Tori Kelly follows up her 2018 passion project, Hiding Place, winner of the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Gospel Album, with the new LP, ‘Inspired by True Events’ (Capitol/School Boy Records).
‘Inspired by True Events’ sees the two-time GRAMMY winner departing from the bright and breezy pop of her 2015 debut album, Unbreakable Smile, to music with more experience and substance. Along with showing the maturity of her powerhouse vocals and exceptional range, Tori brings even greater depth to her songwriting, examining events that have shaken her world in recent years.
“At first I was worried about whether people would want to hear these kinds of stories from me, but then I got to the point where I didn’t let that hold me back – I just had to write about what was really going on in my life,” states Tori.
Jimmy Napes (Sam Smith, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige), who co-wrote and co-produced most of the album with Tori, helped her make that leap. The first song of their London sessions was lead single “Change Your Mind” – Tori’s soulful response to learning that her parents disapproved of her engagement.
Tori recalls, “As we were writing it, there was a line where I felt like I was getting too honest and personal. Jimmy just stopped me and said, ‘If it feels uncomfortable, that’s when you know you need to say it.’”
“Sorry Would Go a Long Way” provides the most painfully charged moment on Inspired by True Events. With its stark acoustic guitar work, the timeless ballad finds Tori’s vocals turning heartbreakingly fragile as she assumes her mother’s point-of-view at the time of her parents’ separation. She co-wrote the track with British singer-songwriter Bruno Major, who also plays acoustic guitar on the track, and Napes. Tori wistfully recalls the simplicity of childhood on the luminous “Kid I Used to Know” and pays tribute to the wisdom of her late Jamaican-born grandfather on “Your Words.”
“The first time I listened to the record all the way through, it felt like I was watching a movie of someone else’s life,” Tori notes. To augment that cinematic quality, she laced the album with interludes crafted from old home movies, including a clip of her father declaring his love for his then-two-day-old daughter.
Tori will soon head out on tour in support of Inspired by True Events, as well as reprise her role as Meena in the forthcoming sequel to the 2016 animated movie ‘Sing.’
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