Lauren Spencer Smith, the Gen Z singer who's not afraid to feel
Vulnerable, messy, and sad.
For many listeners, Lauren Spencer Smith's music often evokes these feelings. And at some point, she was shamed for being "too emotional" and "too sensitive." It's hard to imagine that the bubbly woman we saw at Conrad Manila has faced such emotional challenges. But for the 20-year-old singer, there's nothing wrong about being real with your emotions.
It was five years ago when then-15-year-old Lauren belted out her dreamy version of Always Remember Us This Way by Lady Gaga in the car with her dad. She joined American Idol the following year and finished on the Top 20.
"My video going viral [at] 15 was the first thing that had ever happened to me on the internet. It was the first thing that started my music career," Lauren, who was in Manila for a mini-concert in Eastwood City, shared in an exclusive interview with PhilSTAR L!fe.
"I started music at a very young age and that actually helped me understand what the music industry was like," she continued. "I learned more every single week, every single month, every single year. And, like the older I get, I feel like my music grows with me and my sound grows with me and I get to experiment with different sounds and music at a young age."
Lauren's lyrics often delve deep into her personal experiences. She thinks it's sometimes challenging to share these emotions, especially if there are people involved.
"I think we’re doing a really good job in the world now about debunking that and allowing people’s feelings to be valid and letting everybody know that they can feel whatever they wanna feel, I love that my music kind of contributes to that," she told L!fe. "But I feel like sometimes it’s a little scary to share things about your life with the world. I write about real things and real people so you know—friends, family, exes, whoever it is—they do not enjoy me writing songs about them and about our experiences. So that can definitely be very pretty tricky to navigate," the Canadian singer continued.
"I’m like an oversharer. I love to trauma dump on other people and tell everybody about my problems, I think that’s how I cope with things and cope with my emotions—just talking about it. So songwriting is just another form for me to be able to do that," she explained.
Despite this, she said she doesn't mind people calling her music "vulnerable" because it makes her "happy to know that other people feel like my music helps them."
Her debut album was titled Mirror because a mirror was the only thing that's truly seen every side of her. It represents the full spectrum of emotions she has explored in the album, from joy to sadness and everything in between.
Her single 28, particularly, which is about her dad's May-December relationship with a younger woman, was not received well by her dad. But, to her surprise, many of her listeners are going through the same thing and so she felt "compelled to share the music."
"Many people were commenting that they had been through the exact same situation and that there wasn’t really a song about that yet. And, so, I felt so compelled to share the music whether [it] hurts people’s feelings or not. I just realized that so many people were going to relate to it and they felt like they needed this song that felt really important to me to put it out," she said.
Gen Z, TikTok, and the all the feels
In 2022, Lauren took the internet by storm with her debut single Fingers Crossed, which went viral on TikTok. The song amassed over 30 million views before its official release and racked up 10 to 15 million streams within just 12 hours.
"I feel like TikTok completely changed my life, especially my music career. I don’t think I would even have the music career that I have now without the app TikTok," she said. "It gave me the freedom to just be able to share music and do whatever I wanted with my career."
"TikTok has changed how artists blow their music up completely. I think many artists who didn’t have a chance before TikTok now have a platform and have a voice just any other artist," the Flowers singer said.
For the last seven months, Lauren has been busy working on her second album, teasing that it will be "part sad, part angry."
"I’m writing a lot [about] like female rage music lately. So, hopefully, I will get to release new music really soon," she said, hinting at one song about karma.
"Sometimes people can be so horrible, you know, people who bullied other people or make other people feel less than [them]. It makes me so angry that those people don’t get their karma sometimes. So it very much was a joke of a song but we turned it into kind of a saying that ‘If karma doesn’t get those people, we’re on our way."
Her songs, she said, resonate with people—especially the Gen Zs—because she is telling a "true story" and people listen to music when they're sad.
"I feel like I’m almost growing up with my fans like we all graduated together. A lot of my fans are kind of teenagers, [in their] early 20s, so we’re all kind of going through our first relationships or second relationships and breakups and trying to navigate the world so I think that’s what makes my music relatable to the audience, for sure," Lauren shared.
Lauren reminds her fans to not let anyone shame them for feeling these things.
"Your feelings are valid and you’re allowed to be sad, angry, whatever emotion you wanna feel in the world about anything—you’re allowed to feel those things. And, it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be sad. And, it has been like shamed for a really long time…like not to cry, like you need to be tough and sometimes you need to cry and be yourself and be you," she said.