Laura Marano has always felt a deep connection with songwriting but it took some time to find her voice.
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Growing up in Los Angeles, Marano got her start in acting. She and her sister Vanessa Marano (known for her roles on Gilmore Girls and Switched at Birth) spent much of their youth at the Agoura Children’s Theatre owned by their mother, which sparked their interest in the craft. Her sister was so adamant about making acting a career that when their mother took her to meet with a casting agent, they agreed to sign both sisters. This led to a JC Penny commercial when Marano was five and starred alongside her sister in several episodes of Without a Trace. Marano got her big break in 2011 as one of the lead roles on the Disney Channel series Austin & Ally playing the latter character, a shy singer-songwriter. It was a fitting role for Marano, who’s a singer/songwriter at heart and claims music as her first passion.
“I always felt very strongly about songwriting,” Marano professes to American Songwriter, adding that she “loved singing the songs that I wrote. Songwriting, I always felt really connected to, confident in and felt like it was a part of me. I just needed to do it.”
Marano first felt the power of songwriting when she was four years old and wrote a song about her uncle, who had differing political opinions from her side of the family, and used the song as an olive branch. “I remember seeing my uncle and writing this song being like, ‘I love you Uncle Tony, even though we disagree politically,’” she shares.
From an early age, she was taking voice lessons in between acting gigs and started learning piano at the age of nine. By 13, she was doing “amateur recording sessions.” But Marano admits that it took time to develop confidence in her voice, particularly when she started doing co-writing sessions when she was 16.
“I think my insecurity about my voice would really inform me in those sessions and my level of confidence,” she explains. “I think that time mixed with me not being very used to co-writing, feeling a bit insecure about my voice, made those sessions quite a learning experience for me in terms of finding my confidence in that room. I think it got found again over the years as I kept doing it.”
Marano really started honing in on her voice as a songwriter with her 2022 EP, Us, which completed her trilogy of EPs Me You Us that started in 2019. Written after a devastating breakup, Marano calls the project, “the most personal body of work I’ve ever put out.” She entered the writing sessions with raw emotion that came out in the songs, reflecting how the 27-year-old has grown as a songwriter.
“I think how my songwriting has evolved over time is I use way more specific personal experiences than I did when I was very young,” she expressed. “I feel quite deeply, I think we all do, but I exude a very positive exterior and I do feel like there’s happiness in my life. But I also can feel quite intensely in terms of more negative emotions and I really take a lot of that into my songwriting.”
Exploring challenging emotions comes through full force in her new song, “Boundaries.” Admitting that she’s often “struggled” with setting boundaries, Marano teamed up with Todd Spadafore to pen this honest track during a hectic time in her life when she was doing back-to-back recording sessions and filming a movie that left her emotionally and energetically drained. After the film was completed, she started prepping for a tour, all of this leaving her feeling “burnt out” and “stretched way too thin.”
“I was emotionally and physically exhausted,” she describes. “I was getting to that place where I was feeling resentful of everybody and everything. I also was feeling resentful towards myself for not having these boundaries and not being able to have the strength to say, ‘These are my limits.’”
Instead, Marano channeled her frustrations into song. The catchy bop has her admitting that she’s trying to be too many things while taking accountability for not drawing proper boundaries. I can’t give the best of me /When I’m spread so thin / Everybody wants a piece that I can’t give to them / Wish that I was better when it came to being friends / Because when they don’t see the best of me / They don’t see me again, she sings over an ear-friendly pop melody.
Those lines were partially inspired by words of wisdom from Marano’s high school teacher who said, “We only have so much energy to give, and so you have to make choices in your life of who you’re going to give that energy to.” Marano took those words to heart which is reflected in the thoughtful lyrics of “Boundaries.”
“It’s definitely been a mentality I’ve carried my whole life of trying to give as much of my energy to as many people as possible,” she says. “I think you do get to a time in life where you realize you only have so much energy to give, and it’s not the people around us [fault] of them wanting your energy and you can’t give that energy. It’s really on you to set those boundaries.”
Marano cites I wish that I was better when it came to being friends / Because when they don’t see the best of me / They don’t see me again, as the most vulnerable line in the song, as it connects to her “fear of abandonment,” particularly after going through the breakup that left her with a deep sense of loneliness and questioning.
“I think you sometimes equate burning yourself out with being a good friend or being good at your job or being the best part of yourself, and it’s quite the opposite,” she observes. “I think when you are spread thin and feeling emotionally burnt out, physically burned out, you’re not your best self and you’re not doing your best work. That line really hit hard and writing that was really important because it felt very true to me.”
Marano is actively working on her debut album that she’s expecting to release in 2023, with hopes of touring after its release. She’s set to do a three-night residency at the Midnight Theatre in New York City on June 15, 16 and 17.
Photo Credit: Catherine Powell/Courtesy of NAKD Entertainment
