Q&A: Lauren Jauregui On Finally Sharing Her Solo Debut, ‘Prelude,’ Being Vulnerable, Alicia Keys And More

This has been a major and well-earned week of celebrating for Lauren Jauregui. It started, last weekend, with back to back Halloween parties. She had a lot of fun going out and dressing up both nights. The first night she says, “I was a last minute Playboy bunny energy. It was like a French maid corset situation that I put ears on and made something out of nothing kind of energy.” Then night two she was a mermaid.

But Halloween comes every year. So those parties absolutely paled in significance for Jauregui to the one she got to hold last night (November 4) with friends and family. After years of working on her debut solo effort, the EP, Prelude, is out today.

As I found when I spoke with her earlier this week, nothing is going to match her excitement and pride at finally being able to share the very personal record, which she executive produced and co-wrote every track, with her fans.

I spoke with her about the record, what she learned being in a writing session with Alicia Keys, the artists she admires — from SZA to Summer Walker — for their vulnerability and much, much more.

Steve Baltin: Does it feel a bit surreal to finally be at this place of album release?

Lauren Jauregui: Yeah, actually, that’s the exact feeling. It’s like, “For real? Just this easy. You just let it go like that?” Because I feel like a mom. I know that’s probably an insult to mothers, ’cause it’s a whole other kind of process. But I feel like these are my children that are coming out of me and that are about to be released into the world. And there’s this sense of calm, readiness, intertwined with this sense of disbelief and intertwined with this light nervousness.

Baltin: So how did you finally know that November 5th, 2021 was the day to give birth?

Jauregui: To be honest, I don’t even know if it was a decision like that. I finally signed with AWOL, as my distribution company, and it was the time that made sense. Because everything was ready. I had already finished everything. I was in master mode and just getting the final touches on the master’s in my twentieth mix I was on. And it was ready. So why not was the question.

Baltin: You started 2018, and now it is three years later. We’ve gone through a global pandemic, the whole world seems to have shifted 86 times during the last three years. So have these songs changed a great deal for you in the last three years?

Jauregui: Yeah, so this is what’s interesting about these songs. Even though I’ve grown into the woman I am now from the girl, I was then they still stand the test of time to me. Like they still resonate with very human feelings that people are still definitely going through and feeling. I think that’s one of the beauties about being so honest in my work, is that I’m speaking to universal truths, human truths that we all go through in our own ways. And I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about music, getting to express and then having other people resonate with your expression. But yeah, it’s like they’ve taken on different lives, they mean different things now. They’re applicable to other relationships, some of them. They have their own lives, which I think is really cool, personally. [chuckle] But they’re still the same structurally. I just embellished them and made them more complete than they were when I wrote them.

Baltin: Are there songs from others that have changed for you as a fan?

Jauregui: The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, I heard some of the songs when I was younger and they were bops. I loved the songs, but I hadn’t really connected to the full project. And then when I was like 19 or 18, I think was when I heard that full project talked about and for the first time, which is blasphemous to say. But I did, and it changed my life because I was like, “Wow. The way that she connects to her lyric and the way that she connects to her message and conveys it.” That is so inspiring, and so that’s her album, and I could still listen to that top to bottom every day. It’s still relevant and as I grow through life, the songs grow with me. As I learn more about myself, as a woman I think I would be. And I hope my project can do that for people too.

Baltin: For your project what are the songs for you that particularly grew with you or that have changed?

Jauregui: I think “Sorry” is like that. And I think “Colors” is like that, ’cause they’re just like explorations of self and dealing with the downs of life and moving through them in some sort of deep vulnerability, but trying to find the strength in that. So I think that thematically that continues to mean different things to me as I get older.

Baltin: What was it about Vic Mensa that made him the right fit? And how did you guys come together?

Jauregui: Yeah, so “Scattered” was a song that I wrote and produced in 2019. And I just sonically really wanted to invoke that unresolved tension inside of myself of like, “I don’t feel like myself, but I’m asking for help.” And that’s why the chorus changes happen the way that they do, they kind of take you into a little bit of an uncomfortable place on it, like ear wise. Yeah, I think Vic is an amazing fit because he is so honest in his expression as well lyrically. And he talks very openly about his struggles with mental health, and I think his perspective is important. Especially in a time like this where we’re all coming to terms with the fact that we are walking around this globe, emotionless, f**king disconnected beings refusing to connect to ourselves and each other because we’re also scared all the time. And I think that Vic does a really good job of communicating that, and I think that that’s what the song was communicating. And so yeah, he just bodied it.

Baltin: How has the response been to the fact that, in a way, you’re calling people out, because by making yourself vulnerable at a time when everybody doesn’t know how to talk you’re pointing that out?

Jareguai: A lot of people don’t know how to communicate their feelings, and I think that there’s some artists who explore that complexity, and then there’s artists who ignore that complexity and just make stuff that they think other people will like. And I think that that’s obvious when you listen And these are the songs that resonate with me and I think my only intention for them is that they resonate with others in the same kind of way. They are cathartic for me to get out of myself, that they’re cathartic for people to listen to and maybe connect with themselves a little more.

Baltin: Are there moments on the album that surprised you when you go back and hear them?

Jauregui: Yeah, “Sorry” is definitely one of those for me and yeah, all of them, but I think “Colors” is also one of those for me, when I listen to it. Sometimes I listen to it when I’m in a place of completely past that space of doubt, and then other times I listen to it, like right when I’m in one those deepest pits of the doubt. And I hear it, and I’m like, “Woah, wait no, we have to pull ourselves out of this.”

Baltin: When you look at being vulnerable in music and I think it’s such an awesome thing too because there are certain artists who do it well, and there are certain contemporary artists who do it well.

Jauregui: I have a lot of respect for SZA and Summer Walker, like the two of them in the way and H.E.R., the way that they express themselves in their songwriting is really, really, really spectacular, I think. My collaborators, Vic and 6lack for sure, are like that to me, 6lack is an insane writer and I’m so connected to his spirit, he’s a Cancer like me. And like I said, SZA is someone that I really admire as a songwriter. She does an incredible job of articulating her experience and her pain and her joy and her confusion with life and just her experience. And I really love that about her. Kali Uchis as well, does that. I think she’s a sick songwriter just in the way that she expresses herself and tells her story. And there are contemporaries of mine, Kehlani, I think does the same, there are contemporaries of mine that are friends of mine that I think are really just talented in that regard of being able to articulate Jhene Aiko as well. I think I would add to that list. And Summer, like I said, Summer Walker, I think she’s really talented, her penmanship and just the way that she articulates her reality and her feelings. And that’s what’s important to me when it comes to listening to this music.

Baltin: Are there those artists that you’ve gotten to be around that have inspired you with the fact that they just carry themselves like they belong?

Jauregui: Yeah, definitely. Anderson.Paak is one of those people for me. He’s like a good friend of mine and has always been just really cool and real, and just has always acknowledged my gifts and respects me as an artist. And so that’s been really cool. I think Ty [Dolla Sign] as well, when he and I were together he taught me a lot. And he took me under his wing a lot, even if it was subconscious in his reality. For me, just watching him work and be the savant that he is, and his talent, and seeing his work ethic just really taught me a lot vicariously. And he is just cool, like he just knows who he is and does what he does. I think Alicia Keys. I was in a writing session with her one time and seeing her in her vulnerability and her rawness, and her process, was really inspiring to me because I admire her so much as a songwriter and as an artist. Before I was in that session I was rigid about it needing to be perfect before somebody could hear it or it needing to be a really good melody in order for me to even suggest it. Like that fear of failure, that fear of it’s sounding bad and people thinking that I’m not talented because of that. But yeah, I just learned a lot from that experience as well. It was just like relaxing into the truth of who you are and knowing that even if you’re imperfect, the perfection comes from exploring that imperfection.

Baltin: What are the moments from this record that you are most excited to do live, and do them in front of an audience and see how audiences respond to songs off Prelude?

Jauregui: Honestly, I’m just excited all around for the experience of feeling people in front of me while I sing again, [chuckle] but I am really looking forward to singing “Scattered” live. I’m looking forward to just feeling the crowd, feel their feelings out with me for their own reasons. I think that’s one of the most magical things about music is that it’s a frequency and it enters people’s bodies, whether they know it or not. The words enter your subconscious, even if you don’t know it, so I’m excited to feel that. And see whoever it is that it inspires.