Lauren Jauregui returns to Lima as a soloist: “Now I do what I want”

With Fifth Harmony achieved sales records, billions of streaming views and sold-out sales in countries on three continents. but now how Lauren Jauregui she wants so much more: to discover all the possible ways to express herself artistically and to be as honest with herself as possible along the way.

A first sample of this came in 2021 with “Prelude”, a very intimate album of 7 songs that, as the name indicates, seeks to be the presentation of this stage of his career in which, in order to have full control of his project even decided to leave his label and continue as an independent.

This month of March, almost 7 years after what was her first and only visit to Lima with Fifth Harmony, Lauren will return to the same stage in the Peruvian capital to present those first songs that she has composed as part of this new stage in the who says he values ​​the learning process more than reaching goals quickly.

– You are a few days away from returning to Latin America, but this time as a soloist. How do you feel shortly after starting this moment of your career?

There is pride, but I am also anxious, but with good anxiety. I am also very excited to be able to be with the Peruvian public, which I love.

WATCH THE VIDEO INTERVIEW HERE:

– How do you prepare for a tour?

Right now I am going to the gym, in the last month I have been taking vocal lessons twice a week… there are many things to do, many decisions to make…

– How will the show be? What songs will you include in your setlist?

I’m going to sing almost all the songs from “Prelude”. I’m leaving out one or two because I have some new songs that I’m going to play for you from a coming EP. God willing, the EP comes out before I go there or it may also come out while I’m there, but it’s coming soon. And when I say soon, I really mean it. I am also going to sing the songs that I have in Spanish like “Piña”, “Nada”, the ones that already exist in the world I am going to sing for you. Better said, with you.

– The album with which you return to Lima, “Prelude”, not only marked your solo debut, but also as an independent artist, you left your label in 2021. Do you now feel in complete control of your career?

Yes, 100%. I also have a great team that helps me and protects my creative vision, which is very important to me. But yes, 100%, I do what I want!

“Every time I tried to show someone what I was doing, they told me I wasn’t a good writer and that’s what put me in a place of insecurity.”

– Do you think you could have made a record like “Prelude” if you weren’t an independent artist?

I don’t know… what I wanted with “Prelude” is for it to be like the foundation. I didn’t want to give everything, but to show a little bit of what is coming and what I can do. Maybe if you don’t know me from Fifth Harmony, that you listen to the songs and know what’s going on in my mind, how I think about love and things like that. I feel that it is a necessary part of my history as an artist (being independent), I feel that at the end of the day those who get involved in music just for business, are only interested in that: business. I am also interested in business, because like everyone else I have a rent to pay, but for me art is more, it is an expression of the soul, an expression of my path as a human being in this life and I will always protect it’s. I do it from when the group ended until now. Although I have had to learn a lot to open up, to let people who know more than me help me, I have had to grow a lot as a business woman, but for me it is worth taking more time, it is worth learning and that I didn’t get everything perfectly the first time. Learning is the part of life that makes us grow and makes me able to create art.

– Is it difficult to reach that moment in which you feel confident with your decisions?

It was difficult at first, but I am now quite comfortable in my process.

– It caught my attention in “Colors”, the single from this album, which you close reciting. I know you have an interest in poetry, how much do you write thinking about poetry and how much about songs?

Before writing songs, I wrote poetry. That’s how I started. For me songs are poems: lyrics and rhymes that tell you a story in three minutes.

– When I listen to the album, I find it hard to believe what I stated in a past interview that, when the group ended, you didn’t feel capable of writing. Were you very insecure about your talent?

Insecure yes, but more than anything there was no person to tell me that I could do it. Every time I tried to show someone what I was doing, they told me I wasn’t a good writer and that’s what put me in a place of insecurity, but I didn’t stop writing, it didn’t stop me. Since I was a child I began to write and express myself with words, and no one could take that away from me, but yes, there was an insecurity, I felt that I could not do it with the caliber that I needed as an artist, as if I could not compete with the writers of the moment or write a hit.

– Part of what distinguishes you as an artist are also the messages that you address in your songs and on your platforms: you touch on themes such as acceptance, for example, loving oneself. How important is it to you to be able to share those messages with the community that follows you?

It is the most important thing for me, to use my platform, my voice and my talent to influence. At the end of the day I make art for myself, to express myself and to be able to get all this pod that is inside me in my experience as a human being, but I express it and share it because I want other people to see how powerful it is, to see that they are agents of their lives and that they can do whatever they want. fucking They win, that they can be exactly who they are, that they know that they don’t have to change to be in this society that is so sick, this society that no longer sounds familiar to us, where everyone is sad, afraid and nobody is living. To live it is important to be connected with yourself and with your power and if you are not aware that you have power over your own life, you will continue to be part of what already is and you will not be able to create that new world in which we all want to live. . I don’t feel that I am Jesus or the savior of the world or anything like that, but I feel that artists who understand that of being, of being, it is important that they remind people that they are powerful, just as they see you.

– You recently released “Always Love”, which is a different breakup song, because breakup songs are always “I hate you, I don’t want to see you anymore” and this is the opposite: a celebration.

I also have songs that talk about being very angry and that the other person hurt me, but I feel that when I wrote “Always Love” I was in that mental place of feeling a lot for this person that I was with, but I already know that we can’t be together. Many people have had that feeling, but there aren’t many songs that talk about it and that is something that does exist, although it is not reflected in popular culture.