You could say Lauren Lovelle was born to make country music.
After all, it’s in her blood. The Harvey County, Kansas-born singer made her musical debut when she was just four years old, singing “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank Williams onstage with her dad’s honky tonk band. By the time she was 10, she was joining the band for entire sets. Now, after fronting a country band for the last two years in Kansas City, the 24-year-old musician is making her long-destined debut with Other Dreams.
Across the four-song EP of lush country music, Lovelle conjures images of the endless empty plains where she grew up, of smoky dive bars and queer cowgirls spinning each other across floors dotted with glitter and confetti. Combining classic Americana songwriting with an emotive indie rock sensibility, she delivers a dreamy mixture of raw storytelling and playful, poetic turns of phrases that just as quickly incite humor as they do explore emotional depths.
Reminiscent of country legends like Linda Ronstandt, John Prine, and Townes Van Zandt, Lovelle’s songs tap the old as much as the new, infusing the contemporary indie rock songwriting of Phoebe Bridgers and stripped-down modern country of Esther Rose—creating music that’s seeped in the DNA of classic country and honky tonk, and finished in a dreamy shimmer. It’s music that’s as much for two-stepping with your grandfather as it is driving the endless plains while reflecting on personal trauma and tragedy.
Though music is in her blood, Lovelle’s choice to pursue music wasn’t always an easy one. In high school, she took a long break from country music after transferring to a school in Wichita, where she became ashamed of her rural upbringing. After graduating, she enrolled in nursing school, where a nightmare upended her life. Lovelle and a friend were sexually assaulted and fought a subsequent years-long court battle. Grief and rage were waging a war on her brain and body. She couldn’t retain new information, and eventually dropped out.
But it was during this time that country music brought her back into herself. One day, she heard a Linda Ronstadt song—and it hit her: She had lost so much, but she still had music. Playing in bands was the only job she could see herself doing. “At that time where the PTSD was really rough. I could not hear hardly any song, even the most shallow song, without crying,” she says. “The most joyful song would still move me to tears. It was kind of a spiritual awakening about what music means to me.”
Lovelle found a job fronting a band in Kansas City, playing Top 40 covers everywhere from biker bars to casinos to get her feet wet. She wrote her own music on the side and eventually formed her own band Lauren Lovelle and the Midnight Spliffs in 2023. After meeting producer and fellow Kansas native Isaac Flynn of Hembree, who has supported Elvis Costello, Phoenix, and Cold War Kids, she set out to record her debut record, which she and the Midnight Spliffs recorded at Crooked Shack in Lawrence, Kansas.
While later releases touch on heavier themes, Other Dreams is a buoyant introduction to Lovelle, featuring a combination of big ballads and two-step songs that showcase her songwriting chops and uncompromising voice.
On “Anxiously Attached,” Lovelle weaves playful poetry as she effortlessly cascades into her upper register atop a plucky guitar. “Hastily wasting this flame/ On a lover who walked away,” she sings with a confident shrug. She is a troubadour, the tour guide of her own beating heart.
On “Very Last Time,” a twangy tune with effortless vocal runs, Lovelle’s controlled vocals take on a certain cheeky acceptance, as if to say: “This is how it is and what else are we doing to do, but sing?” A chorus and clangy electric guitar bolsters the mood with plenty of time for dance breaks. “In My Jeans” features a warm slide guitar, conjuring images of long drives and longer conversations. “I was cursed before the cradle/it’s in my jeans,” Lovelle sings in an airy drawl, tracing the ancestral storyline that’s brought her here, as strings swell to add emotional depth.
On the dreamy ballad “Won’t Tell You Goodbye,” about a dead-end relationship, Lovelle pours her heart out. “I won’t tell you goodbye/so don’t tell me the truth,” she sings in a whispery, emotive drawl. Lulling verses give way to a big, bleeding heart chorus, which eventually morphs into a waltz, buoying the hopeless lyrics with a sonic joy. Because ultimately it’s a ballad about hope, and about the great love that’s sustained her her whole life: music.
“It’s about how I’m going to give music a chance to break my heart first,” Lovelle says. “If music destroys me and disappoints me, that’s still more of a victory than not taking the chance and totally letting my heart be broken by some dude back home. The failure of music, after I tried and gave it my all, would still be a victory on its own.”
Because it is her love of country music, of its poor, queer, diverse roots, her love of the sprawling plains and smoky honky tonks, and of the craft itself that has always conquered whatever life has thrown at her. Lauren Lovelle has always been a country singer. Now, it’s her show.
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