Tori Kurtz, who records under the name Willingness, has always approached music with vulnerability. But on her latest album, “Sunflower,” that vulnerability becomes a lifeline — a way to process a relationship in real time, from first spark to heartbreak to healing.
“It is the most real, most raw thing I've ever written and also the most real and raw thing I've ever experienced,” she said.
The album’s title and story are both rooted in a romantic relationship that changed the course of her life.
Released in May, “Sunflower” is the follow up to her 2023 self-titled debut, marking a deepening of her sound, songwriting and spiritual journey.
“The name of the album is so interwoven with how the album even came to be, why it exists. And it exists because I fell in love,” Kurtz said.
The woman she fell for had a connection to the earth, often barefoot in the sun, enjoying the beauty of the natural world.
“When I met her, I was so the opposite of that,” Kurtz said. “That's the beautiful thing about connecting with her, is that she reconnected me to parts of myself that I had lost touch with.”
Kurtz affectionately nicknamed her “Sunflower,” a symbol that revealed a deeper meaning after the album was complete.
“I didn’t know this, but sunflowers follow the sun throughout the sky in the course of a day," she said. "How cool is that?”
This discovery came to represent both Kurtz’s relationship and broader spiritual themes of love, the universe, God and self-growth.
Keeping a sonic diary
Kurtz wrote “Sunflower” not after the relationship ended, but as it unfolded, each song capturing a different emotional chapter as it happened in real time.
The album opens with “River (The Day We Met),” an instrumental inspired by the pair’s first encounter.
“We connected by the riverside, and that's her MO,” Kurtz said.
She said, like a river, the moment was an invitation into something beautiful but unknown or unpredictable.
“Both the beauty of what it is to fall in love, and then, of course, the grief that came along with that,” she said.
Tracks like “Falling Together,” “Never Look Away” and “Let the Light In” overflow with the joy and vulnerability of new love.
Rather than writing with guitar or piano to begin writing her songs, Kurtz used her voice as the primary instrument, channeling emotion directly through improvised vocalizations.
She would sing freely to release emotional energy after spending time with her partner.
“I would come home and I would need to move that energy, like I had to get it out of my body,” she said.
That primal and unique method of composition became the spark that would then inspire the lyrics to flow later.
The result is a series of tracks that sound like emotion in motion: fluid, unpolished and alive.
Even the short “Shower Song” carries emotional weight, capturing a candid moment where Kurtz’s partner was singing in the shower.
“I stood outside the bathroom door ... with my recorder, and I was just like in this dreamy space. And she had no idea,” Kurtz said.
Songwriting retreats and spiritual repair
The album’s midpoint brings a shift, reflecting the painful reality of a relationship gone sour.
The song “Halfway” marks that turning point.
“It was about halfway through the relationship where ... I experienced infidelity and betrayal,” Kurtz said.
She said feeling like something was “ripped away” instantaneously forced her to relearn who she was and process letting go.
Through it all, she returned to her voice and eventually to a form of peace.
“Circling back to the sunflower being a more in-depth meaning — like the light of my own love is what's here to nourish me, and everybody else gets whatever spills over,” she said.
Tracks on the latter half of the album explore the complexity of healing.
"It is the most real, most raw thing I've ever written and also the most real and raw thing I've ever experienced."Tori Kurtz
“Heavenly and Hollow” was composed during a songwriting retreat, using a cut-up lyric technique.
“The technique is writing sentences on strips of paper, organizing them and orienting them however you want,” Kurtz said.
“Thunder,” meanwhile, became a personal anthem.
“It speaks to how totally blasted open my eyes and my heart became through that hardship in our experience and our relationship,” Kurtz said. “The line is ‘I needed a storm to come to wake me up.’”
When the album was finally sent off to mastering, Kurtz said she felt both a sense of closure and liberation.
Those powerful feelings are at the core of the Willingness project — a name that came to Kurtz during a guided spiritual journey when she asked, “Who am I?”
“In that moment, it was like everything landed in place and my body,” she said. “I finally had a space where I could represent myself.”
Kurtz said she’s still figuring out what’s next — both musically and personally — but one thing is clear: She’s willing to face it all, fear and all.
“I can be afraid, but I'm gonna still do it anyway,” she said.
