Lauren Daigle Tells Apple Music About New Self-Titled Debut Album, Collaboration, Songwriting, Evolution & More
Lauren Daigle joins Zane Lowe for an in-depth conversation on her new self-titled album due out this Friday. Lauren dives deep into the process that made this project come to life, sharing the stories behind songs like “Thank God I Do” and “These Are The Days”, highlighting her vulnerability, collaboration and striving to create a body of work that can inspire others.
Lauren Daigle Tells Apple Music Why She Decided To Self-Title Her New Album…
I was at dinner with two of my girlfriends and they were like, “Hey, what are you naming this album?” And at this point, we had already been working on it for almost two years, and I was like, “Ah, I don’t know.” I was like, “I would’ve thought a title would’ve come by now, but it just is still… I guess as I keep going, it’ll present itself, but it’s not coming up yet.” And they were like, “Well, we know why.” And I said, “Why?” They were like, “Because this needs to be a self-titled record.”
And I was like, “What?” They’re like, “Yeah, girl. You have poured all of yourself out onto this and we’ve watched this transformation take place in you during the course of making this record that the realist parts of yourself have made themself known.”
Why is it self-titled? It’s because it took those records to find my voice, to find the voice that I can stand on in front of people and say, this is what I love. I love this sound. I love the way that we recorded this record.
Lauren Daigle Tells Apple Music About Evolution and Her New Album…
The thing about from the outside perspective, and I have to do this with myself, it’s hard to watch people evolve whenever we love and long for the people who they are. But to sit alongside someone and watch someone evolve and say, oh yeah, I’m steadying this course. That’s how this record feels. There’s been an evolution that has taken place.
And it’s like, okay, I hope that you know the girl that was once there still very much lives inside of me. But here’s all of these other elements that I’ve lived. I’ve put out a record five years ago. So from the past five years, here’s all these other elements that have been introduced into my life that I can now deliver and share upon.
Lauren Daigle on The Relationship Between Therapy and Her Faith and How They Go Hand in Hand…
…we see all of these things with mental health right now. And I think in the church… Let me rephrase. I think there are sometimes where that can be a shameful experience, but I, last night, went to this service and I was just having a war. And I told my friend, I said, Hey, can you encourage me? I need somebody to say the truth to me right now.
And that to me is some of the greatest therapy built in faith right there. That’s where it is hand in hand married. These are the things I’m wrestling, this is how I’m projecting that wrestle, and these are the areas in life which it’s catching up to me. Can you tell me what’s true via the lens of faith? Love that.
Super grateful. In the Bible, it talks about the Holy Spirit is the wonderful counselor. So you go to counseling and then you see, wait, is this a dichotomy? You have the wonderful counselor, but why are you asking for help? This isn’t necessarily quite as talked about in our faith or the doctrines of what we believe, but it talks about the gifts of the spirit.
One of them is counseling. So there are people put on this planet to help with counsel to say, Hey, I’m one of those people. I don’t know what’s going on right now. I can’t differentiate my head from my heart. Can you help the line get a little clearer? Like the communication isn’t right.
And there’s people that are gifted with saying, yeah, let me help. Let me say what I’ve learned in school in all of this teaching. Let me also bring in. And that to me feels like the full picture. That’s where I get the full picture. Where faith doesn’t have to reject therapy. I think they actually can be hand in hand.
Lauren Daigle Tells Apple Music About Working with Producer Mike Elizondo…
He was so true to the process, and so meeting him and working with him, it caused this voice to have to come out of me, this reality to come out of me, where I was so new when I came into music.
Lauren Daigle Tells Apple Music About Her Song “Valuable”…
That song, I was in a parking lot, I had just finished a therapy session. And the way that my therapist had done this, she kept asking all of these questions to make me ask myself a question. And great psychology, good job on you, but what it did was make me say, are you valuable? And she said, you have actually tried so many courses to make yourself feel more valuable.
You are constantly on this quest of learning your value, versus just actually having a knowing of, I am valuable. And then, put yourself in the vortex of the music industry? That sucker will chew you up and eat you whole.
And I think … because what happens is, if there’s any element of an insecurity as far as value is concerned, the music industry will make it louder and louder and louder because there’s so much competition…it’s one of my favorite songs on the record
