“There was never one person who was in my life from three years ago to now…but my mirror was the only thing that was a constant that witnessed absolutely everything…your mirror is the only thing that truly sees you.”
This revelation is the inspiration behind Mirror, the debut album from multi-platinum artist Lauren Spencer Smith.
Across 15 tracks, Lauren reflects on the last three years of her life, a traumatic and maturing period consisting of, “breakups, a lot of best friend breakups – really just the falling out of relationships,” Lauren shared in a press conference with 1824.
The vulnerable project begins with “Never Been In Love.” The heartbreaking ballad about nonreciprocal devotion meets 16-year-old Lauren, who is experiencing one of the first of many heartbreaks, a wound that still stings.
“A lot of the earlier songs on the album …were obviously written about a breakup, which I’m obviously not going through anymore. But I still put those songs on sometimes, and I think about how I felt when I wrote it, and it makes me so sad that three year ago me couldn’t see how happy I am in a relationship now and how I still cry,” Lauren said.
For Lauren, the most challenging song on the album was “28,” a riotous track about an age gap relationship. “It wasn’t necessarily challenging to write it. It was more challenging to decide if it was going on the album or if I should put it out publicly. Is it going to offend people? I would definitely say that that was the roughest. “Bigger Person” was a little rough too. That one really hits pretty hard for me, but “28” probably stumps the rest of them,” Lauren shared.
When asked whether she was ever nervous about being that vulnerable, she revealed how she wears her tendency to be an oversharer like a badge of honor. “I’m such an oversharer. I think it should be nerve-wracking for me to share my feelings with people, but for some reason, it’s not. I just join sessions with people I’ve never met, and I’m like, ‘Cool, so this happened to me, and this happened to me, let’s write about it.’ And they’re like, ‘Wow, you just shared everything.”
Lauren had one of those opportunities to collaborate on “Fantasy” with GAYLE and Em Beihold.
“People always think it’s super daunting to work with other artists, which I think it definitely can be, but Em and GAYLE are the sweetest, kindest people in the entire world,” Lauren gushed. “While you’re recording a vocal, they’re like, ‘Yes! Slay! You sound so good!.’ It was just like a very positive typical atmosphere of teenage girls just supporting and loving each other. It was really fun.”
One of the major turning points in the album is “That Part,” a triumphant track that marks Lauren’s personal realization that she has found everything that she deserves and never knew she needed.
As a child of divorced parents, she questioned whether she wanted to open herself up to the potential of that kind of heartbreak. “When I wrote “Fingers Crossed” and a lot of the other breakup songs, I never actually felt that way. I was in a very heartbreak era, and I never in a million years thought about getting married. I thought it was so complicated, and I didn’t really feel that way until I actually met my boyfriend, and I started to feel that way about him. I feel like the two were not intentional. We just kind of wrote to write what I was feeling in those exact moments, and they just happened to be kind of cohesive but different.”
The album closes with “Do It All Again,” a recognition of success and a thank you for the journey that guided her here. “Three years ago, I just never would have thought that I would be where I am today, and I think everything happens for a reason. Even though some of the things that happened were so shit in the moment, I would have never imagined something positive would have ever come out of them.”
Lauren will “do it all again” on her Mirror Tour, which kicked off in Chicago on July 14. The 42-stop tour with Geena Fontanella, Blake Rose, and Henry Moodie will bring her across North America, the UK, Europe, and back to Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
“I’m really excited to play the Queen Elizabeth in Vancouver,” she revealed. “I’m from Vancouver, and I think it’s a bigger venue than a lot of the other venues. I think it’s going to be the biggest one on the American/Canadian leg of the tour. and it’s the last show of the American/Canadian leg. My whole family will be there.”
You can grab your tickets to Vancouver and other cities on the the Mirror Tour here.
Lauren’s debut album Mirror is now streaming.