Rising star Kalie Shorr has never fit neatly into a box – and that’s exactly what makes her one of the most exciting voices of her generation. Raised in Maine, she cut her teeth singing in a church choir and fronting teenage rock bands before moving to Nashville, where she quickly earned acclaim for her razor-sharp songwriting and fearless perspective. Her debut album Open Book landed on the New York Times list of the best albums of 2019, and in the years since, she’s carved out a space all her own: bold, genre-blurring alt-rock that nods to the raw energy of Alanis Morissette and Nirvana as much as it does to the storytelling craft of Shania Twain and Taylor Swift.
Beyond her music, Shorr’s creativity spills into every corner of her life. She restores vintage clothing, dabbles in interior design and DIY projects, and even crafts intricate cakes when she’s not writing or on the road. She’s surfed in Costa Rica, learned mandolin, and honed mindfulness practices that keep her grounded while chasing her next challenge. Whether collaborating with Nashville heavyweights or sharing the stage with Stevie Nicks and Kelsea Ballerini, Shorr embodies the curiosity, restlessness, and sharp-edged artistry of a true storyteller.
We sat down with Shorr to talk about her career and new EP, My Type, which dropped on August 1.
RR: Talk about the new EP – your debut did so well. Would you say this new music is a continuation of that or a fresh start creatively?
Kalie: This one feels like I’m returning to my roots from Open Book [debut album], but also incorporating sounds from my music since then. And that works kind of perfectly because EPs…you know, you can’t tell your whole life story with an EP.
There are some songs on it that feel like sister songs to my last EP [I Got Here by Accident]. Kind of like revisiting the same topic but with five years more experience. All these things I reference from my childhood – specific breaks; mental health – they’re all things I sang about on Open Book, but I have a different perspective being 30 versus 25.
So yes, I do think that they’re very all closely tied together and, but there’s kind of a bridge between the two walls.
RR: What was the inspiration behind the lead single, “Unkiss”?
Kalie: Well, it was a song that had a really long journey, and I feel like that’s something all these songs have. Some of them I even wrote before my first album. “My Type” was a song I wrote in 2017 by myself and revisited in 2022. I wrote it for the first time literal days after I went through a six-year breakup.
It almost made it onto Open Book on a bridge, and it always kind of stuck with me, the idea. It was always important to me. And I was in a session one day in 2022 in Nashville. I’d been living in L.A., but I was in Nashville, and I just… I didn’t feel like an artist. I’d been feeling horrible about everything. I was in a label deal that wasn’t working for me. My management was like, slowly ghosting me. I had never had that low of a career moment, and I just started to not really feel like an artist.
And so I was like, ‘Hey guys, can we work on this song with me? I don’t want to co-write today. I just wanna work on this song. It’s been in my heart for years.’ And we did, and I just fell back in love with it. It was like, ‘This is who I am as an artist. This is what I care about. This is what I sound like. This is the kind of lyrics I want.’ It just kind of reignited everything for me.
RR: It sounds like that song kind of reignited your whole artistry at the same time.
Kalie: Totally. Yeah.
RR: Talk about your sound. It has spanned from country to alt-country to rock… What inspires genre fluidity? How do you define your sound, if you do at all?
Kalie: I like the term genre agnostic, because it’s like, I do believe in genre to a degree. I don’t really feel like I know exactly where I stand with it… I’m genre spiritual, not genre religious. That’s the way I feel about my favorite artists like Michelle Branch, and I would say the same for Jewel. When people describe them, it’s like pop, rock, folk, country. It kind of has all those things.
And I never wanted to box myself in. I think with my first record, people thought it was more country because I was living in Nashville. But to me it was like singer-songwriter, pop rock.
And then with I Got Here by Accident, it was more pop punk. And now with this record, it’s just all of those things together. So I think I just allow myself to be influenced by whatever I’m listening to.
RR: After years of reinvention and exploring these different sides of yourself, what does success look like to you now?
Kalie: That’s a great question.
I feel like I know what success is so much more now after knowing what flopping really is like. Because, you know, I was working at a strip club in a referee costume at one point, like that was my job. And then I was like, ‘okay, I need to make something happen.’
So I started doing my podcast series, and then people really liked it, and then it gave me the confidence to make music again. And then I moved to L.A., and now I’m back doing music full-time. And so, to me, success is being able to do that. Like, having the baseline of getting to make music.
So I’d love to do things like play SNL, win a Grammy… but success is also just being able to put out songs that I care about.
Give My Type a listen below: