buy her something!” he told Usmagazine.com Wednesday at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, a resort casino. “I’ll pick something up tonight.”

Asked if he’d pick her up some golf clubs, he laughed: “I don’t know if she’d like that!”

“I think I’ll take her out to dinner,” he added, “a nice restaurant.”

See what a body language expert had to say about Jessica and Tony.

Romo — who is in Lake Tahoe for a golf tournament — said he and Simpson are renting a house.

“We’ll be here all week,” he said. “We’ll probably rent a boat and go out on the lake on Saturday.”

Simpson’s birthday celebrations kicked off Monday when she dined with Romo, her pregnant sister Ashlee and husband Pete Wentz at Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas, California.

“We had a get together,” Romo said.

Following dinner, Simpson and Romo hit West Hollywood’s Key Club to see Steel Panther (formerly known as Metal Skool).

The Dallas Cowboys quarterback even tried his hand at singing the Guns n’ Roses hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine” to Simpson and the crowd.

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Vanessa Hudgens says “stupid people” leaked the nude photos of her online last year.

“I think people thought I took it lighter than I really did,” the High School Musical star, 19, said of the incident in a new interview with Good Morning America Radio. “For me, it was really tough because I’m a private person and for something like that to happen, it’s so mean.”

She said the experience was “horrible … it sucked. But thankfully it’s over and it’s in the past.”

How did she survive?

“My fans were amazing because they have stood by my side. They really are my core group,” she said. “My family’s always there for me. I just surround myself with good people and try to think of good things.”

See more photos of topless celebs.

In February, Hudgens — who just dropped her new disc Identified — said she was upfront with her mom about the shots.

“I was just open with her, and she was just so cute,” Hudgens told Seventeen. “She was like, ‘Well, everyone can be naked if they want to.’ My parents are very supportive of me. And they know I’m a teenager, and yes, kids do stupid things sometimes.”

The biggest lesson she learned?

“Nothing is private,” she told the magazine. “Everyone knows everything, and they can find out everything about you… you have to be aware of the people you’re around.”

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Eva Mendes, who quietly admitted herself into treatment at the Cirque Lodge in Utah in January, admits that she’s still “sensitive on the subject” of substance abuse problems.

The actress snapped at a reporter for Interview magazine who joked that Alcoholics Anonymous would have to be changed to Alcoholics Unanimous because of the prevalence of problems in Hollywood.

“I’m not making jokes, because people die from this stuff,” she says in the interview, which hits newsstands next week. “So, honestly, I think it’s a bit tacky that you made a joke. I’ve got to be honest.”

Mendes, 34, had entered treatment for “personal issues,” her rep said, amid reports of drug use and body issues.

“There are so many lies out there regarding my recent trip to Cirque Lodge,” she says. “But I don’t care what people think. I just don’t care. So I will neither confirm nor deny.

“I’m not a spokesperson for any kind of substance-abuse organization,” she adds.

“I’m proud of people who have the determination and the fearlessness to actually go and face their demons and get better,” she says. “This is a life or death situation.”

Mendes also says being a Cuban-American actress has helped her career – but Hollywood executives are slow to realize that ethnic diversity is “the future” of America.

“We are the future,” she says. “I mean, we’re all just mixing together that much more. We are the future in that sense. I don’t mean Latinos, I just mean ethnic diversity.”

Though Mendes – who stars in the upcoming films The Women (September) and The Spirit (December) – thinks “being a woman in Hollywood is a big enough challenge” because of “the lack of roles,” she says she is often passed over for roles.

“What makes it frustrating is when a director or a studio head doesn’t see me for the same part that they’ll see, let’s say, Drew Barrymore for,” Mendes says.

“Drew’s a great friend of mine,” Mendes adds. “But it’s like, ‘No, we want more of an American type of girl.’ And it’s like, American has opened up. I’m an American girl, born and raised.”

But Mendes doesn’t consider it a challenge and thinks it’s harder for Asian stars: “We have so many Asian girls in this country, and they’re so not represented up on the screen.”

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