Laura Fortini Shattered
Aurora, Ontario singer-songwriter Laura Fortini releases "Shattered," the second track she has released to the public, though it will land as the tenth song on her forthcoming 14 track, self-titled debut album. The song arrives eight months after her debut single, "Look In," released October 10, 2025, and comes ahead of her later radio debut, "Lights Went Out," which looked back on a bittersweet teenage memory.
"Shattered" pulls from something far closer to the bone, a private family struggle Fortini watched her twin brother go through, and the helplessness of wanting to stand beside him while not being able to say so out loud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eik3Lp4MfcQ
Fortini wrote the song four days after witnessing the conflict unfold, sitting in her grandparents' spare room while her family's new home was under construction, the same room where she would later write "Lights Went Out" under similar circumstances. Unable to speak openly about what she had seen, either with her brother or her parents, she put everything into the song instead: the emotions, the unspoken weight carried on every side of the conflict, even the shape of the panic she felt in the moment. She was two days away from turning sixteen when she wrote it.
"This song has the most exact, vulnerable and honest portrayal of how I felt at the time," Fortini says, "and it's also the most accurate demonstration of the type of person I am." That clarity shaped the recording process from the start, with Fortini determined to carry the song's rawness through to the finished version rather than soften it. "When we were working on this song, Mat and I, we tried to get to the core of the situation," she says of collaborating with producer Songsbury. "I tried to have it so that the actual thoughts, sensations, sentiments and, ultimately, the intentions were what was communicated in the way we did the music and composition, and of course the lyricism. We wanted to make it abundantly clear what the gravity of the situation was, or at least how it felt back then. Hopefully, when you hear it, you understand what I meant in forming the song this way, and hopefully it can be related to."
Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/track/7JqWGzatD3Oqi0MeQbTy5z?si=d216d13f1de7492e&nd=1&dlsi=aa8f2a77ba1d417f
"Shattered" was written and composed by Fortini and produced by Mathew Teofilo, known professionally as Songsbury, continuing their ongoing collaboration. A lyric video for the song is available now on YouTube, with a full music video still to come.
The response to "Lights Went Out" has already carried Fortini's story well beyond Aurora. The single earned coverage from Tinnitist, Cashbox Canada and Record World International, along with a feature in Aurora's own Aurora Today, and picked up broadcast attention as far as CW33 in Dallas, ATV Today in the UK and Concert Monkey in Belgium, proof that a deeply personal, small-town story can travel further than expected.
Fortini's foundation in music 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, not long after attending Taylor Swift's 1989 tour as her first ever concert. Alongside years of choir and theatre, she taught herself basic production to shape her own demos, the same rough recordings that ultimately convinced Teofilo to work with her. She continues her Royal Conservatory studies while pursuing a degree in English, History and Humanities at York University, where she has also taken a Concert Choir course within the Fine Arts and Music program.
With "Shattered," Fortini adds another deeply personal chapter to a 14 track self-titled debut album now three songs into completion, continuing to use her own experiences, including the ones hardest to say out loud, as her clearest way of connecting with listeners.
