Lauryn Marie won American Songwriter’s 2021 Song Contest with her original and earnest song “Walk.” Since winning the contest, she has continued to write and release more music. Additionally, she recently graduated from Belmont University where she studied songwriting and minored in music business. Now, she’s looking forward to the rest of her career and plotting her debut full-length album.
Earlier this month, she sat down with American Songwriter to fill us in on her life after the Song Contest, her latest projects, and what’s coming next.
[RELATED: 2021 Song Contest Winner Q&A: “Walk” by Lauryn Marie]
Lauryn Marie on Her Using My Words EP
Lauryn Marie released her EP, Using My Words on April 15. Some astute listeners may find that the project’s tracklist is full of familiar titles. There’s a reason for that.
“Back in February, Taylor Swift announced her Tortured Poets Department album and released the tracklist and I thought all of the titles were really cool,” Lauryn recalled. “We hadn’t heard any of the songs yet. So, I decided to try to write some of my own songs based on some of those titles and kind of predict what she was going to do with it but also see what I would do with that title,” she added. “Her writing style is similar to mine and I am pretty familiar with it. It was pretty cool to combine both of our styles.”
At first, she didn’t have plans for a release. Instead, she was just flexing her songwriting skills on social media. “I took the title, ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’ and I wrote a little chorus and posted it on Instagram and TikTok and it kind of took off,” she said. “Then, I started doing more of those videos and decided to record five of those songs and release them before the album came out which meant I ended up recording most of them in the span of a week in my bedroom.”
When asked if she got close to Swift’s versions of the songs, she said, “I got some of the keys right, which was interesting. Most of it was pretty different. She kind of subverted a lot of expectations with that album. But people said my ‘Florida!!!’ one sounded a little bit similar to the one that she did with Florence and the Machine.”
“A Different Kind of Beautiful” Opened Some Important Doors for Lauryn Marie
Lauryn Marie released the single “A Different Kind of Beautiful” in March. Before it hit streaming platforms, it opened doors for her at Belmont and beyond. “That song was inspired by my parents’ relationship and just how I’ve seen them love each other through the years and just how you change as you grow up and you’re not the same person you were when you were younger,” she explained. “When you commit to loving somebody you commit to loving through all the different phases that they go through and I think that’s really beautiful. So, I decided to write a song about that. It’s just really important to me and it’s my favorite song to play live,” she added.
“I got to perform it in Belmont’s Best of the Best Showcase. They do genre showcases throughout the year and I played the songwriter showcase in 2022 and won that. So, I got to play the Best of the Best Showcase in 2023 and that song’s what got me there,” Lauryn said of the song’s early success.
“I also submitted that song when I was nominated for the Songwriters Hall of Fame Scholarship at Belmont. I actually got that scholarship, so I got to go to the Songwriters Hall of Fame gala in 2023, too. That was cool.”
A Full-Length Album Is Coming
“That’s what I’m working on right now,” Lauryn Marie said when asked if she plans to release a full-length album. “I’m currently working on figuring out what I want to put on a full-length. I’ve been releasing songs since I was 15 and it’s all stuff that I’ve made by myself in my bedroom. I think what I’m trying to figure out is what I want my debut album to sound like and what I want to put out into the world because I have a whole lot of songs that I want to put out there that are very different. But, it feels like time so I’ve started recording a bunch of songs to see what fits,” she explained of her current process.
Lauryn Marie Reflects on “Walk”
“Walk” won the 2021 American Songwriter Song Contest. Lauryn Marie reflected on the song and what it means to her. “I wrote it after going for a walk by myself at night just around where I lived. And I realized the sun was starting to go down and I had my headphones in and all of a sudden, I started feeling really anxious and hyper-aware of my surroundings because I just heard of some scary things happening to women around where I live and just anywhere in the world,” she recalled. “It’s just more dangerous to walk alone at night when you’re a woman,” she added.
“I just kind of rushed home and was sad and scared that I felt like I couldn’t go on a walk at night. Like, I was fine, nothing happened to me. It’s just the feeling that you get,” she explained. “I just wanted to channel that into a song. It’s all very honest and about paranoia that you feel because of what happens so often. I wrote in like 30 minutes and it was exactly how I was feeling.”
About how she feels about the song now, she said, “I still think it’s one of my favorite songs that I’ve written because it’s about something important. I love writing love songs and breakup songs because those are important, too. But it was nice to step outside of that with this song.”
Featured Image via Instagram
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