Lauren Pritchard grew up in Jackson, Tennessee, a place she calls “the buckle of the Bible Belt.” But that doesn’t mean she didn’t feel “conflicted about the female role in the Bible.” At age 28, all the friends she grew up with are now married with children. But that wasn’t going to be Lauren. And coming to terms with these contradictions, having roots and being an individual, and stepping out comfortably in her own skin is exactly what her album In Loving Memory of When I Gave a S*** is all about.
Lauren’s, aka Lolo’s, velvety fierce southern soul music had Rolling Stone summing it up as “big voice, big strings, big heartache.” She’s also penned and lent vocals to Panic! At The Disco’s #1 album Death of a Bachelor, writing the title track on the Grammy-nominated album, no less. She has even scored an off-Broadway musical adaption of Chekhov’s “Songbird.” But even if Lolo’s talent has always been there, she’s fought for it to be heard. She told NPR:
I always tried to be a good, sweet little Southern girl, but I wasn’t. I wasted a lot of energy trying to be what other people wanted me to be, and I can’t be anyone but myself now.
On her path to self-discovery, Lolo made stops in London, where she lived for a time after signing with Universal/Island Records UK, and then in Brooklyn before returning to Tennessee in 2015. Of her time living on the road, Lolo wrote “No Time For Lonely,” a part Tinder-takedown, part anthem for those who have too much going on in life to waste time on bad dates. She admits she found “the rapid pace of the dating world as a young 20-someting (to be) really, really obnoxious and weird.”
But living back home doesn’t mean she’s turned her back on the self she discovered while she was away. Lolo wrote “Dandelion” the day she returned, and says “the thing that makes it somber-ish is genuine searching to figure out how to just make the line (between my non-stop New York life and my roots) work.”
Lolo is currently working on an EP for the song “In Loving Memory of When I Gave a S***.” You can see her live inside Levi’s® Lounge April 18th! Enter here for your chance to win.