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By: Me

I’ve always been singing. My parents always say they could never get me to stop. That’s what I did everywhere I went. I don’t know how I came to love music so much. Maybe it’s because it moved something inside of me in some solitary moment, or because it felt like flying. People constantly ask me, “What made you decide to become a singer?” I didn’t decide. I guess music chose me.

Here’s the “facts about Kelly” part of this. My first performance was at four years old at the Cape Cod Conservatory. I still remember it. My hands were already dancing and floating around beyond my control like they do now. After I finished, I went up to the video camera, and stuck my tongue out. I’ve always enjoyed sticking my tongue out. Thankfully, I no longer do that after performances.

My father is a jazz pianist and my mother is an artist, so I was raised to love all art and appreciate general craziness. I grew up listening to all the jazz greats my dad showed me, like Ella Fitzgerald, Julie London, and Peggy Lee. My mother’s taste also influenced me toward other styles of music--the Carpenters, Whitney Houston, Renee Fleming, Sarah Brightman, Sting, and Paul Simon.

When I was six, my parents divorced and my mother and I moved to Kanab, a small (I mean really small) town in southern Utah. I kept performing, while having a fairly normal childhood. That changed when I was 14. My mother and I rented out our house, got in our car, and looked for every performance opportunity we could find for me. I sang at state fairs, I opened for Kenny Loggins, I even performed at the 2004 Olympics. On the way, we slept in the car, stayed with friends, and rented $19 a night hotel rooms.

All roads led to Los Angeles. The first time I sang the national anthem for the Lakers I was 15. Super nervous. My hands were shaking every second. Kanab had 5,000 people. The Staples Center had 20,000. I spent the next year going on fruitless auditions in an attempt to make some money to keep my music going. The contacts I made in Los Angeles eventually worked out and I met my manager, my vocal coach, and the producer of my first album. And from there, a new paragraph began.

Whenever I sing a peace comes over me. Like the world is okay. It’s been that way forever. I get lost in a forest of notes that surround me like leaves falling on an autumn day. That’s the clearest description I can give you. Music heals me. I hope it will continue to do so my whole life. I have always felt it was my purpose to share that with the rest of the world.

We began making what became We Are One in the summer of 2004. It was the best, most challenging, most exhilarating, hardest, craziest two years of my life. I loved and craved every second of it. I spent at least 8 hours most days in the studio, listening to drum beats, deciding on reverbs, arguing over guitar takes. I wrote and recorded song after song after song, each one being my temporary favorite. But the songs that stayed with me are the ones that are on the album.

My album is eclectic, I know. That’s because I’ve never liked labeling myself as a certain kind of musician, or a certain kind of person. That may come from my ridiculous mind wanting to be perfect at everything. I’m not sure. I do know that I love jazz, and always have because of my father. I was also trained classically most of my life. That gave me other influences, other languages, and other emotional and vocal colors. I love the sound of a tinkling piano, a delicate guitar, and swelling, intense orchestras. I also love a soft but heartfelt rhythm and lyrics that can create a perfect picture in your mind in only a few words. We Are One is a combination of all the music I love.

But, the music I make is not really about me. It’s about all of us. That’s why I named my album We Are One. Music about the quiet moments of solitude when a song makes you feel like you’re part of it, something you can’t possibly describe to anyone else. I hope you feel it like I do.

kelly sweet - we are one

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