Tori Kelly

Using her powerful voice and buoyant spirit, Tori Kelly has become one of music’s brightest stars. Since her emergence in the 2010s, she’s racked up Platinum certifications and hundreds of millions of streams, lending her vocal talents to the Sing series, and collaborating with a diverse breadth of artists like Justin Bieber, Jacob Collier, Jon Batiste, and Illenium. With her first full-length on Epic Records, TORI., the California-born two-time Grammy winner is primed to show off her wide range of musical influences and personal inspirations, weaving together arresting grooves, unrelenting movement, and her love of Y2K-era pop and R&B.

Kelly gave listeners a preview of her new direction on tori, the sleek 2023 EP that featured the skittering, Timbaland-echoing “cut” and the glittery vocal showcase “missin u.” On TORI., she expands on that release’s promise in a way that warrants its all-caps, full-statement title, bringing together sounds from the late ’90s and early ’00s in creative, exciting ways that put perpetual motion at the forefront—with the throughline being Kelly’s strong, versatile voice. “I love and grew up with all these different sounds,” she says, “And now I can put my own spin on these things that I’ve been inspired by.”

TORI. is Kelly’s first full-length since 2019’s Inspired by True Events, a cathartic album that led to the singer-songwriter experiencing an artistic breakthrough. “Inspired by True Events was very acoustic-feeling—a lot of live instruments, very heartfelt lyrics,” Kelly recalls. “I’d gone through a lot personally, and that’s just what came out of my soul.” Releasing it, she says, “felt so healing” and helped her process her emotions in a way that prepared her to dig into the rest of her artistic self.

Kelly was supposed to head out on a world tour in 2020, but that was cut short by the pandemic—so she decided to follow her muse, releasing the R&B-tinged Solitude EP and following it with A Tori Kelly Christmas later that year. “Mentally, I was already in this place of a new era,” she says of that time. “I was trying to think, ‘What would this look like?’”

In 2021, she connected with the pop polymath Jon Bellion for a session. “I had been a fan of his for a long time,” she says. The chemistry was instant: “We did two songs in a week.” Those tracks, the sparkling love song “alive if I die” and the pumping “shine on,” helped establish a new direction for Kelly’s sound. “I literally told him when we first worked together, ‘I just want songs that I can belt out in the car, and that other people would want to belt out in the car. I want feel-good songs, and songs that make me dance,’” she says. “Those were my guidelines—and I think we accomplished them, and a lot more.”

Take “thing u do,” which shape-shifts from a swaggering jam that recalls the most commanding ’90s R&B smashes into a fever-dreamy breakdown that features insistent piano and a guest vocal from fellow Grammy honoree Jon Batiste. Kelly explains, “it includes everything that I love: a big vocal, live instrumentation, a catchy hook, and a '90s feel.”

The inspirational anthem, “high water” rounds out the album with a message of resiliency. “‘high water’ is a special one—it’s actually one of the last songs that we added,” she says. “I had thought, ‘Great, this is the album. This is TORI. This is me. And then my health scare happened in July, and that shook things up.” tori was set to come out five days after Kelly was admitted to the hospital, where doctors discovered blood clots around her legs and lungs. “It was not what I pictured,” she says of that unusual release week. “But, it really changed my perspective on life. I’m so grateful to be on the other side of it and still be able to do what I love.”

After leaving the hospital, Kelly wanted to channel her feelings into a song, and “high water” came out. “It felt like the song kind of wrote itself,” she recalls. Before that, “I could have been like, ‘All right, let’s write an uplifting song.’ It could have worked, but because that whole thing happened—and it was so scary—I was able to really pour myself into it.”

“high water” has the breezy yet determined feel of rousing late-’90s hits like Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be,” which was one of Kelly’s inspirations. “That was one of my favorite songs growing up,” she says, and she wants “high water” to resonate with listeners the way that track affected her. “My hope is that other people would feel encouraged in whatever they’re going through, too,” she says. “While writing it, I was thinking of others, and hoping that it would touch them in some way.”

Kelly’s music has touched millions around the world, and with TORI. she opens herself up fully, bringing together big-chorus singalongs, throwback beats, and honest lyrics in a way that paints a striking, vibrant portrait. The album showcases all of the different musical sides of the artist that she has not shared with the world before, a truly definitive statement that brings all of the unique layers of her artistry together in concert.

“This feels like a self-titled moment,” she says. “I am ready to say, ‘This is who I am.’”