Kelly Sweet

You know the feeling. We’ve all had it. Chills run up and

down your spine, and the hair stands up on the back of your

neck. The reaction is so strong, you can actually feel it

moving through your body.

Somehow - and it is inexplicable - the melding of voice,

talent, words, and melody have come together to create a

sublime moment. It’s as if the singer was privy to your

most intimate thoughts and feelings. A deep connection is

forged between listener and vocalist: you have become soul

mates. The pleasure - the feeling of oneness - is so

intense, you listen over and over. Such is the experience

of hearing 17-year-old singer Kelly Sweet for the first

time. The opening “oohs” of “We Are One,” the title track

from her debut album coming from Razor & Tie in 2006, stop

you dead in your tracks. Hushed and hymn-like, Sweet’s voice

creates a lush world of beauty. Fittingly, the song’s lyrics

urge listeners to take comfort in the community of all

souls. “I am you, you are me, we are one,” Sweet sings in

her supernaturally crystalline voice. Simple words imbued

with the uncommon wisdom of a singer who seems to have lived

a thousand lifetimes in her short time on earth.

No pre-fab pop confection or eager-to-please talent-show

contest winner, Sweet possesses the kind of organic talent

that is driven by an innate need to connect. In an age when

savvy music fans are rejecting the hollow hype that

accompanies the arrival of each "next big thing," Sweet

relies solely on talent and passion to convey who she is and

what she has to say. She is an artist who is driven to share

her gifts with the world because she has no other choice--a

fact that makes her extraordinarily unique among today's

demographically-designed pop stars. Like such stylistically

diverse artists as Norah Jones, Josh Groban and Dido, Sweet

is that rare singer that combines unassailable credibility

and talent with an uncanny ability to connect with a wide

audience of music fans.

To spend even the briefest time with Sweet and her music, it

becomes readily clear that the singer possesses an emotional

and spiritual sensibility that cannot be measured in years.

After all, Sweet was only three years old when it became

apparent to her that she would be devoting her life to

making music. But even at that tender age, she knew that

performing was about more than getting approval and

attention.

“One of my first musical memories,” she recalls, “is of me

standing at the bay window in my house when I was three

singing ‘I Will Always Love You.’ I knew then that singing

was something I just had to do - it was like eating and

breathing for me. But it’s always been so much more than

people clapping and saying, ‘Oh, that was lovely.’ There’s a

feeling I get when I sing that’s like a freedom and a peace

within myself. And I always felt like it was my purpose to

impart that feeling to the rest of the world.”

Perhaps it was divine fate, then, that Sweet was born into a

musical household (in Cape Cod, MA) one in which her jazz

pianist father and her artist mother fostered a love and

respect for music that began when she was an infant. “I was

hearing music before I even came out of the womb,” Sweet

laughs. “My father was always playing the piano. And days

after I was born while still in the hospital, my mother

gently put headphones up to my ears...it was the sound of a

tinkling piano.” Raised on the jazz standards that were

part of her father’s repertoire, the singer gravitated to

her Dad’s side at the piano to learn musical notes soon

after she could walk. Her first public performance followed,

at when she was 4 years old, at the Cape Cod Conservatory.

“I sang ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ and ‘I’ve Got No

Strings’ from Pinocchio,” she says. “My father played piano

for me. I was so excited.”

At the age of 7, following her parent’s divorce, Sweet and

her mother moved to Kanab, UT. “My mother wanted to paint

Utah,” the singer explains about their adopted home state.

“And Kanab was a really safe town. Five thousand people, one

stoplight. Everybody knows you. My mom loved it.”

Ironically, it was in this tiny Southwestern desert outpost

that Sweet and her mother began to plant the seeds that

would lead to the serendipitous blossoming of the singer’s

professional career. Working regularly with a vocal coach,

Sweet honed her skills as a performer by singing at state

fairs, county festivals, and community theaters. “I was

consciously trying to reach the world,” Sweet says, “but I

knew that I had to take it slowly. You can’t all of a sudden

go out and get a record deal. I was developing myself as an

artist so that I would be ready when the time came.”

As the audience got larger, Sweet’s aspirations grew. Sweet

and her mother rented their home in Utah and went on the

road for two years, traveling back and forth between Kanab,

Las Vegas and Los Angeles in search of every performance

opportunity. Barely 14, the singer opened for Kenny Loggins

when his tour came through Las Vegas. And when her mom sent

the Los Angeles Lakers a CD of her daughter singing, the

team booked Sweet to sing the National Anthem three

different times.

One synchronistic encounter after another eventually led

Sweet to a meeting with Grammy-nominated producer, arranger

and songwriter Mark Portmann (Josh Groban, Celine Dion) in

July of 2004. The meeting ended up being the most fateful

appointment of her young career thus far. “Mark and I

instantly got each other,” she says. “We started working

together immediately. Everything felt so natural. And we

never really had to try to search for songs because they

just came to us. We ended up with too many songs.”

One of the first songs Sweet recorded was an unlikely cover

of the Aerosmith classic, “Dream On.” "When I sang it, it

just felt like magic.” Indeed, Sweet turns the former rock

anthem into a spiritual salve for our troubled times, made

all the more poignant by the difficult circumstances that

surrounded the song’s recording. “I was very sad at the

time,” says Sweet, “because my father was undergoing

chemotherapy in Boston while I was recording my album in Los

Angeles. I knew that what I was doing was keeping him going,

and if I kept my dream alive, maybe he would too."

Other highlights include the uplifting “Now We Are Free,”

the Sanskrit theme (written by Hans Zimmer and Dead Can

Dance’s Lisa Gerrard) from the film The Gladiator, the

playfully sensual “Raincoat,” which clearly shows off the

jazzy influence of Sweet’s youth; and the lilting and

languid “Crush,” in which Sweet duets stunningly with

herself, creating an internal dialogue about a secret

infatuation that is clearly turning into love.

The latter song is one of several on the album that were

co-written by Sweet, with Portmann as her songwriting

collaborator and guide. “I started writing lyrics when I was

12,” she says. One weekend, I wrote lyrics to the song that

became ‘I Will Be Waiting,’ and I gave them to Mark when we

were in the studio. I was so nervous to give Mark Portmann,

the amazing writer, my lyrics. I mean, I was 16! I sat there

and closed my eyes while he read them, and he said, ‘Wow.

We've got to put music to this.' I was so happy.”

The exuberance and youth of Sweet’s undeniable teen status

can be heard in the album’s more contemporary-sounding pop

songs. “How ‘Bout You” is a joyous pop smash written on the

singer’s 17th birthday.

Not your typical pop record in any way, shape or form, WE

ARE ONE has a much more ambitious sensibility than those

being heard on Top 40 radio today. With songs sung in

English, Italian, French, and Sanskrit, and melodies that

partake of both jazz and classical influences, WE ARE ONE

conveys a sense of depth, intimacy and sophistication not

often heard in today’s pop landscape. The magnificent

“Giorno Dopo Giorno” couples Sweet’s soaring vocals with a

thrilling string arrangement, bringing listeners the kind of

intense joy that can usually only be experienced in the

world’s finest opera houses. “The song originally had

English lyrics,” says Sweet, “and it was called ‘Who Can I

Believe In?’ We felt that the melody was too European and

didn’t work with the lyrics, so we asked Marco Marinangelli,

who writes Italian lyrics for Josh Groban, to translate the

words into Italian. It came out beautifully.” Sweet says she

has always gravitated to the beautiful sounds of languages

other than English. “I was classically trained beginning at

the age of 11,” she says, “and that’s when I began to sing

in other languages. It always came very easily to me."

WE ARE ONE, then, is that rarest of musical experiences--a

seamless emotional journey that deeply touches listeners of

all ages with its beauty, grace, individuality, and courage.

But perhaps to call Sweet courageous is overstating

something that is really much simpler. “This music is not

about me,” she says. “It’s about the soul in all of us. I am

just happy to have a voice to convey these things to the

world.”

And the world is certainly a better place because of it.

Ella Fitzgerald, John Mayer, Celine Dion, Charlotte Church, Josh Groban