And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 186: Lauren Daigle

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Today’s guest is a spectacular vocalist, songwriter, and humanitarian. Hailing from Louisiana, this writer grew up immersed in the zydeco, blues, and Cajun music scene. Nicknamed “the music box,�� by her mother, she became obsessed with making music when bedridden due to an illness at 15. Since then, she’s dedicated her life to music. This two-time Grammy Award winner has received seven Dove Awards, five Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, and has had four No. 1 singles on the Hot Christian Songs chart. And The Writer Is…Lauren Daigle! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to And The Writer Is with Ross Golan. There are millions of singers, thousands of artists, and only 40 songs per genre at a time. These are the stories of the hottest creatives, the most venerable legends, artists, songwriters, executives, and more. Follow our socials and share your music with the and the Writer is community. We'll see you all there and now. Here's this week's episode. Chartmetric is proud to sponsor the upcoming upcoming. coming season of and The Writer is.

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David Lee Murphy, David Foster, Nothing But Thieves, Gabby Moreno, Cheyenne, the Trague, and many, many more. And peer music neighboring rights represents over 300 record labels and more than 3,000 artists, including Billy Eilich, Imagine Dragons, Martin Garrick, David Gatt, Metallica, Megan the Stallion, Her, and Strom A. Delivering nearly 100 years of music publishing excellence, peer music is a trusted and widely respected leader in our music community. If you want to learn more, I recommend you go to at Peer Music on all their social media sites and check out PeerMusic.com. Hey, if you've listened to this podcast for the last few years, you know about LAMP.

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Thank you for being fans of this podcast, LAMP, because we are fans of yours. Welcome to And The Writer is I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's guest is a spectacular vocalist, songwriter, and humanitarian. Hailing from Louisiana, this writer grew up immersed in the Zydeco blues and Cajun music scene, nicknamed the music box by her mother. She became obsessed with making music when she was bedridden due to illness at the age of 15. Since then, she's dedicated her life to music. This two-time Grammy Award winner has received seven Dove Awards,

five Billboard Music Awards, two American Music Awards, a bunch more nominations and has had four number one singles on the Hot Christian Songs chart. All the way from New York City, this artist is a lot of things, but a human first. And the writer is Lauren Daigal. Thank you. Thank you for welcoming me.

The very first time I heard you sing in person was at the Music Cares event for the Grammys in 2019 for Dolly Parton. And, you know, people who don't know at the Music Cares event is, it's sort of like the, you know, I don't want to say like the Who's Who, because that makes me sound weird in that way. But there's like all these incredible, incredible musicians who honor. an icon. And that year is the icon, Dolly Parton. And you sing, and I just remember everyone at the table being like, who is that? If they didn't know who you were, and then the people who knew were like, that's Lauren Daigle. That's Lauren Daigle. And so I was like, you know, that was pretty cool because you can con a lot of people in the music business, but that's one thing you just can't, you can't con if you're going to do a live song and you're going to be that vulnerable you better

have your chops up so uh that was my first impression of you come on i was so i remember that day like it was yesterday i was so sick i had the flu that whole week and i was like it was that moment of i'm about to enter into a room of people i've never met before and honor an icon and for everybody listening in basically you sing the artist songs to the artist. Like Dolly Parton is in the room and you're singing her songs to her. So I remember thinking to myself, gosh, I really don't want to mess this up. And it's almost like sometimes when you get right to the edge of falling apart,

something about that place is where the best, all the greatness comes out of you. So my voice was raspy and fragmented and I felt like so tattered. but it actually was exactly what I needed to make the emotion of that song come alive. So yeah, I remember that like it was yesterday because I was like, this is a make-a-break moment and we're going to see how this goes. Had you met Dolly before? No, I had never met her. And it's interesting.

You can probably tell me if this is real or not because I'm not 100% sure. But somebody told me that in order to be a part of that list, they invite you. Like, Dolly selects the people she wants to sing her songs. Is that right? I don't know if that's true, but we're going to say it's true for this, for sure. And if anybody ever corrects me, I'm going to be like, not the Dolly Parton tribute, she pictures.

So I don't know if it's true, but that's our story. Look, I don't know either. That's how, you know, that's how involved I am. Hello. But I remember thinking to myself, holy cow, but they whisked, they brought her off really quick. I did the Joni Mitchell one. And Joni Mitchell stayed after and like hung out with everybody. And guess what we talked about?

What? Wolves. What? Wait, why? The animal. Yeah, no, I got, I mean, I know it the wolves are, but why wolves? She just, she just wanted to talk to me about the beauty of wolves and what their eyes mean when you look at their eyes a certain way. And how much she loved living with wolves for years.

I was like, Joni, I want to be your best friend. like only Johnny Mitchell. Yeah, that's wild. Let's tell a little bit about your story because I think that we've done probably close to 200 interviews, maybe over, maybe under, I don't know, we've done a bunch.

But although we've had a lot of artists who've released faith-based music or they're religious, they don't necessarily epitomize a genre as much as you do modern Christian music. And so I feel like a lot of our listeners aren't necessarily attuned with how big Christian music is in the United States and around the world. They don't necessarily understand what it is that what seems like a subgenre until you really look into it and you realize how this is a really competitive, inspiring space.

So I guess I just wanted to explain a little bit before we even go down who you are. And do you identify your musicianship through that genre? I feel like it goes, every time I get to this topic, there's like a split that happens. Okay. And these are the two lanes that I see it in. musically um on this last record i worked with mike elizondo holy moly that man is a juggernaut right there's so much inside of him that is i mean he is like uh an encyclopedia of music inside of one human being he there is no genre that he cannot masterfully create and build in um and so i think sonically and for the musical side of things i i don't know

if I'd necessarily identify specifically with Christian music in the sense of I love, I love real instruments. I love, you know, all being in a circle and going down at the same time in the studio. I love feeling more than four chords. And this is no, this is nothing against Christian music. I don't have anything against it. I think from a musical standpoint, there's just some things that I delight in other areas of music as well. And so I remember when I was a kid, there's this wrestle that I had. So I was always like, God, this is, you talked about when I was sick. So I was sick in high school from the ages of 15 to 17.

And I remember finding so much hope at that time. I went through serious depression and a lot of isolation because of it. But on the other side, like once I'd kind of moved into. knowing I'm going to be at home for a while, there was this hope. And I would have dreams and things like that that were very visceral, very real, like out-of-body experiences, if you will. And I remember telling God, God, I want to sing for the rest of my life. And I want to tell the world about, like, the hope that you've given me, but I don't ever want to be in Christian music. And I just remember, like, I care about what I've experienced here, but I don't want to

ever go into Christian music because one, I don't want my friends to make fun of me. Two, sonically, like you mentioned, I grew up with Sadica, I grew up with soul, I grew up with jazz in New Orleans, like I grew up with these sounds that were just, they were just different artistic expressions than what was coming out of Christian music. So the first phone call I get is from a Christian record label, like as it would go. But I remember telling myself, like, I'm going to take this step and just see what happens. And so that brings me to the second leg of the two. The first is I don't necessarily identify it from a sonic space, but then the second leg comes along.

And I don't think that I would have known the weight of a song interacting with someone's soul, like to the core of who someone is if I hadn't gone into Christian music. Like when I arrive at a show and I see people like embracing loved ones or like there was this little girl. She had a canteeniera and she has a brain tumor and it's pretty bad. And she was a make-a-wish kid that came. And she had the DJ only play Lauren Daigle music and he had to remit everything. Like full mariachi, the whole thing had to be Lauren Daigle. but in Spanish style, like DJ remixes. It was incredible.

She sent videos. But I say that to say, I think seeing the way that these songs have interacted and how people have found God and have found hope and have found something to hold on to through the lyrics, that's something that I can never take away. And I never want to take away. like regardless of of what genre i go into i think it's like the natural artist thing in you to i always am creating other sounds and um other expressions of that sound thinking outside of okay i'm going to be in this genre or this genre or this genre or this

genre just thinking like what music do i want to bring forth and the two things that that that keeps coming back is I want to do a true jazz record like tried and true like straighty way on 80 down the middle and then I want to do like a lullaby record like put your babies to sleep and then maybe you can fall asleep too you know what I'm saying so I don't know I find myself always dreaming um about more music coming out of me that might look different than what I've done before but the heart and soul of why I create will always stay the same. Yeah, that's interesting. First of all, I, I don't mean to pigeon hole you and that's not my intention in asking the question. It's more because I've heard you sing both in person and on records and you can sing the phone book. And it's an interesting thing to be

part of a genre where most of my career has been sort of floating with artists that fall within the umbrella of pop. Even if it's a, you know, Nikki Minajer, Michael Boubley, it still falls under that, this like strange umbrella. But when I work in Nashville, it's very clearly country.

And when I work in, you know, if I work with jazz musicians, it's very clearly jazz. And it's interesting because what you're doing is like, if you didn't know, if it wasn't already pre-labeled, like, why isn't that a, why isn't that, you know,

next to a, on a pop radio station or why isn't that? You know, you can do so much with your voice. Because this new album with Mike, by the way, Mike does, in this next segment, we'll just jump to it. In this segment of what would Mike Alizando ask Lauren Daigle on and the writer is,

Mike Alizando asked the question. He said, where have you had the best piece of alligator cheesecake? Right. Did he actually, did you contact him to ask him? Yeah, of course. Yeah. He is, okay, I love Mike so much. Love him to the core.

So he, did he tell you about this story? No, no, no, I, I, this is, I, but I was, and you're going to answer this question, but my thought was like, here's like a real jazz musician. If you know Mike's history, he's like, an A-list jazz bassist, you know, who's like gone through like the he is the quintessential hip hop bassist he's the quintessential alt rock

basis and here he is working on your album and that's where it's like I'm happy to have I'm happy that your answer was what it was and that now I need to know the answer to his question which is you know where have you had the best the alligator cheesecake

okay so it's this place in New Orleans and It's off of Oak Street. And here's the thing. It's, to me, you can't get alligator cheesecake anywhere else. And the way that this dish is prepared. What is it?

So I don't know how to explain it, but. Is it literal alligator? Yes, alligator. And it is so good. Like, okay, if we write together, come to Louisiana. Come to New Orleans. Come stay with me. I'll do the whole bit.

So the place is called Jacquesumbos. And Jacques is the one who owns it. And it is sheer ruckus. He is so much fun. I love him. And he has these culinary dishes that are like so unique and so it's all Cajun food, Creole. But he puts this really flavorful as if it's not flavorful enough, right?

But he puts this kind of wild edge to it. And that's where the alligator cheesecake comes from. But it's not like cheesecake, like a New York cheesecake. It's not like a New York cheesecake with alligator stuffed in it. It's like almost like how a kish, like it lives in the family of how like a kish would live maybe, but full of cheese, full of alligator. It's so savory. It's so good.

And I'll take you to get one if you come. It's like, it's out of this world. So Mike came to New Orleans and I was like, I got to see you. And I got, there was this moment where I realized, wait, I moved to Nashville and all these people I'm riding with, who I love dearly, but like they don't actually know anything of what I came from. And there's like New Orleans, arguably, I'm sure, but the birthplace of jazz, like there's a lot of music and soul and spirit down there that I feel like people need to tap into in order to know who I am. And so, uh, Because you only get one version of me. Like the second I leave New Orleans, my voice change, like my accent changes. Everything changes. It's like, you got to know me for me.

So they came down, Mike being one of them, and we had the time of our life. We ate our way through the city. He got all this art, like went and bought just so much art that's now hanging in his studio. And he got it. Like he totally tapped in. And there's this moment where the first night we were going to. I was taking them the Frenchman. And we got to the street corner and there was a band busking.

And if you know anything about New Orleans, like the people busking on the streets are just as good as people in the studio in Nashville. Like it's just, it's a thing. Everybody grew up doing it, right? So here we are. We get to this band. And the other thing that's beautiful is there's no like segregation when it comes to age or skin color, or things like that.

Like, everybody does music together. And it is, it's about how you feel. Like, do you feel my instrument the way I feel it? Do you feel your instrument the way that I feel it when you play? Like, it's all about that camaraderie. So you see, so we get to this band and it's like, you know, everybody from age 15 to 90, right? And it starts to like subtly rain, like just like a misty rain.

that's like beautiful. It's so cinematic. And I start dancing with them, you know, cutting up whatever and telling, you know, show him, I wanted them to see like a good time. Well, this car pulls by and it drives by pretty slow and the windows are limo tinted. And New Orleans is the safest place in the world. So nothing was going through my head. No, I'm kidding. So here we are. This car pulls by and I'm like, uh-oh, please not on the first. night that they're here, please. And right as it gets to the band, the window starts to roll down. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. We don't have time for this today. Like, we got to get, y'all got to get out of here that's about to go down, you know? And so window rolls down slowly,

and a trumpet pops out the window. And he starts playing a solo over what the band is playing on the street and Mike looks at me and he said, this just changed the trajectory of the entire record. He's like, I get it. I get your head now. I understand what you're trying to do. And he said that was kind of this pivotal

moment of changing the sound. And like, I'm not, this is something that Mike is so like good for me. He's so good for me because I can sing out parts

like oh okay can you do this this this this is this like i'll sing melodies that i want them to play but i don't have that musical theory i don't have the the language right i can sing it but i can't say it and uh that's been like my greatest roadblock that's the hardest thing for me like after this next record cycle it's done my plan is to go to school because i'm like i got to get this in me in a new way and so mike has been so patient but I feel that I feel the music the way that I grew up on it, if that makes sense. I still, it's like every time I listen to music, it's like returning to it like a child. It's like this place of so much whimsy and so much joy and so much curiosity that really just, I can't wait to get lost in.

And that's the feeling of New Orleans. Like that's the way that they present their instruments and their, yeah, the beauty from which it flows. Watching Mike in a studio chart out songs is really refreshing because I think there are a lot of people in the business who have good taste but don't necessarily have the vocabulary and you're working with one of the best. Speaking of another one of the best and I do want to get to your story, but in this segment called what would Natalie Hemby ask Lauren Daigle and Anne the writer is, she also had stories about you guys going through New Orleans, which is. why I felt like I should bring this one up. Usually I spread them out, but, you know, what the heck? So she said, like, amazing things about you, but one of the things she said was how, you know, you guys would walk down the streets and you knew the names of everybody, like homeless people,

buskers, you knew the names of everybody. You knew, like, who was playing which jazz club, what night, and you were just a person of the town, of the people. And she was like, I don't even know what I would ask her, except for being that you're so vibrant, what would you do if you weren't doing music? Oh, dang.

I think about this all the time. I think I would be a school teacher. And I think the reason why is because I could, what I feel on stage, like showing people, there is another way to live, like to actually live. like the infusion of living.

That's what I feel like I am able to give people when I'm on stage. Like I'm able to sit there and say, hey, like if you've had a moment of, if you've had 10 years, if you've had a decade, if you've had two minutes of feeling like you, life is not worth living, let me try to show you how. And I feel like that same excitement, that same joy, that same zeal, the zest for life, I can infuse that same thing into kids. and then let them go into their destiny, into their future, whatever. And so I feel like being a teacher, you could be wild, you can be whimsical,

you can impart wisdom, and you can build the character of someone in maybe ways that they've never received it. Like, you know, we started working with prison ministries, or, I guess not prison ministry, we just started going into prisons when we toured. And I would always ask people, like, what is it? you would change. Like, how would you do this differently if you were in, you know, young again? And every single one of them say, start with the kids. Like, I didn't have an environment where I had my parents there and I got involved in gangs really young. And if I had somebody who believed in

me, this would have a little different. So I feel like that's what a teacher gets to do is believe in kids that might not have anybody else believing in them. And so for me, that'd probably be the other job and then I could just play music and dance around the classroom all day long. Is it a different stage? Do you want to have kids of your own? I don't know. I go back and forth all the time. And I'll tell you why.

Because I was just with Kelly Clarkson. She said to me that she touring was really tough with kids. And I'm like, I love touring so much. But I also, if I was a mom, I know I'd be like 150% mom. I don't have that duality thing where that a lot of there's a lot of people in the world that they can be ambidextrous with life. They could figure out multiple roles. I am like one lane at a time. I can barely tie my shoes and brush my teeth within the same hour. It is like impossible. It's just not the way I'm wired. And so I find myself sometimes where I think I don't know if I would have

the capacity to do both. But it would definitely be something that would stretch me. and I love kids. Like, I absolutely love kids. I always thought I was going to be a mom of 12, like, growing up. I was like, oh, I'm going to have, like, 12 kids. I'm going to have so many. Peer Music is a leading music publishing and neighboring rights company that has been championing songwriters and artists for nearly 100 years.

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And peer music neighboring rights represents 300 record labels and more than 3,000 artists, including Billy Elish, Imagine Dragons, Martin Garrick, David Gathe, Metallica, Megan the Stallion, her and Stromé. So, if you want to learn more about a global music publishing and neighboring rights company that moves with integrity and treats their roster like family, go check out peer music.com or follow them on social media at peer music. Our good friends at Chartmetric have all the data you need to power your music career. From playlist placements to stream counts to follower demographics and many more,

It's never been easier to understand how your artists fit in the music industry and how they can grow. Charm metric does the work for you, providing actionable insights and visuals on their up-to-date global data that covers over 10 million artists and 100 million songs. So there's no math required. Use it to find out things about your favorite artists and any of the artists and writers on this podcast. plans start as low as $10 a month. Learn more and get started today at chartmetric.com. If you've listened to this podcast over the past few years, you know about LAMP.

LAMP is Los Angeles Academy for artists and music production, located five blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. They have a state-of-the-art campus, featuring a classroom of 45 in-real-life students, common area is a live stage where they host open mics. They have 15 real recording studios. They have a world-class one-year intensive high-level music program founded by the super producers, our friends, and guests, Stargate.

They've been responsible for songs like Firework and What's My Name, Diamonds, Irreplaceable, a ton of hits. Think of Lamp as this nine-month high-level songwriting camp featuring world-class mentors from the music business, including Benny Blanco, Circuit, Emily Warren, Neo, Diborne, Hi, Diplos, Stargate, Jimmy Naves, Kenny Beets, a bunch of our guests, some presidents of publishing companies, major A&R executives, you know, superstar managers like Jay Brown, who has Rihanna, you know, top-rated mixing engineers, vocal producers, lawyers, business managers, all sorts of music professionals featuring on their Wednesday, Thursday workshops. So they're going on their fourth year, and those are just examples of people who might be

your mentor if you get accepted to lamp. So if you're interested in being one of the students who learns how to write and produce songs every single day, which is the norm for them, then you should visit lampmusic.com. That's L-A-A-A-A-M-P-Music.com. And thank you, Lamp, for being a fan of this podcast. We are fans of yours. There's no question that, you know, the, I think the industry is more. accepting in a in its sort of patriarchal ways of women who have who get pregnant and have children to not hide it to be part of the narrative of their career.

I think that's why, you know, someone like a Megan trainer is having actually one of the best moments of her career right now is because she's leaning into it. And I think the industry is actually really excited to have moms. Yeah. And I think we could use more of that. So I'm touring with children at all is, is wild. Doing anything with children is wild. But if that's, if that's the route you go down, you know, that's, it's plausible. It just ends up becoming, that just becomes your story. You know, it just becomes a new, a new version of it. All right. So, yeah, let's tell a little bit about your story. I know we went on some tangents even to start, but. You're, you know, you're Louisiana born and raised. So, you know, it is the birthplace of jazz. And for any of you who have never heard or watched Ken Burns' documentary on jazz, I couldn't recommend it enough.

Everybody who's making a living in the music business in the United States owes Louis Armstrong and the birth of jazz. if it wasn't for the success of him, of swing music, there is no music industry that we think of. There's no country Western. There's certainly no rock. There's certainly no pop or anything else if there wasn't jazz. So I think you're right. Coming from the source of it, was jazz the music that was played in the household?

So it's interesting, not really. what we grew up in, my relationship to jazz was just always through going to New Orleans. Like, I grew up in Lafayette, so very Cajun, lots of Zytoco, lots of blues. But so I grew up in sort of a different understanding of jazz, as in it was just what I saw on the streets, what I heard in all the different places, what I, like, found myself getting lost in every single time I'd go to New Orleans. So I actually became in love with the city because of jazz. Fast forward, though, my family were they loved Motown.

Like my aunt was always listening to Al Green, always listening to Aretha and the Supremes. And so I feel like a lot of that influence was a part of it was what made me me. It is what like fully brought me alive. But there was something about the soul connection. Because like jazz, there's a place inside of so many jazz musicians that is a soul expression. It's deeper than just, oh, this melody sounds good. I love it. They're like carving out parts of their insides every note that they strike.

And they're gaining this understanding from different sources, right? And I feel like there's a piece of me when I listen to the Supremes, when I listen to, you know, Marvin Gay. There's like what's going on. I mean, he, he like etched out so much with that song. Like, I just went to the Hitsville USA a couple years ago. Oh, it's crazy, yeah. It like blew my mind just to see the places that these artists and these musicians went to. And I feel like the Motown thing is really kind of what arced me in with jazz, if that makes sense.

It was kind of the lanes in which, yeah. Was secular music? Um, encouraged. Oh, yeah. My dad, we didn't grow up in one of those Christian households where we couldn't listen to other music. I remember I was driving out of the interstate with my mom's best friend when we were kids. I was five years old. And I said, hey, can you read those numbers to me?

What are those numbers on the dash? I want to listen to that music when I get my mom's car. And so I got my mom's car and I said, mom, can you play 102.5? And so that was my introduction to pop. The song was, I just want to fly Sugar Ray. And I remember thinking, what is this? This is so incredible. And so we started listening to pop in my mom's car.

And at the time, that was like Whitney and Celine and all these powerhouse vocalists that like actually rocked my world. I would pull the boombox out and lay down next to the boombox and just wait for their voices to hit me. And my dad was hardcore classic rock. He believed that the 60, 70s, 80s are the best music of all time. He loved everything from Led Zeppelin to Fleetwood Mac to journey, to, you name it. And so we really, that type of music is really heart and Bonnie Raid. All those women that had those lower registers with so much grit and they also had so much soul in them too. So those were a lot of the impressionable voices that I found myself kind of falling in love with and making me in such a way. So yeah, I didn't grow up in a household that we couldn't listen to

anything but Christian music. My family, my dad just loved music. Music as a whole. And my aunt, she loved, I say my aunt all the time because we all, we're a Cajun family. We all lived on the same street. We all lived right next to each other. It was one of those kind of things. So I'd go over to her house and it was always the Aretha's Gloria. It was, you know, Al Green and all of them. What are your, how many siblings do you have? I have three. Well, it's three total.

I have two siblings. An older brother and a younger sister. Are they musicians? No. I'm the only one. It's so fun. Did they want to do it? Or was it just sort of like, no, that's Lauren's thing.

And we're different people. They didn't want to have anything to do with it. They're like, no, that's Lauren's thing. So my sister can sing, though. I would always say, come, sing with me, come jump on stage with me. Come here. No, girl, now that's you. But my sister listened to like 50 times more music than I did.

She was always listening to music. She would just be like, come on, listen to this, listen to this. Let me show you this new song. Let me show you this new song. So it's really interesting how she loved music, but she never, it wasn't her thing to, you know. She just didn't want to be on stage. she's like, that's just not my thing. I love to sing in the car and that's good enough for me.

My brother, he was visually, he was really good at visual arts. He was a charcoal artist and really good. And then he ended up going into the military and then my sister ended up going into the medical world. So very, very different. We're all from three different worlds. You ended up, you know, I don't want to skip too far ahead, but when you're 15 and you, you know, you have this life-changing experience.

I'm going to dedicate to my life to music. Before that moment, you obviously sang. You know, it's like, what were the moments where you were like, maybe I'm good at this? Was that from the out, was it from like five years old? Were you just naturally good at singing? And when, you know, you even went to school for other things than music. So there's a difference between I'm a good singer in the car who can sing along with Mariah and Celine and Whitney, whatever.

There's a huge difference between that kid and someone who ends up pursuing it for a career. Who were the people along the way that said, hey, you should actually sing in front of people. And you should actually, you know, maybe this is something better than what you're thinking it is. Or were you always like sitting in front of the mirror with a, you know, a microphone? Yeah, no, I didn't have that like from a young age. So I remember I was a camel in the church play when I was three years old and I told my mom, I want to do this forever. I remember feeling like this is, I love this feeling. What is this? You know, I didn't necessarily know what was happening. But I remember being in grade school and there was a little kid that was sitting next to me and someone asked them, what do you want to do when you grow up? And they didn't ask me that question, but I went home and I thought about it over and over. And I thought about it over and over. And I thought about it over and over. And I remember listening to Celine Dion and being like, I want to sing. I want to be a singer. But I never, I didn't grow up in a musical household. And I didn't go to a school that had a musical program either. Like we didn't have any arts or anything at our school. It was a really small

school. And so I remember just thinking, I guess I'm going to have to like go into the medical world or go be a lawyer. I don't know, something, something different. And my mom, when I got sick in high school, she said, hey, do you want to go into voice lessons? You sing all the time. Like, Lauren, you are always singing. And I was. Like, I was singing around the house every second of every day. Like, my mom used to say, the reason why the house is called the music box is because

she would always say, I could hear you before I could see you. I knew you were awake because I could hear you. You were always singing. And I still am like that. I'll just sing around the house, whatever. But she went to my church choir director and she said, listen, And my daughter sings all the time. I don't know if she's any good.

I didn't know if I was any good. I had no clue. But she was like, my daughter sings all the time. Would you just put it on the back row of the choir? Just like as a space filler kind of thing. And he pulled me aside and he's like, come sing. I want to hear you sing. And I was like really sheepish about it, like singing real soft.

He's like, girl, I've heard you laugh. You better sing this song. Don't be shy like that. And so I started belting. But at the time, I didn't even know that was belting. I just thought, oh, I'm screaming really loud. Like, I'm talking green. I didn't know anything.

And he was like, no, you're going to, don't, you're not going to be in the choir. You're going to sing this song like for the lead. And I remember thinking, what? So started singing in the church, went to American Idol when I was 17. And the first round is, it was with like 10,000 people. And I remember getting the golden ticket. And I thought, wait a second. If I could get through this many people, this is kind of weird.

Like I just sing in my bathroom. I literally paid my voice teacher by being his maid. I said, look, I'm a poor high school student. I was scrubby toilets. I'll be a maid. I'll do whatever it takes to just learn how to sing, like teach me voice lessons. And that's what happened. So I would say it was a combination between my mom and dad

because they always encouraged music and encouraged me to sing. And then my voice coach was, he fully believed in me. And then my grandfather, every morning they would have this coffee crew at 9 a.m. They would come over. And I lived with them when I went to college. And he was like, all right, girl, sing for them, sing Adele for them, sing. Amy Winehouse for them, sing something, you know? And there's 9 o'clock in the morning.

I'd be like, what are you talking about? So he was also somebody that really encouraged me to get out there and sing. But I was in a cover band for a while and he would stay out with us until 3 o'clock in the morning just watching us sing. Oh, that's so good. You know, you end up getting that golden ticket, but that's 2010. And you go through, you know, you come back a couple times to, you know, American Idol. Still encouraging, I'm sure. But there's a cap to American Idol.

And you didn't ring the bell. You didn't win it. Yeah. And there's a break there for a few years, you know, between that and you releasing your first album and kind of getting noticed in that way. What happened in that time? From 2010, other than the few months that you end up, maybe months or weeks that you devote to American Idol, what were you doing? What were you doing? How did you get noticed from there?

Why didn't you give up and be like, you know what? I'm going to go do childcare. Yeah. Okay. So, funny enough, I was in school to, I was a child and family studies major, and I was going to go in a lot. law school to help with traffic victims, like to support pro bono, work with kids and be able to counsel them at the same time. And I remember being in that realm and I joined the LSU, I went to LSU, I joined the LSU Women's Choir, and I ended up meeting his band. They were the cover band

who introduced me to another band. You know how music, it just all starts to get past. Well, this, this band, they were like, hey, what do you sing background vocals for our record? Well, they ended up getting picked up by a record label who had this indie artist retreat. And this indie artist retreat lasted for like just a week outside of Seattle. It was small. I didn't know anything about it. I had never been to the mountains before. I was like, what trees, mountains?

Like, this is awesome. I've never even seen to snow. I'm going to go just as like a help, like a background help, whatever. Like not thinking anything. I didn't know it was to get signed. I just thought, you know, I'm just going to go learn about the music industry. And so I was still at LSU at the time, and I flew up there, and I ended up getting, I ended up, oh, no, the lead singer of the band that I went up there with ended up getting an emergency appendectomy the morning of the showcase. And so here we are supposed to sing for the record.

They will, and he gets an emergency appendectomy, and they say, hey, can you step in and sing lead? And so I did, and I sang, and it was like insane. and I remember just kind of everything stood still for even but a moment in time. And we ended up going through the label basically called me. And they were like, would you be interested in moving to Nashville? We'd be interested in signing you. And I said, yeah. And so I dropped out of college and moved to Nashville and went to learn how to write.

That's so crazy. What was your first song that you wrote? Were you writing at all in high school when you were in the, like you said, like you were singing around in the, you know, the shower? whatever. When did you write your first song? I wrote my first song when I was 11. I remember just cathartic. Like, I'm going to write down all the ideas I can think of and the things that are going on in my family or my life or whatever. But you know how, like, Adele wrote 19 at 16? Like, she was a writing prodigy. That was the opposite of who I was. Like, I found some old songs and stuff that

I wrote when I was a kid and they were awful. What's the song? What is the song called from when? I literally don't even, I don't even know if it had a title. I just remember like it was in poetic form and I, I remembered, oh, wait, this was a song I wrote. I just don't remember. And then there was one that I wrote when I was 18 and I remember that one.

I loved the melody for that. It was like, dreams they father. away, but I wish to stay here. Misty eyed as the blue boy cry, but I wish to stay here. You left me no other choice for it to love you till the end. And I wish to stay, I wish to stay wrapped in your arms. Dreams, they may see too. So, but I remember feeling like, oh, that just kind of took me into a little place of wonder and simplicity.

And I like that, you know, but that was it. Like, I was just writing my, I hadn't, and on that indie artist retreat, there was a lot of co-writing. And I had never co-written before, but I loved it. I remember that first session, I thought, I hate this. This is miserable. I do not know how people do this. second one I thought well it wasn't as bad but I still hate this it took about probably like a year before I was like okay I can kind of get the swing of this fast forward like two to three years into it

I was like I like this now I'm 11 years into my career I like being in a studio and writing just as much I don't want to say more because I don't want to make it a competition you know but I love writing it's probably my favorite part of one of my favorite parts of the whole bit you know i was in a session with some of the currently like some of the bigger writers in the business and they were just talking about how much they hate writing songs like it is a hard process it is i always say like it's really fun to have written a song yeah it's really hard to write a song so you better like the people and you better like people that you can go get alligator cheesecake with. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck in these sessions.

Sometimes you're like, this is really hard. And I don't know if any of this is good. And this is, you know, as I say to people who don't know anything about songwriting, if you want to know what songwriting's like, walk into a room of people you don't know, sing at them and then ask what they think. Yeah, literally. That's exactly. You're like, I have an idea.

Okay, we've never met before. I'm going to sing at you. What do you think? Yeah. Who does that in any other situation? Then I always think it's weird. This isn't a side. And so I'm sorry for going on a tangent here.

No, do it. I like it. I always think it's weird when people have these like have egos attached to it. Or they're like specifically masculine or they're specifically mean or whatever it is. And they walk into sessions and then they still sing. I don't care if you're rapping. I don't care if you're screaming. You're still singing.

Like, it is the, it is, it's like walking in with an attitude and then be like, I'm going to dance in front of you. Like, it's not, it could be, I don't know. I just think it's funny when people have an ego in a business where they have to walk in and sing. Oh, yeah. I don't like the ego thing. The second I walk into those environments, I am immediately calculating my exit. Like everybody's like, all right, we're going to write for two hours. I'm like, we're going to write for 30 minutes because I ain't hanging in this vibe.

I just, I love, that's why I love Natalie. That's why I love Jason. That's why I love Mike. That's why I love these people. Because you walk in and they've written, I mean, my gosh, the song that these people, that they've been a part of is like insane. And I'm over there just like loving their humility. It's the best gift because then it actually lets the. the purest thing rise to the top.

Nobody's trying to fight for, I had to learn this in the early parts of my career. Because I remember thinking to myself, I'm not going to be the person that comes in with the best, this, that, and the other. I'm not going to have the best idea. I might probably, actually be, it might be more probable that I would have the worst idea. But am I going to be so prideful that I wouldn't introduce the worst idea into the room because that worst idea is going to prompt somebody to think for the best idea. And therefore, the end result will still be that we got the best result.

So why be so privy to only introducing the best idea into the room when we might actually be forfeiting the best idea by not introducing the worst idea? And so I had to like get over that thing. And now when you find yourself in that, you're just free. Like I am, I walk into a writing room. And there's moments when I'll be in there with some big names who've written crazy songs. And I'm like, I'm going to just sit a little longer this time. I'm going to sit and listen a little longer. And there's other times that I'm like, I don't care.

Let's just have fun. Let's just be free. Let's just enjoy this. And I'd rather get to know you as a person. And then write from this place of purity and authenticity and the clean conduit. You have to be the one that drives. Like, first of all, that might be. be the best advice that we've ever heard because that's that's that's what it is to be in a session is to

throw out ideas and your job as a co-writer is to you know do a save as to be like yes that idea works what if we were to just change it here change it there and when you're with uh you know there's like a mike and natalie appreciation podcast but if you like you know when you're around those kinds of people, you throw out the bad idea because they can help edit their way through and be like, what they'll get out of that is that lyric, they'll get that one melody, or maybe even the key, or maybe the tempo, or maybe the, all the things that can come out of that idea, you know, it's just, it's just an ingredient and it's not fully baked yet. You can kind of still, you know, pull it apart. When you moved to Nashville, how did you,

was the goal at that point, you know, you were on the show probably around the same time as like Carrie Underwood. Like, were you, was the goal to go down that path to be more in the country path? Or was it more like, is it more like, I'm Lauren Daigle, I'm doing the Lauren show going into Nashville? 100%. I didn't, like, I moved to Nashville so naive. I didn't even know Nashville. This is like how much I did not know. I thought, oh, Nashville, they keep calling Nashville Music City. So I moved to Nashville. The first thing I said is, okay, where's all your jazz clubs?

And they were like, what? I was like, Music City. Like, you should have like a bamba club and a salsa club and a jazz club and a, like, it's music city. Like, you should have all the music. And they were like, no, no, we have honky talks on Broadway. And I went home and basically cried. I was like, I just left the best music ever.

What was I thinking? So I didn't even know that Nashville was this place of representation for country music and for Christian music and for bluegrass. I had no idea because I heard Music City all the time. And I just, I was so green. I didn't take any like music history classes or anything like that. For me, music was always. outside of ed like outside of institution like i always thought of those as separate separates so um i feel like that that's like a regret as far as i should have while i was out of the shoe i should

have taken more time to be like oh let me enjoy like you know what i mean i always thought music and institution they these don't go together because like music is the antithesis of an institution I always kind of bucked the system a little bit. And so I never actually got the privilege of learning the things that would have actually just made me a better musician. I think a lot of people are afraid of the box, whatever they keep the boxes. Oh, yeah. I'm sort of like the opposite where I think, you know, I've said it on this and I've said it to, I say it all the time where it's like, the expectations of the listener

when you walk into a museum you assume most art is going to be within 90 degree angles and it's what you do within those expectations that makes like the you know the viewer the museum goer feel like they're taking care of

and they're in awe of like wow this person looked at the box and they saw something different sculptures aside, all the other stuff, performance. Like, I get, I get that. As the metaphor goes, I just think that the more you understand the box, the more you can do some wild things within it. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I, at that indie artist retreat, so that was 12 years ago, and I still remember this teacher from Belmont, he was a professor from Belmont, he flew out to teach us, and he talked about, the art of limitation and how if you actually limit yourself that's where the most brilliant creativity comes because you don't have every crayon in the color box you don't have you have you have to figure out a way to make the color you want to see and he was I remember thinking I don't like that no no no no no no we're done with all this like limitation is beautiful thing and the more I've done this the more I've seen like wow yeah how challenged am I creatively

if I have every creative tool. It's an absence of those perimeters that just kind of gives you everything. Once you actually do have perimeters. And I feel like going back to your very, very first question, that's what Christian music became for me. It became this limiting factor that I had to figure out, how do I write the things that I actually want to say, the feelings I want to convey the sonic liberties?

how do I do that within these perimeters in a way that still feels like artfully me? Just piggybacking on the first thing. That makes a lot of sense. And it's really easy. I think a lot of people are trying to write their whole career in every song.

Yeah. They want to show all the parts of their life. Just in case this is the song that does the thing, they want to be able to show like, oh yeah, and then I can also do, you know, and then check this out. Watch what else I can do. And you're like, well, I know, I get that. It's just it's patience. Patience is a big part of it.

In 2015, you really start getting like the accolades. And it starts to become, you know, multiple year after year. There's always a, at least, you know, I shouldn't say at least, there's always a dove award. But then you get into like the. the Billboard Awards, the Grammy Awards, especially in 2017, but you have this run of just, you know, this acknowledgement of what you've been aiming for. Did you start, is it hard to, I mean, it's sort of like a meatball or a softball or whatever, but like is it hard to be grateful after a while?

Is it hard to look at these awards as individually unique when you start getting, when you start receiving this kind of adulation? I feel like what happens for me is that you have to build a construct of am I making art for that or am I making art because I love what I do. And that to me is the dance. So I have to look at those awards and say, oh my gosh, what an honor. This served its purpose. This is great. This is so wonderful. But it can't be the only thing of which I create for.

So I think having like whenever I don't get more jaded, gratitude is still completely there. Like I did not know about these Grammy nominations. I was like, what? When my manager came to me, it's like, you've been nominated for two. I was like, holy cow, I never take it for granted. I don't ever feel like it's, oh, yeah, like, you know, because my name is up there, it should be awarded to me. I still kind of get shocked a little bit.

And the Grammys are a different animal altogether. Billboard's I love because it's numbers driven and that feels good, you know. It's like, okay, there's a little piece to this. But yeah, I think the relationship I have is, okay, this is fun. This is an honor. This means a lot. And I'm incredibly grateful. And that just can be that simple.

Like, I'm going to let it be. I'm so grateful for this. Wow, that felt really good. Holy cow. And then when I step into the studio, it's like, I just want to make art. How do we do it? What is that going to feel like? What can I show?

How do we live in this? that's the dance. Gratitude remains. Even this many, even 11 years later, gratitude still remains. You know, you have your first hit really in 2014 that leads into 2015. Did you start feeling pressure to repeat success? Do you feel more pressure over time or less pressure over time? It's weird. Certain pressures that I once had fell away and then new pressures have been introduced. Pressures that I used to not have are now here. So it's like a weird thing. Like I used to have much less pressure about my voice, right?

I would just like rock up and sing and do it and call it a day. Now I'm like, oh, I need to make sure that is precise. I need to make sure the precision is there, the execution is there. Like I have found myself, it's strange how I'm more concerned the order I get in that regard. same with musicality like hey is everybody doing good like okay what about this note what about this can we change this to make it more flavorful is there something that we could do here you know uh i think that changes and i think right like right now we're on the kaleidoscope tour we have 92 people out with us that travel every single night and when you realize like that's 92 mouse and that's

92 households and that's 92 there's a pressure like there's just people can act like oh you know it's just no there's a pressure i want this thing to be successful i want people to be able to be on our tour and in it to roll well and um so i think those are new pressures that i didn't necessarily have in the past uh the pressures that have gone away are the pressure the pressure of like everybody has to love me i have to say everything the right way the like some of that pressure has changed I'm like, people are going to love me, people are going to hate me, people are going to love me, and then find ways to hate me and people are going to hate me and find ways to love me. And that's just the way life is. It just is what it is. And I think sometimes you can fight that system as much as you want. And by the end of it, you're only beating yourself up. You're the one that is tired at the end of the day. And I have so much freedom in saying no. Now, like, there's things that I get asked to do. And I'm like, that's going to make me tired. And I actually just love what I love the music industry. I love getting to sing. I love getting to perform.

I love getting to write. I love getting to create. And I don't want me, I don't want myself to become jaded. So I need to protect my emotion with this. I need to protect my sleep habits with this. I need to protect. And that's okay.

And like, I remember, here's another Mike Nugget. Mike was the one, because I always recorded vocals at like from midnight to 5 a.m. Like I was always like, I was a night owl. from the time I was in my mom literally said from the womb you were always awake at night childhood I was always I would start my homework at midnight and so just I was always awake at night and um very common for creatives right but I remember getting to Mike's studio and he said yeah that's gone we're not doing that and I was like come again and it was a little thing of like what what are you what are you talking about this is my system this I've done every single record he's like yeah you're going to operate on my system now

And he said, I show up at 9 a.m. and I leave at 7. And I'm not leaving a second later. And he was like, just trust me. Just try it. I said, Mike, like, you don't understand. I don't wait. I can't wake up before 11. Like literally, my body just won't do it. He said, just trust me, you can come in at 2 every day and we'll sing from 2 to 7 or 1. And we're saying from 1 to 7. I had a pall up on my vocal cords whenever I started the record. By the time we finished recording, it was gone. And I say that to say, he taught me the health of how to create in a manner that there's still more. He said, this was the Mike Nugget, this is the quote that I will hold with me for forever. Because I looked at him halfway through the record. I said, why don't you work till midnight? Like, I don't understand. I just don't get it. And he said to me, why would I steal today from tomorrow's creativity? He's like, because I'm going to be exhaust. if I stay up till the night or if I stay up to 2 a.m. And I get back to the studio at 8.

And he's like, I'm going to be exhausted. And I actually have the beauty and the luxury of being able to create every single day. But I won't be able to create every single day if I do that. And I would rather create every day than like max out days and then have to recover and then max out days and recover. Why steal from tomorrow's creativity? And I was like, dang. And I've kind of, honestly, I've implemented that into. so many areas of my life. It hasn't just been with the studio. It's been with every business opportunity,

with every moment to go sing it. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I've had to say, I would love to do that, but that's going to steal from tomorrow. And I just got to figure out how to do it differently. This is probably going to break your heart and this isn't a competition. But I'm part of the 4 a.m. Club. Like I wake up. Me too. I love it. I get it. I do. I love it. There's a musician that I talk to who's up at four every day and we're always like, good morning. And we share... Oh, you're saying you wake up at 4 a.m. Oh, yeah. I'm the... Yeah, yeah. Sorry. You melted right there. But like, no, it's this weird thing where like once I started that, and it's now I'm about like six years onto that.

And I'm, you know, I watch the sunrise every day. You know, I rarely miss the sunrise. I would say probably less than, you know, half a dozen times a year I miss the sunrise. And like, I've been up since 415 today and I put on the fireplace and I pull out my computer and I start writing lyrics because everyone or like stories or whatever. It's this fresh, like, no one's awake. It's my time. No one is. But I know this one other jazz musician piano player who we've been working on a thing.

And literally it's like there's a group of people who communicate at that time who are like, you know, hey, check out this song. Check out. And there's this. It's like the underbelly of the music business. I feel like are these people who wake up obscenely early. And now whenever I'm in sessions and people are like, hey, I want to start a two, you're like, two? Dude, that's 10 hours after I've been awake. Like, this is, I eat dinner at five, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. So, like, there are definitely, there's this thing called chronotypes, which is that there's, like, if there are 200 people in a human clan, that 20% of the people are. night owls and are you who can go to bed it for and then there's 20% of people who are morning uh morning larks who wake up at 4 a.m and the idea is that there was always a human awake in the clan to make sure no one would get eaten by animals so I feel like you need to have all these people okay this is that is so fascinating because I went to get my DNA tested like just to learn about my body right and this doctor

said, oh, you actually have a gene where if you wake up too early, you will stay sick. Like, your body will not know how to function if you wake up early. And you are prone to like be alert at night, wake up at night, your brain turns on at night. And I was like, they were like, does that make sense? Does that resonate? I was like, for my whole life. I literally was always sick for grade school. I was the kid that was always out of class sick because we'd have to.

get up at 6 a.m. and go to class and I was just miserable. I mean, miserable. And but the same, I think our driving force is the same because you just said that at 4 a.m. you wake up in the world of still, like you get to actually have your own space. That's what it was for me. Like at midnight, I know everybody is asleep and there's just this few subset of people that I can like shoot creative ideas to and like allow my brain to illuminate in places that I've been like waiting for it to get to all day. You just start your day off with that, which is so much better. Well, I have a, I mean, this interview has been a lot of tangent, so I appreciate you going down

these rabbit holes as this. But a friend of mine is a sports psychologist, Dr. Eric Bean, also one of my best friends, full disclosure. But he's been the one that's like talks about decision fatigue. And it's like, you've, once you've gotten all that, when you've gotten all that rest and you wake up, you have a lot of ideas. And when I'm in that session,

when, like for real, when I'm in a session that starts at 7 p.m., my job changes. I can't be the guy who's going to write every lyric and every melody because I will start to pick what's convenient and not what's best. Yeah.

Like I'll do sometimes the one that gets the pre-course done, not necessarily the one that's like, oh, I can beat that. that. My first draft isn't as good by the end of the day. I find myself doing that. I never heard of the first decision fatigue until recently. That is me every time it's like, hey, can you decide what flight you want to take? Hey, can you decide which hotel, Lauren, which one? My manager used to say, I don't decide what I eat.

Like you decide. Lauren, you're the foodie. You want the experience. You want the this, that. And she would always say, like, you decide for me because it's one less decision that I have make. And I thought, you're not living. Like, how are you doing? That's not living. Like, that's not passionate. And what I realized is, it's brilliant because she's carving space for the things she actually is passionate about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's different. All right. So next segment, we're going to go five for five. I'm going to list five things. Just tell me the, you know, first things that come off the top of your head. We're going to start with Louisiana. Oh, swamp. So good. We're going to go at jazz.

Ella Fitzgerald was my first thought Great We're going to go at the Price Fund Oh come on My grandfather His middle name was Price That's by it's named after him Got it

I'll give you I'll give you a few sentences Tell me real quick Let people know what the Price Fund is Okay so I grew up Cajun family like I said And my grandfather He was from Mississippi

But he would always teach us how to just love people. It didn't matter if he was the president of the United States or a homeless man on the side of the road. He's going to talk to them the exact same. And he would, he just delighted in people. And it wasn't until he passed away that I found out all the ways that he would give. And I said, you know what, I'm going to go and continue that legacy. And so we work now with elderly and with children going into those prisons, like what I talked about, all the the residents that we talked to, they said, hey, go and get involved in the public school systems. It's called Public to Prison Pipeline. And so we started partnering with a lot of schools with

after-school programs to keep art in schools. And we built two schools in the Congo. We're giving instruments to different music programs around the country. And every city that we go into, we actually partner with local organizations there that continue art and education. So that's, That's something that we've been doing. And then we just started doing these things. We partnered with this organization called Culture City. And we go and build sensory rooms into all the arenas that we go into so that kids can go and watch basketball games and hockey games and go see concerts,

even if they have sensory needs, you know. And that's been really beautiful. We're going to go with the self-titled album. Oh, why did I name it? Yeah. Why is this one the self-tidal album? I found myself evolving the most between these two records. So between Lookup Child and Lauren Daigle, it was this wild.

Like, I remember just being like, holy cow, I am so, COVID happened. I changed producers. my manager literally had to fly down and be like, are you going to still do music? Because the state of the world was just so heavy. I didn't know how to process. I wrote with so many new writers. And I felt like my whole relationship with music even changed.

When I first started working in the industry, I was like I said, so green. I didn't know how to communicate my ideas in the studio. Now this is my fourth record, if you include the Behold record. I have a language I can communicate ideas. I can speak into songs in the way that I want them to sound, the way I want the lyrics to go, that it didn't necessarily have in the beginning. It's almost like the first three records were the learning part,

and then this was the one I finally got to arrive to in a sense. So that's why it's Lauren Daigle. That really shouldn't count as one of them, so I won't. I'm going to go with your dad. Okay, I first thought it would be LSU because we always get LSU together. Got it. That's a good team to follow. I mean, I went to USC, so there have been some moments, but, you know,

she's a good school. Okay, let's go with the final one being your mom. Oh, I would say she's my creative. She's the one who, she's a dreamer, and she is a fortress for our family. Well, thank you for doing the podcast. You know, Natalie warned me. She goes, oh, you're going to love her. I think the joy that you bring into even this hour and change is like for sure being in a session with you is fun.

I'm sure like all the tours and the 92 people you get to tour with, they get to experience it often. But you know, you're bringing a lot of happiness into people's lives. So I thank you for doing this. This is great. Thank you. This episode, is produced by Joe London, Mega House Management, and myself. See you all next week. I'm Ross Golan signing off.