Multi Grammy Award-winning MCA Nashville country artist Vince Gill released the latest focus track from his upcoming album OKIE today. “Forever Changed” is a song that is both timeless and of the moment. Inspired by Gill’s personal experience with attempted sexual abuse, “Forever Changed” gives voice to survivors of trauma and speaks to the cultural moment in a singular way. “I knew it was important for people to hear—it’s a real thing and you can’t sweep it under the rug,” Gill says, “It’s a story about sexual abuse and grew out of an incident that happened to me in junior high school—I was lucky and I escaped, but who knows how my life could have been different had I not gotten away.”
In 2018, Gill performed the song at the Ryman Auditorium for the Universal Music Group Nashville Artists’ Showcase during Country Radio Seminar. “We’re living in a time right now when finally people are having the courage to speak out about being abused, and I think that is beyond healthy and beyond beautiful—to see people finally have a voice for being wronged,” Gill told the audience, “maybe what’s been going on has given me a little bit of courage to speak out, too.”
Audio / Vince Gill talks about the song, “Forever Changed,” from his new album, OKIE.
DownloadVince Gill (Forever Changed) OC: …heart for you. 1:48
“That’s a real thing and you can’t – you can’t sweep it under the rug. And that song, I changed that song too from the way I had written it originally. It has to have a little bit of compassion to it and that probably is – if there’s one song that might be the most judgmental on this record it might be that one. But it used to have a much harsher ending and I didn’t feel comfortable with saying that. I remember Keb Mo said one time, he said, ‘I have a hard time singing this Johnny Cash song because it said, ‘I shot a man in prison just to watch him die.’’ He said, ‘I can’t go there.’ And so, I softened the ending quite a bit, and in the last verse. And I think it’s better because then it has – it has a little bit of forgiveness. It has a little bit of compassion and that’s not easy to do, to forgive. It’s very hard, and especially yourself. But the person that’s been wronged has all the power if they forgive to let the guilty party, they’re going to live in that forever. Some people say well they should. Great but it would be good if…So yeah, that song is hard. It’s very, very hard to hear. I’ve even talked about in the past that my basketball coach and gym teacher who acted out on me in junior high school, and I was lucky. I knew it was weird in what he was trying to do, and I jumped up and I ran. S, in a sense nothing happened. Something happened but the results of it didn’t happen, and who knows what my life would have been had it happened if it would have been changed. It might have been whatever. So, I just think it’s good to reach out to people that have been wronged and say somebody has got a heart for you.”
