Vince Gill is opening up about a sexual abuse attempt he experienced when still a child, in his new song, “Forever Changed.” The song, from his upcoming Okie album, touches on the pain he endured while in junior high. Although Gill ended up changing some of the lines in the song, the lyric, which says, “Can’t you just leave the child alone? / I can hear the angels in heaven moan / God was watching and He knows your name / Because of you, she’s forever changed,” gives voice to a pain that he, and far too many other young people, endured.
“That’s a real thing and you can’t sweep it under the rug,” Gill shared with his record label, UMG Nashville. “And that song, I changed that song too from the way I had written it originally. It has to have a little bit of compassion to it and that probably is – if there’s one song that might be the most judgmental on this record it might be that one. But it used to have a much harsher ending and I didn’t feel comfortable with saying that. I remember Keb Mo said one time, he said, ‘I have a hard time singing this Johnny Cash song because it said, ‘I shot a man in prison just to watch him die.” He said, ‘I can’t go there.’ And so, I softened the ending quite a bit, in the last verse.
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“I think it’s better because then it has a little bit of forgiveness,” he continued. “It has a little bit of compassion and that’s not easy to do, to forgive. It’s very hard, and especially yourself. But the person that’s been wronged has all the power if they forgive to let the guilty party – they’re going to live in that forever. Some people say, ‘Well, they should.’”
Gill admits it was hard for him to write “Forever Changed,” and it’s hard for him to sing, because it forces him to relive one of the most traumatic experiences of his life.
“That song is hard,” Gill conceded. “It’s very, very hard to hear. I’ve even talked about in the past that my basketball coach and gym teacher who acted out on me in junior high school, and I was lucky. I knew it was weird in what he was trying to do, and I jumped up and I ran. So, in a sense nothing happened. Something happened but the results of it didn’t happen.
“Who knows what my life would have been had it happened if it would have been changed,” he added. “It might have been whatever. So, I just think it’s good to reach out to people that have been wronged and say somebody has got a heart for you.”
The 62-year-old previously opened up about his experience while performing at Country Radio Seminar (CRS), on stage at the Ryman Auditorium.
“We’re living in a time right now when finally people are having the courage to speak out about being abused, and I think that is beyond healthy and beyond beautiful—to see people finally have a voice for being wronged,” Gill said from stage. “Maybe what’s been going on has given me a little bit of courage to speak out, too.”
Okie will be released on Aug. 23. Pre-order the record, and download “Forever Changed,” at VinceGill.com.
Photo Credit: Getty images / Sylvain Gaboury
