Aurora, Ontario singer-songwriter, Laura Fortini, releases her debut single for radio, “Lights Went Out,”: a warm, narrative-driven pop song built from a real memory she carried for years before finding the right way to tell it. The third song in her released collection, coming after her previous songs, “Look In” and “Shattered”, it’s a flirty, nostalgic track that reminisces a late-summer/early-Autumn memory. Written when Fortini was just fifteen, the track marks the first official radio release from the 23-year-old artist, who also performs under her own name as she works toward a full length, self-titled album.
The song traces back to a single night at her family’s annual community festival, an all-day gathering held every Labour Day weekend that draws hundreds of family members and close friends within her tightly knit, Italian Canadian community. Fortini wrote “Lights Went Out” not long after that festival, reflecting on a near relationship that had become the subject of good-natured community chatter, and on her own hesitation to pursue it further at the time. Rather than approach the memory with regret, she wrote from a place of curiosity, imagining what it might look like to reconnect without any of the earlier complications attached.
That reflective, open-hearted quality shapes the entire song. Writing from her grandparents’ spare room, where her family was temporarily living while their new home was under construction, Fortini found herself drawn to the sensory details of that night; the brown wooden pavilion strung with glowing yellow and orange lights, the secluded park in the middle of a wide stretch of woods, and the collective energy of a community gathered in one place. The song captures that yearning directly, translating a very specific personal memory into something broader and more universally felt.
“Lights Went Out” is a reflective look at a relationship that unraveled before it ever had the chance to fully bloom, capturing the bittersweet longing to return to a time when hope outweighed heartbreak. Through vivid imagery of “thorns and roses,” “bright-red flags,” and the recurring refrain: “take me back to the moment before the lights went out,” Fortini explores the tension between nostalgia and acceptance, acknowledging how love can feel beautiful even when it is ultimately unsustainable. The lyrics balance vulnerability with self-awareness, tracing the emotional arc from devotion and optimism to the realization that some connections, despite every effort, are simply not meant to last.
“Lights Went Out” was recorded at Songsbury Studios in Vaughan, Ontario, with producer Mathew Teofilo, and released independently through Fortini’s own publishing. It arrives as the next angle of the chapter of her life this album appears in, on the edge of a fourteen-track long-playing record that’s currently in progress. Now, three songs into completion, this is a project Fortini continues to pursue and describes it as a way of using her own experiences to connect with listeners who may recognize themselves in similar moments.
Fortini’s musical foundation runs deep. She began piano lessons at four and voice lessons at six, going on to complete Royal Conservatory of Music examinations with honours and First-Class Honours, before picking up guitar and songwriting together at twelve. Fortini wrote her first song after witnessing Taylor’s concert for 1989, as her first-ever live concert she attended. Alongside years of choir, theatre, and live performance throughout her school years, she taught herself basic production skills, tools she now uses to shape her own demos. Though she calls them “humiliating”, and “rough drafts”, those demos were the ones she used to give to producers and is what her current producer accepted the terms to work with her on. She is currently continuing her Royal Conservatory studies while pursuing a degree at York University in Toronto. Studying English, History and Humanities, Fortini has also taken a course in Concert Choir, within the Fine Arts/Music Program. She is looking to continue taking more courses in that field for a potential minor degree.
With “Lights Went Out” now introducing her sound to a broader range of listeners, Fortini continues building toward her debut album one song at a time, guided by the same instinct that has defined her songwriting since childhood, using music as her clearest way of processing experience and connecting with the people who hear it.
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