“When I was younger, my dream was to be on Broadway,” LØLØ – real name Lauren Mandel – explains. “I never even thought about writing songs, but I always kept a diary. So, when I started to learn guitar in ninth grade, my guitar teacher suggested that I should write songs, which at first, I refused to do because that would be like people knowing my diary entries and I was too embarrassed.”
Her guitar teacher told her that he wouldn’t come back unless she wrote a song, and as she was worried she’d lose him, she tried writing a song that night, and ended up writing ten songs as it came really naturally to her. This marked the start of LØLØ‘s journey to becoming a musician. “After that, I was like, ‘screw Broadway!’” she laughs.
After releasing three EPs – 2019’s Sweater Collection, 2021’s Overkill, and 2022’s Debbie Downer – LØLØ knew that she always wanted to make an album because she loves listening to albums as a music fan. “I always want to add more to the story. Even with the EPs, I put the songs in a specific order, so it told a story. With an album, you have more tracks, so there is more inside scoop of the overall story with more material. But then I wrote the song U & the tin man, that I realised that there was more to this, including crazy visuals and a story. From there, I wrote more songs, but it wasn’t until I wrote the song wish i was a robot that I realised there was two sides of the same coin: falling for people that have no emotions who treat me like shit, and then wishing that I had no emotions, so that I didn’t have to be affected by all of these things and life in general.”
That is why LØLØ‘s debut album is called falling for robots and wishing i was one, a brilliant pop-rock album. Most debut albums skim the surface of who an artist truly is for the sake of testing the waters, but that isn’t the case with LØLØ. Her debut album is raw and honest about heartbreak, feeling emotions too deeply, and it also perfectly captures the zeitgeist of being a woman in the modern era. The track list for the album tells a story of a woman falling in love with a guy and the crazy feelings that come with romantic love, and then realising that he’s still texting his ex girlfriend. “As the album goes on, it tells more of the story,” she explains.
The cover of the album shows LØLØ as a punk Dorothy holding the heart of a robot as they are on a yellow brick road with a emerald castle in the background. “It was inspired by u & the tin man because I thought it’d be cool if I was a punked-out Dorothy because The Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite movies and my dream was always to be on Broadway. I wanted to be Elphaba in Wicked because that’s my favourite musical. I felt like my album was the same vibe as The Wizard Of Oz is quite whimsical and Dorothy learns that she needs to grow up. The film is also about her learning about love and courage, so I felt like I was Dorothy trying to navigate through this crazy world that we’re in. It’s my first album, so go big or go home.”
The majority of the album was recorded in Nashville. “The recording process was very easy for this. In the past, I’ve sung the demo, and then gone back and re sung it until it was perfect, but this time around, whenever I wrote something, I’d sing it and then left it at that. It was cool because it meant that I got to do the majority of the album with the same producer, who’s called Mike Robinson and it was really fun. I’d go out to Nashville for a week or two every other month, we’d get a bunch of songs, and it was like a fun little getaway where I’d write a bunch of songs, and then we just slowly put it together.”
Even through the album has fifteen songs, there were some songs that didn’t make it onto the final product. “Once I knew what the album was about, I knew I needed a song about this, that, and the other to fill in the rest of the ideas to go with those themes, so there was a bunch that I tried writing that I didn’t think were good enough. Then there was one song that I thought was good enough for the album, but it didn’t really fit the theme of falling for robots and wishing i was one, so I didn’t put it on because I’m a stickler for a theme,” LØLØ explains.
The album never falls into the trappings of chasing the next big thing, but instead involves LØLØ “writing about what was super specific for me, but I’ve always been asked: ‘Did you date my ex?’ because of my lyrics, and I always hope I haven’t dated their exes,” she laughs. “But I think it’s really cool that even though the lyrics are very specific to what have happened to me, we’ve all had shared experiences.”
The shared experiences is why people love LØLØ and why she is quickly growing into one of the most exciting new artists of the 2020s. She isn’t afraid to be raw about life, and falling for robots and wishing i was one exemplifies this, and is one of the many reasons why LØLØ is a name to watch.
falling for robots and wishing i was one is out now via Hopeless Records.
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