The harrowing real-life story behind Vince Gill’s “Forever Changed” was a secret that the “nicest guy in Nashville” kept to himself for decades. It wasn’t until the burgeoning #MeToo movement in the late aughts inspired Gill to translate his truth into music, incorporating the track into his 2019 album Okie.
Following the advice of one of his musical idols, Merle Haggard, who told the singer-songwriter to “just tell the truth,” Gill told Billboard, “All I tried to do was have these songs maybe be about subjects that were tough, but maybe tell these stories without judgment. That’s what feels the best.”
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The Real-Life Story Behind Vince Gill’s “Forever Changed”
One year before Vince Gill released his 15th studio album, Okie, he was performing at a February 2018 musical showcase at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium when he stunned the audience with a shocking personal confession. While introducing “Forever Changed,” Gill described an experience he had in the seventh grade when a gym teacher tried to touch him inappropriately.
He kept his description of the event vague that night, adding, “I don’t think I ever told anybody my whole life, but everything that’s been going on gave me a little bit of courage to speak out to it.” The singer-songwriter went into greater detail the following year in a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone.
“My basketball coach in seventh grade tried to act on me,” Gill revealed. “His hand got further and further up my leg, and I jumped up, and I ran. I was lucky, and I escaped, but I know a lot of kids who didn’t. Probably went to my school. A friend of mine, a gay man, recently heard the song and said, ‘Man, I am on the floor crying my eyes out because nobody ever talks about this stuff.’ My hope is that it will help people deal and heal.”
The Song Was As Much For Everyone Else As It Was For Him
Although Vince Gill changed some elements of the story in “Forever Changed,” his experience rings true in every line. Can’t you just leave the child alone? Gill sings in the chorus. I can hear the angels in heaven moan. God was watching, and he knows your name. Because of you, she’s forever changed.
As deeply vulnerable as the song might be, given Gill’s harrowing abuse story, “Forever Changed” is larger than one man’s trauma. Gill wrote the song as much for him as everyone else who has experienced sexual abuse—including those who came forward during the #MeToo movement that started in 2017, those who felt like they couldn’t or shouldn’t, and the countless other victims who existed outside the late aughts social movement.
“I knew it was important for people to hear,” Gill told The Oklahoman. “You don’t hear a lot of songs about sexual abuse, and that’s what this song really tries to tackle in a graceful, forgiving, and kind way. Not with judgment. That’s the biggest thing for me on this whole record was to not pass judgment. That’s the one thing I see in a lot of us that I wish we didn’t do so much. We’re just so quick to judge and so quick to take a stand.”
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