Interviews

Lauren Pritchard Interview

• 25th Feb 2011

Wasted In Jackson Is the Debut Album Released By Singer/Songwriter Lauren Pritchard. I managed to catch up with her prior to her new Single release “Stuck” to speak about the album & collaborating with Eg White the man behind the smash hit’s “Chasing Pavements by Adele & Also “Warwick Avenue” She tells us about working with Lisa-Marie Presley, the struggles she faced as a musician & also her incredible success playing in the musical “Spring Awakening”

Hey Lauren, How’s Your Week Been?
Lauren: It’s Been Alright, Everythings Good.

You Headlined 1 of the HMV Next Big Thing Gigs, How did that go?
Lauren: Yeah it was wicked, it was a really exciting gig for me, it was sold out and the crowd was absolutely amazing, it was a really good night, I had a lot of fun. We basically went over our time limit and realized that it was time for us to get off the stage even the audience wanted an encore so it was great, we all enjoyed it.

Your Album “Wasted in Jackson” debuted at #84 In the UK, What was your reaction to this?
Lauren: You Know what I was really happy, for me this whole entire London experience has been a very interesting journey for a number of reasons because it has taught me a lot of lessons, I mean I had only been going out and gigging for 6 months before the album actually came out and so I was really proud of the outcome and I thank everybody who supported the record.

Your New Single “Stuck” is being released on the 28th Feb Can you tell us a little about it? What inspired you to write this single?
Lauren: The song “Stuck” is about a middle ground that you reach with someone, realizing that you been with them for a while and you are totally fine with it even though things might just be a little bit sort of normal and kind of middle ground but you wouldn’t have it anyway. It’s basically putting a message across that all songs don’t need to be dramatic and be about relationships starting or ending, sometimes you just want to make music about being in love and being comfortable in a relationship, and I definitely think I took that on board when writing the new single “Stuck”.

So You Originally from Jackson, Tennessee, Does this have an impact on your sound & style of music?
Lauren: It Definitely has and the interesting thing about making the album here in the UK is that I Am Very American and the producer I worked with is English and so instead of trying to make a very English or Very American type of record we kind of decided very early on to bring to the table what we both had and create a mixture of both of those things and so he gave me the freedom to bring in my Americanisms, I have a tendency always and I feel like this comes from growing up where I did and so I do find myself drifting to a bit more of a country/soul style sometimes

You had the pleasure of living with Lisa-Marie Presley when you were a teenager, what was this like?
Lauren: Well they are very close family friends of mine and so staying with them was not a career move, it was really just living with them, I needed a place to stay and her daughter Riley is 1 of my very best friends in the world and they opened up their home to me. What I will say is Lisa is a person that I have always admired in the industry; I think she is a very strong and wise woman, she knows exactly what she wants, when she wants and how she wants it, she doesn’t mess about getting it and I admire her very much because she really sticks to what she believes in, she doesn’t bend for anybody and I think it’s very easy to be persuaded in an industry that has so much temptation and corruption in it and she has always held very strong and so I admire her very much and I feel very fortunate to be around her and get to know her because she is very much someone who I look up to and respect.

You Have had an amazing career so far, I mean the Press Love you, you have an incredible fan base, you released a successful album, worked with Professor Green and even been offered a part in the Hit Show Glee, could life get any better for you?
Lauren: Life can always get better, but I think I have also been very fortunate and very blessed so I am grateful for all of the things that have come my way, I think part of it is timing and luck, and the other part is the fact that I have worked my ass off from the time I was very young, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I set out at a very young age to try and make that all happen.

What are you hoping to achieve this year?
Lauren: What I want to do this year is continue building, the album comes out in America on22/02/11 and so that is going to take a lot of my focus, I mean I want to start working on the 2nd album, I Also have a couple of personal achievements that I am doing this year, I am running 2 marathons in the Fall, I am an epileptic and I am running in honour of epileptic awareness and so this year is filled with a couple of different things but more than anything what I really want to do this year is continue building my foundation getting the 1st album out there, gigging, touring and just promoting myself, getting out there. There’s also some collaborations that I hope will happen this year and we will see how it pan’s out, last year a lot of stuff happened that I couldn’t have planned, really good things and so I just hope the same happens this year.

Any Plan’s of writing an album this year? Who Would You Like To Work With?
Lauren: There’s quite a few people on my list but whether it actually comes through intuition we shall see, a couple of people that I would like to do some writing with are the guys from “Bombay Bicycle Club” there are 1 of my favourite bands, we tried to get some work done last year but they were very busy and I was very busy as well but hopefully this year we will make some time to get together and do some writing. I am also going to continue doing work with Professor Green and so yeah I am excited.

Twitter is 1 of the hottest places to be right now for any musician, can we find you on there?
Lauren: I Certainly Am You can find me at:
www.twitter.com/grlcalledlauren
www.laurenpritchard.com
www.myspace.com/laurenpritchardmusic
www.facebook.com/laurenpritchardmusic

It’s Been Great Speaking with You Lauren, I Hope everything goes well with the upcoming release and video, 1 last question before we finish up this interview.
If You Could Do a Duet with anyone in the world who would it be with? And why?

Lauren: That’s A Good Question Let me think about this…..If I Could do a duet with anyone 1 in the world, I would say currently at the moment if I could do a duet with anyone and this is so random but I would really love for it to be with Lil Wayne, I love him and I would love to be able to work with him, I am really into Hip Hop music. Myself and another guy called Pete Lawrie have started up a side project called River Kids, basically we do cover’s of Hip Hop songs, we actually did 1 of Jay Z’s songs the other day It’s really fun.