John Foster‘s world was rocked when his classmates/friends Maggie Dunn and Caroline Gill were killed in a car accident on New Year’s Eve 2022. However, their deaths were also what inspired him to write the song that changed the trajectory of his life.

“In terms of when I decided that music was my thing, it was absolutely, one million percent, December 31, 2022, the day I lost my friends Maggie and Caroline,” Foster shared on the Fable House podcast. “Before that, I was kind of just teetering around the idea of music, playing it on the weekends here and there. It wasn’t until that day, when I went through the worst day of my life, when I sat down and wrote that song.”

The song was “Tell That Angel I Love Her,” which Foster performed on an episode of American Idol and later became the first single he released after the show. He was the runner-up on Season 23 earlier this year.

“Before [that song], music was just a maybe idea for me,” he continued. “It was just something that’s cool, but I don’t know if I’ll ever really connect with it in that really special way you need to connect with it if you want to be someone who does music for the rest of your life. I wrote that song that day and that was my first ‘it’ moment. That was it. I had tears flowing, my guitar was wet with tears. I was looking at that song and reading it back and thinking, ‘I just did this.’”

Dunn and Gill were killed when a police officer crashed into their car while pursuing a suspect on a chase. The officer reportedly ran a red light and was driving at 86 miles per hour when he slammed into the car Dunn was driving, with Gill in the passenger seat and Dunn’s brother, who was seriously injured, in the back, per WAFB.