Kali Uchis pours her heart into new album ‘Sincerely’

Kali Uchis wrote the album she knew her future self would need to listen to. The Grammy-winning artist unknowingly was crafting her own audible remedy.

“I really did make the music that I needed for my grieving process, for just the place that I’m at in my life right now,” she says of the album out on Friday.

“Sincerely,” (yes, the title includes the comma) began as a collection of letters to herself, friends and loved ones but took on a deeper meaning as the Colombian American songwriter gave birth to her first child and processed her mother’s recent death. The first single, “Sunshine & Rain...,” includes a clip of Uchis’ mother saying, “Good morning, sunshine.”

“I wanted to immortalise her in the project,” said Uchis. “I thought it was just a beautiful way to open the album.” The 14-track album finds Uchis proudly wearing her heart on her sleeve with songs like “Daggers!,” where Uchis encourages a close friend to lean into self-love, or “ILYSMIH,” which includes baby coos at the beginning and was written as she lay in her hospital bed with her newborn.

Uchis hopes that after listening to her fifth full album, fans will feel more connected to themselves and more in touch with their emotions: “I hope it will give them some type of solace.”

How was working on this album healing for you?

It’s crazy because a lot of times I feel, and especially with this album in particular, I felt that I really made music that my future self would need, that I didn’t realise I was going to need at that time. The album is actually dedicated to my mom. My mom later ended up getting diagnosed, and she’s no longer here. ... And so pretty much all of the songs ended up taking on a deeper meaning to me because of that and because of it being dedicated to her. ... At the time, I might not have even realized subconsciously that I was making all of this to heal myself.

Is that how you got to the title “Sincerely,”?

At one point, I was like, “I’m gonna make sure each of these songs is like, this is my letter to the world, this is my letter to this person, this my letter to that, this one to myself.” I tried to really conceptualize in a different way that I never have when making any other album. And then ... when my mom passed, a lot of what I had left from her is letters that she wrote to me, and so it ended up, like I said, just more and more reasons for me to realize that it was the correct title for the project.

What does that mean to you to have your mother’s voice be a part of the album?

After she passed, one of the first things I did was go through all of the audio messages that she had ever sent me and I was just listening to all her messages over and over, wanting to hear her voice. When I heard that one I just thought of, “Oh how perfect is this that the song is called ‘Sunshine &Rain...,’ and she had said, “Good morning, sunshine.” It was for my son that she sent that message. I thought it was just a beautiful way to open the album, considering that it’s dedicated to her.

I struggled a lot with whether or not I wanted to share because I’m a very, very private person. So I struggled a lot with if I even wanted to share that my mom was no longer here, but I felt I just had to not be afraid of that vulnerability and not pretend like it didn’t affect me or didn’t have some type of impact on me when it had such a big impact on me and still does.

Associated Press