LISTEN TO ‘INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS’ HERE
LISTEN TO NEW SINGLE COFFEE HERE
Inspired by True
Events
marks a striking departure from the bright and breezy pop of her 2015 debut
album, Unbreakable Smile. Like her 2018 passion project Hiding Place
– winner of the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Gospel Album, with hit single “Never
Alone” named Best Gospel Performance/Song – Inspired by True Events
keeps closely centered on her warm yet powerful vocal presence and
extraordinary range. But this time around, 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,” says 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.
Idolator predicted, “[Inspired
by True Events is] destined to be one of the best albums of 2019” and
hailed “Sorry Would Go A Long Way” as “intimate and heartfelt.” Rolling
Stone said, “‘Change Your Mind’ is acoustic and unhurried. Swelling pianos
and massed backing vocals serve to push the song towards a climax.” VIBE praised
how the song “allows the musician’s soaring vocals and delicate story to
permeate.”
A force of nature truly singular in today’s pop world, 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.
Inspired by True
Events
– Track Listing
1. Coffee
2. 12/16/1992
3. Change Your Mind
4. Language
5. 2 Places
6. 8/28/1997
7. Kid I Used To Know
8. Pretty Fades
9. 3/2/1991
10. Sorry Would Go A
Long Way
11. Actress
12. The Lie
13. Until I Think Of
You
14. 3/26/1994
15. Your Words
16. Before The Dawn
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