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It's hard not to fall in love with Chrissy Metz.
For six seasons, the actress formed a special relationship with viewers as she played Kate Pearson on NBC's This Is Us. She also inspired readers with her personal memoir This Is Me: Loving the Person You Are Today.
Now, the 41-year-old is hoping to connect with fans through a passion that has been part of her life ever since she was a kid—singing.
"Playing Kate sort of renewed not only my love and my desire to want to pursue music as a career, but just to share my heart in a different way than just as Kate Pierson," Chrissy exclusively shared with E! News. "Every single hiatus between seasons, I would come up to Nashville and song write."
This month, she is showcasing the music that she's spent the last five years working on in a special tour titled Chrissy Metz Live at City Winery.
"Because this is a storytelling tour, I get to talk about why I wrote the songs and what inspired me and what the impetus was," she said. "It feels very intimate and I'm really excited about that."
Growing up, Chrissy remembered being in awe of Pink and Boyz II Men's concerts. More recently, she was inspired by This Is Us co-star Mandy Moore's performance at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. According to Chrissy, all the artists are following their dreams and connecting with an audience in an authentic way.
"To see anybody do what they love and just emote in a way that is so sincere and true and it's who they are and they're sharing their heart, that's why music to me is so important," she said. "I'm really inspired by anybody who gets up and shares their heart and their soul and does it in such a raw way."
If Chrissy has her way, her latest tour is only a taste of what's to come in her long music career. At the same time, she wants fans to know the acting bug hasn't disappeared.
"Acting is never going to go away and neither is music," she said. "I hope to meld them together at some point. I'd love to do Broadway. That's always been a bucket list for me, especially because it scares me to pieces. But if something scares you, I think you should do it."
Keep reading to see more behind-the-scenes details of Chrissy's tour. And find out when she's coming to your city by clicking here.
In August and September 2022, Chrissy Metz will hit the road for a series of City Winery shows. "I love people and I love to connect to people," she said. "I know what music does for me and I hope that it does that for people that come to see me."
After being part of people's homes for seven years thanks to This Is Us, Chrissy hopes viewers can continue the connection in her live shows. "I hope that they're feeling as if they're just sitting on the couch having a deep conversation with me and there happens to be really beautiful music behind it," she said. "I hope that they feel that way."
While country music is what Chrissy says she is drawn to, she tries not to put her music in one genre box. "I love the instruments. I love a fiddle, Banjo, an acoustic guitar, but that doesn't mean that it can't be in every other genre of music too," she said. "Country is what I sort of leaned toward, I think more for the aspect of the storytelling and the instruments."
When listening to Chrissy's songs, the singer hopes you hear messages of healing and love. "You can't heal unless you feel and sometimes that's the hard part," she said. "There are songs about my late father and about unrequited love, new love and even understanding that I'm deserving of love."
After signing with Universal Music Group Nashville in 2020, Chrissy knew she was on the right track. "I think I'll be songwriting forever," she predicted. "I will sing every single second of my life if I'm not talking. It's kind of what I do. Everything's a song anyway. To me, I was always a singer and you guys just didn't know."
Chrissy's love for music started in middle school when she joined the school choir. "Music has always been really cathartic and really healing for me and really there for me especially through puberty when you're going through all these changes," she said. "That's really when I started to write poems and songs and make those silly little mixtapes."
As Chrissy embarks on a new chapter of her career, she hopes fans receive a message that it's never too late to try something new. "I think if it's placed upon your heart, there's a reason for it," she said. "Whether you're creative or you're analytical or you're more business minded, we can do so many different things."
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