Maddie Storvold, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter from Edmonton, was chosen on Wednesday’s episode of The Launch to release the heartbreaker, “Don’t Say You Love Me.”
“I really believe [it] is going to change my life,” she said after finding out she was the chosen artist. “I don’t know what to look forward to in my career, I just know that there’s a lot coming.”
The song, which was written by Canadian rock icon Bryan Adams (with Gretchen P. Daniel and Phil Thornalley), is available now wherever you get music.
Adams, a guest mentor on this week’s episode, plays acoustic guitar and lends his voice to “Don’t Say You Love Me.”
For Storvold, appearing on The Launch was extra special. When she was just eight years old, her father took her to one of Adams’ concerts, where she did everything she could to get noticed by the singer. (Adams was known to call someone up on stage to sing “When You’re Gone” with him.)
After auditioning for Scott Borchetta, Marie-Mai and Adams with John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” Adams asked Storvold if she wanted to do “When You’re Gone” with him.
"I can’t tell you how amazing that was,” she told iHeartRadio. “For me it was a story coming full circle. The closing of one chapter and the opening of the next.”
A fixture on the Edmonton folk scene, Storvold followed her debut album The Old Brag Of My Heart last December with Freedom, Books, Flowers & The Moon.
Born in Cold Lake, Alberta, Storvold moved with her family to Dubai when she was a child.
She took piano lessons and, by the age of 12, was learning to play guitar. Storvold also got to experience the world – her father’s job as an airline pilot meant she was able to travel to dozens of countries while in her teens.
Storvold has long been a fan of poetry and literature – the titles of her two albums are quotes from Sylvia Plath and Oscar Wilde respectively – and she was inspired by Canadian storytellers like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, as well as artists like Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and Brandi Carlile.
Her dream collaborator is Carlile, she admitted. “I’m obsessed. I think she’s so cool,” Storvold told iHeartRadio.
“It’s been really cool in the past couple years to see this new kind of powerful femininity, the divine feminine, really making a resurgence.
“So all of my favourite artists are these powerful women who are exploring the female experience, which is something that’s really important to me. They’re blazing the trail and I want to be a part of that.”
On The Launch, Storvold was chosen over finalist Nate Daviau of Toronto, as well as hopefuls Jordane from Quebec City and Ben Cortrill and The Faceplants from Vancouver.
She follows Season 2 chosen artists Cassiøpeia, T. Thomason, Saveria and Olivia Lunny.
Storvold spoke about how music helped pull her “out of a lot of dark places.”
She explained: “I struggle with depression and anxiety. I felt a lot of shame about it for a long time but it’s now become something that I’m like … it’s just who I am. Because it also makes me deeply empathetic and deeply creative.”
Storvold described the task of performing someone else’s song as daunting. “There is a process of sinking in to someone else’s work and making it your own and feeling that experience too because you still have to deliver an honest performance,” she told iHeartRadio.
MORE: Your Guide To Season 2 Of The Launch
After her live performance of “Don’t Say You Love Me” on The Launch, Adams commented: “She made it her own song. It’s as if she’s always sung it.
Storvold agreed. “I do feel like [it] is my song. I just feel connected to it and I hope I get to sing it for the rest of my life.”
Missed this episode of The Launch? Watch it on the CTV app or catch it Saturday at 8 pm on CTV and Sunday at 11 am ET on Much.
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