The Bowery Presents:
Tori Kelly
Friday November 6
Civic Theatre
7pm Doors // $25 ADV
Tix: http://bit.ly/ToriKellyNOLA
Tori Kelly - http://www.torikellymusic.com/
When singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Tori Kelly first played her new single “Nobody Love” for her friends, their initial reaction to the rhythmic, big-sounding pop track was, “Oh, this is really different for you.” “That was interesting to me because in my head, this is the style of music I always envisioned myself doing: urban pop with a hip-hop type of Lauryn Hill twist on it,” says Kelly, who first rose to attention with her intimate, acoustic guitar-driven EPs Handmade Songs and Foreword. “I was always a singer first, then the guitar made its way in on its own. A song like ‘Nobody Love’ was always the vision. This is where I knew I would end up.”
Kelly co-wrote “Nobody Love” alongside Rickard Goransson and Max Martin, the Swedish songwriter and producer who has ruled the Billboard Hot 100 for over a decade with a string of No. 1 singles for Britney Spears, Katy Perry, P!nk, and Taylor Swift, to name a few. Martin says, "After hearing Tori sing, we felt so inspired that we had no choice but to get involved. It’s been such a pleasure to be a part of her journey.”
Martin serves as executive producer on Kelly’s upcoming full-length debut album, which Capitol Records will release this spring. She also co-wrote with such vets as Savan Kotecha, Toby Gad, Claude. Kelly, Chuck Harmony, Wolf Cousins, and Ed Sheeran, whose show at Madison Square Garden Kelly opened in November 2013. The album, she says, does not depart from her soulful roots. “It’s like a marriage between that soulful urban thing and a mainstream pop vibe. It was hard to get to that place, but once we had ‘Nobody Love,’ I knew we’d cracked the code. It felt seamless.”
Working with one of the most successful hit makers in the industry is a long way from Kelly’s early years making songs in her bedroom and posting them online. Born and raised in Temecula, California, Kelly is the daughter of musicians, her dad is a singer and bassist and her mom plays piano and saxophone. “Music was really big in my house,” she says, adding that one of her earliest influences was gospel singer Crystal Lewis. “My dad always played her records, along with Jill Scott, Jeff Buckley, and Maxwell. Hearing me hum around the house as a kid, I think he knew that he should fill my brain with really good technical singers.”
Johnn Stimson
http://www.johnnystimson.com/#listen
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