Don’t Nobody Love Like We Do
Tori Kelly is a 22 year-old singer from Wildomar, California who has been quite a hit in the year 2015. Since the age of eleven she has been performing live, since eighteen she has been writing songs, and now she is one of the most popular young artist in music today for her ridiculous vocal talent, her catchy songs, and lets be honest, the hair.
Her progression in the music industry has been a slow rise to the top almost every year since 2012, with her gaining recognition on YouTube, to collaborating with more and more popular artist and even performing on award shows. This year, she has skyrocketed into everyone’s ears with her performances at the Grammys, VMAs, The BET Awards, and even on shows such as “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” or “Jimmy Kimmel Live”
In an article posted on NPR about the upcoming music artist Tori Kelly, she talks about her background in music. She mentions how she started signing at the age of three. Tori was on American Idol when she was seventeen years old along with a kid talent singing show called America’s Most Talented Kid when she was eleven years old and won.
In a series of short video interviews on MTV’s website under the “Artists to Watch Section” for 2014, Tori Kelly reveals some personal and general information about herself and her music along with some random fun facts. In a thirty second video interview with Vh1, she describes her sound as being “soulful with hip hop and rock influences” because that is the music she listened to growing up. In the quick clip that they showed while having this interview, the music seemed to be very uplifting as Tori Kelly is seen dancing and smiling in her hit single “Nobody Love”, which you can watch below.
In another twenty-five second video, Tori talks about where the inspiration of her music came from. She goes on to explain that she writes about her personal experiences in her own life and her journey as a music artist and the ups and downs that come with her career. In another interview with MTV, Tori shares her hometown in southern California and mentions her love for it, due to the warm weather. She also talks about how, due to touring, she really dislikes cold weather, but loves the fashion that goes with it. She gets a bit more personal by talking about her first concert experience for her birthday with her three friends and getting to see Gwen Stefani perform with Ciara as the opening act. Although these videos do not describe her completely, it gives a strong sense of her kind, generous character and her determination to follow her passion as a singer.
Due to her rise in popularity socially, NC State announced that she would be performing for our homecoming in the Fall of 2015. We saw this as a great opportunity to look into the student’s opinions of her and how they view her career and music thus far. The survey created was six questions, all easy to answer, and we were pleasantly surprised by the results that we got.
We had seventy-eight college students respond to the survey, all students being apart of either the “ARTS NC State” or “Class of 2018” Facebook pages. About sixty-six people (roughly 80%) answered yes to having heard of Tori Kelly before the survey, and nearly fifty-five students (roughly 70%) answered yes to having heard at least one of her songs. The data change occurred when asked if the students were planning on seeing her for homecoming, around 35 students (roughly 45%) said they would be attending the concert. When asked if they preferred different young female pop artist over her, Tori Kelly was only given 10% of the vote in comparison to Ariana Grande (15%), Rihanna (30%) and Taylor Swift (45%).
Overall the students were fairly familiar with Tori Kelly and the music she had put out thus far. We were extremely surprised by the amount of students that actually liked her and are excited to see her perform. Our last question on the list was “What’s your favorite Tori Kelly song?” and it was great to see almost every song off of her new album listed in the results because it showed just how much the students are liking her and how much better that is for a rising artist like herself. From building her fan base through social media to performing on a consistence basis to releasing a major label album, Tori Kelly has been slow rise but an awesome one and this survey is great proof of that.
Tori got a chance to also visit NPR’s “All Things Considered” to discuss a lot about the music industry itself. During this interview she states that much of the album is stemmed from a conversation she had with her manager, Scooter Braun. Following her second EP “Foreword”, many of the executives she was working with at Capitol Records were extremely worried about the direction she was going in. Many of the execs, and even Braun believed that Tori was just too boring and should change her style a bit to be a little more like a lot of the artist today. It’s because of those re-occurring meetings that the album “Unbreakable Smile” came to be. The self-titled single is the first song that she wrote for the album and this was the beginning of it all for her major label debut.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVOvhKCYKAc
It’s extremely brave of her to take a chance like this and continue to be herself despite what other people may have wanted for her. She may say so herself, but I truly believe it paid off for her in the long run. The album “Unbreakable Smile” debuted at number 2 on the billboard 200 and sold 75,000 copies in the first week, which in today’s standards is pretty incredible for a YouTube artist. Although this is technically her third project, it’s still amazing to see where she has been able to go in just a matter of three years of releasing her own material. Im sure the sky is the limit for her career and everyone will be excited to see more.
Tori Kelly has a beautiful face to go along with her enchanting and distinct voice. This is can be credited to her parents who gave her such a mixed background.
Besides her diverse ethnic background, Tori Kelly also has a very diverse mix of genres in her sound of music and in her lyrics. The first song I have ever heard from her is called “Expensive”. It has a very uplifting and fun sound to it with lyrics that are fun and relatable for everyone. All of her music is consistently soulful and is very hard to dislike or not understand. She has a very strong sense of self and sends very good messages in her music which is very important for anyone but especially for young women who are still developing into themselves and finding who they are. An example of this is her song called “Anyway”. She states how she does not smoke and drink without sounding judgmental and sounds very confident in herself. Tori Kelly is not a shy musician as you can see from her many social media platforms she enjoys interacting with others and her fans. Some of the places where fans can follow and connect with her are snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and Fahlo.
For those interested in Tori’s music, everything you need to keep up with this talented new artist can be found here http://www.torikellymusic.com/ .
Links: (Interviews)
· http://www.npr.org/2015/06/24/416857097/pop-singer-tori-kellys-unbreakable-smile-keeps-her-optimistic (her back story, come up story, history on singing shows and youtube)
· http://www.mtv.com/artists/tori-kelly/video-interviews/ (mtv in person video interviews)
· http://www.vibe.com/2015/06/tori-kelly-unbreakable-smile-interview/ (more about her own music, music she’s covered, her sound)
Other Links:
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r704vy1CkFw American idol link
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rju1VoKE7A America’s most talented kid link
- http://www.torikellymusic.com/ Tori Kelly’s music website
