Lauren Daigle’s world is full of color. Her wide palette is on display from the moment she walks into a room with her eclectic style in tow, pulling focus with a bright charm. Her musical style is similarly prismatic. She draws from a variety of sources when she creates. Her Louisiana roots, her developing Nashville influences, and her Christian beliefs are all accounted for.
Videos by American Songwriter
The end result is something kaleidoscopic. Each piece makes up a part of her identity. Her latest record is the most seamless convergence of those pieces, which is why she decided to name it after herself.
“[This project] is self-titled because of all the new places that I got to venture on this record,” Daigle tells American Songwriter. “I showcase a lot more of who I am and other facets that just haven’t been told quite yet.”
Part one of Lauren Daigle arrived earlier this year, ushering in a new era in the singer’s career. She worked with some of Nashville’s most sought-after songwriters for the album—the likes of Natalie Hemby, Lori McKenna, Jason Ingram, and Shane McAnally—opening up new doors and drawing out a confidence she didn’t know she had.
“The songwriters pushed me in incredible ways,” Daigle says. “I got my hands dirty in the creative process, which was really fun. I got to write songs with brand-new people. My team put us all together and it was truly remarkable.”
For all of this and more, Daigle says that the process of making this record was one of the most “precious” she has experienced in her career.
Daigle first started working on this album after a pandemic-induced hiatus from recording and touring. Her previous albums—namely Look Up Child—launched her onto the world stage and earned her charting hits and sold-out tours. The writing process for her self-titled record meant it was time to see if she could continue her string of powerful and inspiring releases.
“[After] the release of ‘You Say’ [in 2018], I was at a fork in the road, even though it was very early on in my career,” Daigle says. “I could see the trajectory of where this was going and I was scared. I didn’t know if I wanted a public life.”
Nevertheless, Daigle found herself firmly planted in an ever-widening spotlight after the release of that breakthrough hit, recruiting more and more ears to hear where she would take her career next. She approached the writing process for Lauren Daigle with trepidation, finding her rhythm again after a significant break.
Early on in the process, Daigle brought her co-writers and her producer, Mike Elizondo, back to Louisiana for a writers’ retreat. Stepping away from their familiar Nashville settings helped the group unlock something innate to Daigle’s musical upbringing.
“It was like a scene from a movie,” Daigle says of the trip. “New Orleans is one of those places that is just so unique. It’s cultural and colorful—made of music.”
One night while in the Crescent City, the group found themselves in the French Quarter late at night when a car slowly pulled up beside them.
“I was thinking, ‘OK, this could either go really bad or really, really bad,” Daigle jokes. “Then, someone in the car rolled down the window and pulled out a trumpet to play in time with some buskers on the street. I turned to them and said, ‘This is our culture.’ It was so beautiful.”
Daigle credits the trip as a turning point for the record. That same impulsive New Orleans jazz spirit can be felt throughout the album. Tracks like “Kaleidoscope Jesus” and “Ego” are bolstered by rich horns and swaggering melodies.
“Being from Louisiana, I knew there were elements of my past and my history that I wanted to bring to the record,” Daigle explains.
It’s a blend of “jazz that comes out of New Orleans and zydeco that comes from Lafayette” that make up the framework of this album.
Louisiana flavors the musicality of Lauren Daigle, but the lyricism is Nashville through and through. Take “New” for example—Hemby brought with her into the writers’ room the story of a friend who had overcome addiction and found themselves in an entirely different season of life when they crossed paths with the songwriter.
Daigle and Hemby then put that story down on paper with acute, narrative detail like many Nashville-reared creatives before them.
“She wanted to write a song about people’s lives, being able to change, and believing in humanity even in the worst of times,” Daigle says. “That song was a blast to write. It was the essence of what it’s like to write with Natalie Hemby. She’s pure passion.”
But that was your story before me
Why don’t we give all the glory
To the one that you are now?
‘Cause old habits die
When you wanna live
I don’t see the old you
I just see the new
God put you in my life
For such a time as this
I don’t see the old you
I just see the new
That sense of narrative is where Lauren Daigle and her past work differ. Though no one can deny the breakthrough power of Look Up Child—there aren’t many contemporary Christian albums that have found mainstream success at the same level—her latest album is a clear evolution in her craft. That’s an assertion Daigle herself would agree with.
“Nashville brought this new perspective to songwriting for me,” she says. “Going through COVID and having lots of idle time, I would pass people on the street and just create a story for them. I found myself really drawn to storytelling. There are ways that you can bring people in through the art of storytelling that you can’t from other styles of songwriting.”
Holding the tension between where Daigle has been and where she is headed is the song “Saint Ferdinand”—another collaboration with Hemby.
“Saint Ferdinand” has Hemby written all over it with an acoustically-driven melody and a chorus that won’t soon be forgotten. To bring in a little something from back home, Daigle tapped another Louisiana native, Jon Batiste, to play melodica on the track.
“I’ve never had a song where the feature was an acoustic guitar,” Daigle says. “We have Jon and Natalie singing background vocals and it [just felt like] the two worlds becoming one.”
They said I wouldn’t last long, but here I am
They said the spirits are strong, but I got ‘em to bend
Oh, life gave me lessons that I still question, oh
They said I wouldn’t last long, but here I am
Oh, Saint Ferdinand, my wonderland
Wild and strange, where vagabonds play
Saint Ferdinand, not what I planned
For my faith, but I’m gonna stay
These streets may not look pretty
But I see angels walkin’ in the city
Saint Ferdinand, my dear friend
Times may change, you can’t keep me away
On top of stretching her wings sonically on this project, Daigle also feels she allowed herself to dig deeper internally than ever before. “[This album] is a lot more vulnerable than anything I’ve ever put out,” she says.
Though Daigle approached each of the 10 tracks with an open heart, she credits “Valuable” as being the most vulnerable.
“I was leaving a counseling session and, by the end of it, we had concluded that the question I based all of my life interactions off of was, ‘Am I valuable?’” Daigle explains. “I didn’t have any realization of this prior, I just thought, ‘Oh, these are off quirks or little insecurities.’”
Right after the meeting concluded, Daigle headed into another therapy session of sorts: a writing session with McKenna. “I hadn’t met Lori and didn’t know if she was going to embrace my ideas,” Daigle continues. “She did and brought it to the next level. We dove in with each other and brought a human experience to the song.”
The message of “Valuable” lives in the same vein as Daigle’s Look Up Child hit, “You Say.” Like “You Say,” Daigle’s faith plays a large role in this track as she lifts up her worries to a higher power and begs the question, What would God say to you?
You’re the hands to the needy and a coat for the cold
What I see when I see you is a heart made of gold
If you feel like you are not valuable
Let me tell you, there’s more
If your heart is runnin’ in circles
Tellin’ your head things that are not true
What would God say to you, you?
Oh, every tear, He catches with His hand
And He knows the way your heart breaks within
You’re valuable
“Valuable” brings us to the last but certainly not least piece in the Daigle puzzle: her faith. Though she has now reached secular crowds that may not fit into her original Christian fan base, that aspect of Daigle’s music cannot be counted out.
Daigle says it’s her love for Jesus that ignites her interest in the stories of others that find their way into her songs.
“Life brings unique people into your world at particular times,” she explains. “I found myself so drawn to stories of the passerby. My love for people comes from Jesus—when I see who he is and when I learned of his character and his nature.” While this record, in essence, encapsulates who Daigle is in this season of her life, it has also primed her to enter a new one, helping her to grow as a person as well as a musician.
“One thing that I’ve learned in the process of making this record is that the people who you creatively surround yourself with are deeply vital to your growth,” she says. “Mike [Elizondo] was someone who never squandered me bringing ideas to the table. If he ever said no, it wasn’t because of a lack of interest, or anything subjective like that. There was always a reason why it sonically wouldn’t work. I feel like he brought that part of my voice out so deeply on this record.
“This experience has taught me how to step out in front of people that would usually intimidate me,” she continues. “The challenges were really beautiful on this record. There’s something about that pressure that is actually really healthy and helps you find greater parts of yourself.”
The newfound confidence she discovered in the studio has translated to her personal life as well, largely because of Hemby’s influence. “This process provided assuredness,” she says. “Natalie taught me how to stay creative and childlike even with the pressure of, ‘Is my song going to amount to anything?’ She doesn’t even let her mind go to that place.
“Then I watched her interactions in her personal life,” she continues. “She’s like the big sister I never had. There’s no superiority or inferiority and that’s really beautiful.”
Daigle combated the fear that came along with the release of “You Say” by “replacing all the doubt with the truth.” It seems she used the same mentality to combat any trepidation that came along with writing the songs for this record.
Any doubts she had about her own ability in comparison to the heavyweights she was working with were squashed by the bolstering relationships she found with them. Any doubts she had about opening the deeper parts of herself to the public were soothed through the vulnerable writing process of these songs.
The second half of Lauren Daigle is set to be released this fall. The 10 tracks on the first part of the project provide such a holistic portrait of the singer/songwriter that it is hard to imagine she could have much more to reveal, but the forthcoming release promises even more insight into Daigle’s new sonic trajectory.
“A lot of people always ask the question, ‘Is this the record that you’ve always wanted it to be?’ I can genuinely say, ‘Yes,’” Daigle says. “All of my other records have amounted to this one.”
Photos by Jeremy Cowart
