Meet Kalie Shorr, a 2017 RISER Who Won’t Quit Fighting
Kalie Shorr packs light. The singer and youngest of the first generation of Taste of Country RISERS says she cleans her closet bi-weekly, taking stuff to Goodwill or giving it away. Her songs come the same way — nimble, with all but the most important assets discarded.
You’ll hear that on "Nothin’ New," her latest single and the song she chose to perform during the recent RISERS video and photo shoot. It’s a song about realizing the guy you’ve been holding won’t reciprocate, ever. A catchy melody grabs your attention before the final lines of her chorus hook you hard. "Fight Like a Girl," a satellite and streaming hit from 2016, did the same thing.
"I've heard so many different stories of how people interpreted ‘Fight Like a Girl,’” Shorr says, "but I remember playing it for my mom pretty soon after I wrote it and the first thing she said was that it reminded her of when she was going through her treatment for chemo for her breast cancer. So I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I never thought of someone taking it that way, and that's so much more important than my qualms with the music industry.'"
Stories like this are common. Shorr’s song in response to a music consultant saying women were just the tomatoes in the salad, and men should be the lettuce, took on a larger meaning. Eventually, it did the same for her.
"I had so many more doors open for me, but also so many more closed in my face," she says of 2016. "I remember there was a moment I was playing Song Suffragettes and just had a really rough day, I think I had a bad record label meeting and I remember playing it and halfway through I just started crying because I was like, 'Do you believe this? Do you believe that you can win with no one in your corner?' I went home and just cried and I was like, 'Holy cow, I need my own song more than I thought I did.' Now I play it and I definitely feel that I've overcome the attitude, but it was hard. I saw a lot of sexism in the music industry in 2016 and so I needed to hear my own song, and the irony of that is not lost on me."
Overcoming obstacles is nothing new for Shorr. Portland, Maine to Nashville is only 1,200 miles, but for an 18-year-old it may as well be on the moon. And there was the house fire. At age nine Shorr lost everything in a blaze that started just below where she would have been sleeping had she not been at a friend’s birthday party.
“I just would've been totally gone, which is really crazy to have that kind of perspective of how quickly things can just go, and when we went back to the house to see if we could find anything after the fire, the whole second floor was burned down, it was literally just the bottom floor and the staircase. It was like the stairway to heaven, it just ended.”
Earlier this month Shorr dropped her new Slingshot EP, a five-song project that showcases talent and potential. This dynamic singer-songwriter talks about her experiences and sings "Nothin' New" during these RISERS videos.
Kalie Shorr On Set at the 2017 RISERS Shoot
Kalie Shorr Opens Up About Obstacles That Led to "Fight Like a Girl"