Country’s Vince Gill sings #MeToo song
Vince Gill wowed country radio professionals in Nashville, Tenn., this week with an unrecorded song about sexual assault, “Forever Changed.” Although the lyrics are sung by a third party to an abuser about a girl’s molestation, Gill said he’d only gradually come to realize that the trigger for writing the tune may have been his own frightening experience as a teen.
The occasion was the Universal Music Group Nashville artists’ showcase at the Ryman Auditorium for attendees of Country Radio Seminar, which draws roughly 2,000 programmers and DJs. At the annual event, stars perform acoustic versions of their singles.
“You come up here and get to sing one song, and you go, what the hell you gonna sing?” said Gill, 60, after thanking the crowd Tuesday. “I think that the greatest way to live is to welcome the moment that you’re in and the time frame that you’re in. I chose this song that I wrote some years ago . ... And maybe this song came from a personal experience for me.
“I was in seventh grade, and a young, dumb kid,” he continued. “And I had a gym teacher that acted inappropriately toward me and was trying to do things that I didn’t know what the hell was going on. And I was just fortunate that I got up and I ran . ... But maybe what’s been going on has given me a little bit of courage to speak out too.”
Gill has told of his junior high experience before, in a 2014 Rolling Stone interview. He reportedly said backstage that he has no plans to record the song.