Interview by Carol Wright | Photos Courtesy of Leo Lauren
Leo Lauren creates music that’s anything but conventional. With a unique perspective and a tendency to take on entirely new personas through his songs, Lauren is an artist you should have on your radar. He talked to NYOTA about his song “Vampire,” musical inspirations, and how he developed his look as a performer.
When did you discover your passion for music?
When I was 19, almost 20, I was recently single from a long-term relationship with someone who was a folk singer, and it was a chance to define myself for the first time as an independent adult. Perhaps partly because the guitar had been off-limits in the dynamic of that relationship, I was drawn to it as a taboo sort of self-expression. I’d also been a largely quiet, shy, soft-spoken person, afraid to be loud or take up any space with my body or voice. Writing and singing songs, especially rock songs, was both magical and terrifying. I felt there was a version of myself hidden in a song I strongly desired to be but had never had the courage or ability to. This sense of discovery is what still drives my passion.
You have a specific aesthetic as a singer. How did you go about developing your look and performer persona?
From early on crafting songs, I got the idea to develop a Gothic Pop alias, still classical and tragic like Barbara Streisand or Cher, but more of an anti-hero speaking to darker feelings and settings – anxiety, desire, vampire-sunset landscapes, crows on an empty playground in your dreams (an empty playground you might’ve been bullied on). I love Americana tradition, like dusty cowboy boots and whipstitch, tattered jackets, but also glitter and glam. I have a soft spot for rock’n’roll theater, and made a non-narrative goth-glam musical as my senior project at art school, sewing costumes for friends to play disco vampires. I came up with the makeup looks and drew the film backdrops as giant charcoal drawings. My paintings had a lot of velvet, glitter, hand stitched and encrusted with jewels. All of that found its way into how I present as I started treating my clothing as I would my visual art, trying to create outfits which could help me transform. I love the idea of queering history, combining and colliding styles from different decades with total disregard for chronology, and mutating it all in my own dark glitter soup. What comes out isn’t quite Frankenstein, Dracula, Grace Jones, or the Scarecrow, but has echoes of them all.
Tell our readers about “Vampire.” What story are you telling in the song?
“Vampire” is a modern pop cautionary folk tale. It’s a story of seduction; it’s dangerous but fun. If the traveling old babushka in a little village in the 1800s who warned children not to venture into the woods at night was actually cruising around East Hollywood in a Rolls Royce Phantom at midnight, crooning out to club-goers and aspiring socialites that the ultimate party comes at a cost, you’d get pretty close to “Vampire.” It just so happens the price of admission is youth, freedom, and every last drop of innocence.
You worked with Heather Liz Baker on your upcoming EP, Supernormal. What did you learn through working with her?
I learned a lot from Heather. Not just how to be a better musician (I still think of her attitude and focus when I’m tracking instruments in my own demos), but to be unapologetic about choices. Oftentimes, the most dramatic, the most brutal, or the most sparkly decision was the best. She was a great partner in following our creative instincts no matter where they lead, despite how irrelevant they felt to music being made today. We were unapologetic about developing that world. If it felt right it was right. She helped me discover a lot of the sonic vocabulary which makes up my identity as an artist.
Who are some of your musical inspirations?
So many different things. Of course all the Art Pop and goth stuff. Bowie, Lou Reed, Siouxsie Sioux, the Cure. I love Roxy Music and Brian Ferry. I used to wish I could be in Cindy Lauper’s band. Also a lot of 80’s funk and RnB. I love The Deele, Sade, Prince, and the Pointer Sisters. And then there’s Type O Negative, Smashing Pumpkins, big stadium guitar rock sound for feelings usually kept in the closet.
What advice do you have for aspiring musicians?
There’s a few pieces of advice. For one, pain is usually a green light for an artistic or emotional experience. Working my way through something in a song usually leads to surprise and relief. Also, write songs like artists you love. Literally try to write that song but for yourself, it’ll be different. And most importantly, try and reconnect regularly with what you first loved about music. Play the music you love no matter how relevant it is to anything else besides the space you’re in. Get away from media and focus on that feeling of stardust and possibility and energy when you’re alone with your music. If you’re feeling something, someone else will.