Before Tyler Hilton wrote the songs that appear on his new album The Storms We Share he had never written anything but love songs. "It•s not that I was uninterested in things other than love, but it was love that made me want to write songs," the 26-year-old singer, songwriter, and guitarist says. Which would have
been fine except that Hilton had been working on a new album for three years and had already scrapped hundreds of songs that he didn•t consider good enough. Uninspired, he was having a hard time motivating himself to keep going.

"I started coming up with these lyrics that were little pep talks to myself, like„Come on, you can do this. You just have to clear your head and keep going,•" Hilton says. "So several of the tracks on this album, like „Keep On,• „Somehow,• and „This World Will Turn Your Way,• are these encouraging, hopeful tunes, which I•d never usually write, but that•s what was coming out of me at the time."

The uplifting theme of those songs eventually served as the inspiration for the album•s title. "I was looking for a phrase that communicated how we all have something in common," Hilton says. "I was spending a lot of time in the South and in Canada and whenever there was a storm, you could be standing in line at
the grocery store next to a stranger and they•d inevitably remark about the crazy weather. That•s when it hit me: Everyone shares one common thing — weathering the storms together. And that became a metaphor about recognizing that we all need to be encouraged to weather the storms. Sometimes you need
to remind yourself that dreams can happen, but they may take time so can•t give up, which basically describes the last four years of my life. That•s what „This World Will Turn Your Way• is about. I wrote it last and it thematically sums up the whole album in that I took everything I learned and put it into that one song."

The Storms We Share is a vividly drawn, emotionally resonant snapshot from these years, which Hilton spent trying to make a follow-up to his 2004 major-label debut The Tracks of Tyler Hilton. That album, which spawned the Top 40 singles "When It Comes" and "How Love Should Be," introduced the then-21-year-old Palm Springs, Calif., native to the public via Warner Bros. Records• now-defunct label Maverick Records. After the label folded, Warner Bros. executives told Hilton they loved his music, believed in him as an artist, and wanted him to stay with the label.