Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftstetch Podcast. My guest today is producer songwriters sometimes artist Lauren Christy. Lauren, good to have you on the podcast.
It's great to be here, Bob.
So, what's the status of songwriting today in a world that's dominated by streaming and frequently only one song off an album has millions of plays?
If that hm hm, wells, yeah, it's very, very different. I'm on the board of SONA and the new NMPA Songs Board, and of course we spent a lot of time talking to this about this problem, and Michelle Lewis and Kay Hanley, who are the heads of SONA, there's so much more equipped to talk about the details of this. But I can tell you what it means to me is okay, So basically it's voluntary.
Just to start for a second, that's a National Music Publishers Association for those people who don't know an MPs. Yes, okay, so it means.
To you, It means to me that I mean, I teach a masterclass on songwriting and the first thing I say is please don't just be a songwriter. It was very important to me that in nineteen ninety nine after I came from being an artist that I started the Matrix and with my partner Scott Sparkan my ex husband
Graham Edwards, and so we were producers. And so I didn't even realize at the time that that was a very important thing to do because of what was going to happen in the future with songwriting becoming volunteer work basically because there's no money on streaming really unless you maybe there is money if you have a massive top forty radio hit, like Top ten, because then the songs get synced in all the TV adverts and you know, basically Top forty still pays money, but that's like kind
of the quan right getting to that top ten spot. And today with streaming, that's all anyone really cares about, and it seems that's all the record labels care about. Like radio. I don't even know many kids in their early twenties who are listening to traditional radio. So it means that the streaming is not really paying an artist. So what I preach is, please become a producer. Please become the artist or the producer, because then you have master ownership, and that's what it's all about. If you
don't have master ownership. You are basically not going to get paid. And it's like sort of like being a poet. And I'm sure it's very nice to be a poet, but they don't make a lot of money, or maybe two of them do in the world.
Right. Okay, Let's say an artist with some success says to you, I want you to write songs for me. Do you only choose to work with people who have a good chance of having a hit single with the song you're writing, or is it like the old days since you get a royalty on every song on the CD?
You say, fine, I mean, I do this for the love of it. So if I think the artist is a star and they've got an incredible voice, if they've got nothing going on, I'll work with them as long as I'm the producer. I have to be the producer, So I'm taking like long bets, you know. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that. I can see that, you know, the president of the labels signed them and that they've got the best manager in the world and all that stuff, because I've seen things come out of nowhere and become
successful in my career. So it's really like, does my heart feel like I want to do it if they if they're impressive to me, then something extraordinary could happen.
Okay. Needless to say, recording budgets have gone down. Prior to the Internet era, producer, we get three to four and frequently from record one in addition an advance against those royalties. What are the deals like today?
Well, I mean, I do think that there seems to not be so much money, especially for newer artists. I think still there's probably I should think Mark Ronson and Rick Rubin of making some gangbuster money. Still, I kind of have a certain price list of how I do things for independent artists, it's so rare I'm ever going to see any money on the back end, so I
charge quite a big fee on the front end. For majors, I drop it a little bit because there's maybe a chance of getting to that top forty spot, you know. I see a lot of people working for like what I think seems like ridiculously small amounts of money. I just think as usual in this business, there's no rules. It's the wild wild West, and you have once you have some success, you sort of have to set a standard of what you get paid. And it's worked out quite well for me to just say no quite a lot.
It's the most powerful world, most powerful word in the music business or in entertainment is no, and I stick to that quite often. Okay, sometimes if I love somebody and it's they've got no money to pay me, I'll sign them and to my production company and just do it all for nothing.
Now, there are a lot of people who've made money from record labels in the last century beginning of this century, and that money has dried up, and they have done vanity records over the last ten or fifteen years. Where somebody says, I have the money, my son or daughter is twelve, they want to make a record. Is that something that's in your world that you've done.
M yes, I have. But I have a very strict rule about that too, that is, if they're not an amazing singer, I'm not doing it. I feel like, when you've got a reputation for doing some good work, I don't want to ruin that reputation and just be about the money. And it's not really ever been about the money for me, thank god. It's just been you know,
as long as they're really talented. Sometimes they have a cause, like I work with a girl who had a very pretty voice, and she was running this charity for children with Down syndrome, and she were going I think it was called Happy House or something, and just they would all like do music together, and I just thought it was so beautiful that I got involved and made eight
songs with her. And I wasn't sure where it was going to go or if there was going to be any success, but she had a lovely voice and it was a good cause, and so yeah, I'll do things again if my heart's in it. I never just want to say I'll give me the money. This kid's crap, you know, but I'll take the money. I just can't do that.
Okay, Diane Warren. She is hustling, even in this late day twenty four or seven. She's calmbing the trades, you know, movies, et cetera. Looking for work. Are you more active or you more passive waiting for the phone to ring? What's it like for you?
I'm definitely more passive in arm a person of faith, and I feel like sometimes it's not your door you earth to open or to bang on. So I do kind of wait for things to come to me, and things do come to me, thank God. I feel like I'm really busy, and I'm always saying, Okay, I got
to slow down. I got to slow down. About ten years ago, I tried to drop my schedule to three days a week because I really wanted to be in my kid's life and I have two daughters and I had to I wanted to go pick them up from school like three days a week and just you know, be hanging out of the house while they're doing the homework. I just didn't want to be in sets every day.
So I've tried to stick to that. But what happens is that suddenly one week I'll be working six days and then I'm like, okay, slow down, next week three days. So I would never say that I'm lost for being able to find work. It's always being offered to me. And have a lot of friendships in this business, long standing friendships, and people come back, so I don't think
I feel I don't feel like I'm hustling. I could probably hustle for like bigger, more high profile artists and seek them out, but I'm kind of a strange fish, and that I really love working with new artists or up and coming artists. And I've worked with a lot of stars and you find yourself waiting at the studio for two hours for them to show up. But it was more exciting working with them before they became stars. But I'm busy now.
If someone wants to work with you, do they contact you directly or do you have a manager or an attorney who filters?
So I very closely with my partner in crime, Donna Cassain at Reservoir Media. I have ADMIN through that company, and Donna is way more than just admin. She's really my publisher and we've been working together, oh like sixteen years, very closely. So on my Instagram and TikTok, I think I have like Donn reach out to Donna Cassain, and then it started to get a bit overwhelming. So at that point I put like an email up. I don't
have management. I just manage myself because I know my schedule better than anyone and it's just quicker for me. And so between Donna and I, we we deal with it with everything. People can direct directly email me like they see me on TikTok, and people will send me stuff. I found some incredible stuff. You know, amazing artists who want to work with me and they've got nothing going on.
Sometimes I want to sign them. Sometimes I'm just like, you know, this is my fee, and quite often they want to pay it again, as I say, they have to be a ma but just me and Donna really working it all out, Okay.
Frequently there's negotiation involved. Do you do your own negotiation?
I do? I do everything.
Okay, So I'm an artist and I say I want to pay you X, and in your mind you say, well I'll do it for two X. Do you then say well I'll do it for three X. What's your negotiation technique?
I mean, if they say, you know, they want to do one song, then I'm pretty much just going to charge my fee. But if they say they're going to do three songs, I might lower my fee by five grand a track.
Okay. What I'm trying to say is, let's say you quote a fee and they say, oh on, I want to pay that. You're you charge five grand? I want to pay three grand? What would you say?
Yeah?
If I really love then I might say, okay, that's fine, but can we do three songs at three grand?
Let me change it a little bit. You're obviously talented on the creative end. How good a business person are you?
I mean, I've managed myself for the last fifteen years and I feel like I've done pretty well, so I think I'm good at business. I had to become a business person. I had to.
Okay, you're with Reservoir, which is a relatively new company. How'd you end up with Reservoir?
Well, what happened was I finally managed to get out of my record publishing deal with Universal and Donna Cassein had been at Universal. She kind of inherited us after I can't remember his name now, but he left the company, the head who'd signed us when I was in the matrix, So Donna was there. We started working together. My contract then came to an end, and I was like, let me just do my own publishing company myself. And I get this call from Donner and she says, Babe, I'm
going to work at this company called Reservoir Media. It's run by this incredible woman, Golna closure Shahi, and it's female run publishing company. And what do you think? And I said, when do we start? Actually, I couldn't be without Donna. She was so amazing and just the thought of getting to be with all these incredible women, Faith Newman, Golna. It's incredible there. And I get to talk to Donna like every week and just kind of plot what we're
up to. It's a great company, and I think they're like just doing amazing things, expanding all over the place, buying catalog they have, They bought Christmas records. It's like, I don't think there's any stopping them. Actually.
Okay, you say you've got out of your deal with Universal? Is that an admin deal? Did you have a regular publishing deal?
Now? That was a traditional publishing deal?
Okay, So when you had success with the Matrix, gigantic success with Avril Levine, did you own your publishing then or were you with a company?
Actually, I was on Warner Chapel when we wrote the Avil stuff, and then Scott Francis that was it signed us to Universal. We actually sort of publishing deal ended about six months after the Avil record blew up, which was fantastic, and of course our manager at the time steamed in and got us a big publishing deal with Scott's at Universal, and of course that you know, it took a long time to play out and pay all
the money back. But once it was done, I kind of felt really strongly that I didn't want to do another publishing deal.
Okay, the songs that you wrote with Universal, do they still have ownership interest in those? Or do you own those songs one hundred percent? Now?
Ooh gosh. I would say they're slowly coming back to me. Some of them are still owned by Universal, and they're slowly coming back to me, and then I take them over to Reservoir as they come back to me.
Okay. So someone starting out might say, Okay, if I write the songs, I get one hundred percent. If I make a publishing deal, I get an advance, but the publishing company's going to have an ownership in that. Everything's negotiable. What would you tell a young person?
But I think if you're a young songwriter trying to make it, I think the reason to sign a publishing deal is one because you really need some money. Like obviously that's the first thing. If you really don't need the money, then you don't really you shouldn't really do a publishing deal, do an admin deal. But I also feel that probably having a good team is important to you.
Having Donner at Universal, they were like pushing me into the right sessions, and that's invaluable to have a team that's like working with you and getting you in the right rooms. So they're the reasons to do a publishing deal. But if you're already in the right rooms, and you have a hit already and you're kind of on the going up, and you don't really need the money, then I would definitely just do an admin deal.
Okay, you said at the top of the hour here you tell everybody to be a producer. You started off as an artist. How did you learn to become a producer, And in your eyes, what does a producer actually do well?
I mean, I think there's many different ways producers work. I mean, like Rick Rubin doesn't work the board right, and he's not an recording engineer. He's got excellent taste and that's worked out to be very beneficial for the artists he's worked with. But I started out when I was seventeen getting signed to E and my publishing by Alan Jacobs. And the first thing they did was they bought me a four track recording studio for my bedroom.
Then I got an eight track recording studio, and then I got a sixteen track recording studio, and I would sit at home and I would just knock out my own little demos. So I felt like I kind of knew how to work all the gear and do all the programming. As I progressed in the music industry, I started to find it annoying that I was looking to for loops and kick drums and snare sounds, and I was like, hang on, what I'm really really good at is lyrics and melody and chords, and it was slowing
me down. And so when I and also being a female artist, you know, suddenly you're put with all the biggest, coolest producers. And I was eager to learn when I came to America, So I wasn't going to say I need to produce myself, but I felt like I've always been a producer, and I've always been involved in the sonic bed of a track of is the groove right to me? As soon as we've written the song, getting the groove right is so important, So I feel like
I've always been a producer. After my career as an artist started to kind of wane a bit, that was when I started the Matrix, and what I found was having a team of people who made up for my strengths, like Scott Spark was an absolute genius programmer and a brilliant piano player and an arranger. He had a degree in arranging. And my ex husband, Graham Edwards had been like he played with Mick Jagger and Jeff Beck, and he really knew how to routine bands, and he'd done
a lot of production himself. So I tell people like, if you're like, at some point, I kind of really lost interest in doing all the tech side of it, of producing the tracks and building the tracks. But I was sitting there the whole time saying, hmm, that's not quite right, Let's do this. How about a keyboard sound like this? So I feel like I'm just incredibly involved with the production, and now today that's mainly what I do.
It's like everything I do is, but I have a co producer almost on every session I'm in because I don't want to be torn between making a great song and trying to think about the production at the same time. So I'm kind of jumping between yeah, how about this idea and then like, okay, how about this MIDI I work with this guy, Middie Jones a lot and He'll be like, literally, we call it building the plane while
we're flying the plane. It's all happening at the same time today, and everything takes honestly like one day, Like we go in at one o'clock and by seven o'clock we have something that sounds like a record written and produced. To me that it all comes from the song. If the song's no good, then I'm just we're polishing a turd. So I try to focus in the session on the song being amazing, and then I'm running over and like talking about Chap used to go here, We need to
how about this? How about we lay out on this point. So I'm very involved with the production. It's so important to me.
Okay, So you were saying you're in the studio today. You used to work with your ex husband in a third guy Spock, you're working today you literally are you saying about working with an engineer or you literally have a co producer in every session.
I have about five different co producers that I love, So I probably have like five different records being made around town every day, and I will be on the phone or popping in to hear what's going on. And you know, after that initial day where you kind of take a shot for an artist, and normally it's on spec.
By the way, you don't get paid up front. And at the end of the day, I said to my husband, I feel like I'm on chopped sometimes, you know, where the three people have all the ingredients and you've got to like present your dish, and whoever's dish sounds the best gets to be the winner. It's kind of like that. And so sorry, what was the question again, Bob? I lost it.
No, no, you gave a great answer. But today, literally as we speak, do you have multiple sessions happening in town?
Yes, right on my way here, I was just talking to two different producers about what we need to do on the track. Okay, on two different tracks. And then I have like three different records going on for my daughters that I'm helping oversee. And yeah, it's music, music, music.
Well, this is interesting because most people who had success prior to the last ten years, they have trouble getting work at all. And you're saying that you know you're working, you know you've got a plethora of work.
I do, I really do. I feel so blessed to say that, and I I'm not even like again, I've said to my husband, shall I get a manager so I can really organize this stuff? And he says, what are you going to do? How can you work anymore? It just comes to me naturally the things I want to work with work on, and I don't. When you've been doing something for this long, it's like a hard cruise ship to turn around. I don't know how I'm
going to stop. And as long as amazing artists come to me, I think I'm getting better as a songwriter. So I think it might be a bit of a joke. I might be in my you know, seventies and still working with young artists, but it's still exciting for me, and I don't want to stop.
Okay, let's go a little bit more micro. Somebody approaches you and they say, I want to work with you forgetting the money. What's the first thing you say to them?
I have to listen and see if I like their voice, and see if I think they've got some real talent.
When people send you something, how many people send piano or guitar and vocal rough demos? How many people send pretty fully fleshed what tends to come over the transfer?
Well?
Quite Often it's artists who've already got stuff released. So I'll say, let me just go and check you out, and I'll go to Spotify as soon as I'll just google them find who they are. If Donna sends me something, do you want to work with this person, I'll go on Spotify and have a listen, and if I like it and they sound good, I'll take a shot. I'll take a day.
Okay, a little bit slower forgetting the money. Once again, you listen to it, you say, this is interesting, I want to work with you. A financial deal is made, what's the next step.
There's no financial deal made at first, it's just literally, will you take a shot? And if I am, I have to be blown away. It has to be really really interesting. There's just so much music out there, so it has to be really amazing. I have to go ooh, I could help. I think that's the most important thing is I could help this person get to the next level, or I could. I can see what they're angling at,
but I don't think they have a hit. I feel like that's kind of my special sources that I've helped find the key to the door for a few people like Avril Hillary Duff her first single, Jason Moraz his first single with a remedy, but I feel like that's my and the Matrix Special source was being able to kind of say, okay, where does this need to go? So that's my first thing is can I help? And after that, once I've listened to the music, then let's
set up a session. And so I look at my calendar and they look at their calendar, and we find a day. I pick one of my co producers that I think would really suit you know, this style of music. Do you want to do it? I say to my cop do you want to do a day on spec? You know? And we show up at one o'clock and by seven o'clock we've we've taken our shot. And that's when you hope everyone says, oh my god, this is amazing. This has to go on the record. How much you're
going to charge us? And that's when you make a deal.
Okay, let's just assume you hear something. Let's call it an established artist. You can go on Spotify, you can hear their past material. You say I want to take a shot. Do you then say send me what you've got? Well?
Yes, if they've had stuff released. Then they're working on a new project. I'll say, I'm so interested to hear what this new EP or this new album is. Where are you heading with this? And so I'll have a listen to it, and if I love it, then like I'm in, you know. And sometimes it's so good, I'm like, oh wow, I gotta I gotta come with my a game today and I love it. I'm so excited to go in. I'm just so excited to know the first thing. I'll say someone answers to what do you what do
you work on yesterday? And if they say, ah, oh, we just did this with so and so, so and so, I'm like, oh my goodness, let's hear it. I hear it, and I'm like, okay, okay, I got to beat this one.
Okay, wait wait. Let's just assume you've decided to work someone sends you a demo. Will you react to that demo before you get in the studio. Will you say, well, I think it needs this or ex or why? Or do you wait until you're in the studio?
Well, are you saying that a demo just for me to produce their song that's already existing? Because nobody's really coming to me to produce something they've already written, and I'm not really that interested in it. I'm a songwriter, okay, okay, that's for sure.
So when somebody walks in the front door, there is.
No song, no nothing. We have a conversation, We have a cup of tea and talk about Okay, who's going through what? Let's like. I also like to bring two or three concepts to the table. It's always been that way for me. I like, I think it's plight if an artist is coming to spend the day with you and you just say I got nothing, I feel it's a little rude because they've taken the time to be
with you. So I like to have three things up my sleeve, and then the first thing to be polite is to say what do you want to do today? And listen to them, And quite often the artist is like, I've just been through a breakup. I just feel so awful, I just feel so nervous, I can't hardly breathe. I'm like, do you want to write about it? Yes? Then I just keep my three ideas up my sleeve for another session with someone else. And if they say I've got nothing,
I'm completely lost, I don't know what I'm doing. Have you got anything? That's when I'll bring out something, and hopefully, more often than not, they like it because I've really listened to what they do and I've tried to cater to something I spend my mornings. I'll work out in the morning, and then before the session, I'll sit at the piano and I'll try and come up with something that sounds exactly in the vein of what they're doing and their vocal range too. I try and figure out
where's their vocal range. Oh, this chorus, I'll start with, like a chorus that will hit their perfect money notes and their timber of their voice. So then when I play them my little ideas I have up my sleeve, they're often like, oh, I can see myself singing it, you know. So it's always very exciting because you never know. Sometimes occasionally I've played my rough and I'm only talking about like a verse and a pre chorus and a chorus.
It would be really presumptuous to say, and here's a whole song with a second verse and a bridge written, So I like to maybe it's just a chorus. But usually I have a little verse to go with it. You know, sometimes they hate it and they say no,
I don't like that, and I'm like, okay, great. Then they can be a little uncomfortable and you just have to So the other way we start, it's okay, any songs that you love right now, tracks that you're just as so inspired by, And they'd be like, I love this track by so and so, so and so and this one of the So we'll have a listening session at the top of the the session and I'm like, something will calm, like my co producer partner and I will sit like maybe with a bass and piano and
I'll just be playing. And then suddenly the artists will say, Okay, I like that. That feels like me, and we go from there and I and then I always have a list of fifteen titles, not just the you know, that's just my backup, is fifteen titles that I think are hot with a little bit of a concept of what it's about. Like for instance, I have a song called Last Hurrah that I did with Bebie, and I took into the session these lines that I had. I'd pretty
much I call it a song map. I teach this on my masterclass so I i'd do you want me to go into this bob. It's a long story, okay. So basically, one day my husband said to me, I'm going to the store. What do you want? And I said, I have a pine to pistachio Hargenedaz And he's like, well, I thought you were on a no sugar diet. And I'm like, last hurrah, ooh voice my memos on my
phone and my notes lyric notes, last Hurrah. And I was like, hmmm, I'm done with the drinking, I'm done with the smoking, I'm done with the playing, I'm done with the joking. And I was like, oh, that's a good verse. So I then thought, oh, like, what's this song about. It's not about hargain Das and my my weak wills, so what is it about? And I said, well, maybe it's about how everyone in life has something they're struggling with and we all put it off and put
it off and put it off. And so I was like, Okay, so the verse is going to be I'm done with the drinking, I'm done with the smoking, I'm done with the playing, I'm done with the joking. And then I'm done with the ladies. I'm done with the fellas just saying. Then I was, and the pre chorus has got to say something like, I know we've said it all before, but would it hurt to do it just once more? And then I was like, then the chorus has to hit. The chorus is going to say this is my last Hurrah.
And then I was like, that's going to be a cool chorus. But that hurrah word is really cool. So now, because a post chorus is, post hook is a big thing today. So I was like, I'm going to make a post hook out of that word hurrah hurrah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, something like that. So I go into the session. I have not got a melody, and I said, Bibi nick long and wonderful producer Andrew, Oh my god, it's the problem with getting old Bob. I can't remember his last name.
I'll let you know. I said, listen, Biby, how about this. I got this verse. I'm done with the drinking, I'm done with the smoking. I'm done with the playing, I'm done with the joking. She because I love it, and I said, then we do it another second half of that verse. Then we go into the pre I know it all before, but would it hurt to do it all once more? This is my last hurrah? And she's like, oh my god, And I said, we do a whole chorus after that, and at the end of the chorus
we go hurrah yah. Yeah. Yeah. So without even having a single melody, I could pretty much show them the song map, and we wrote that song in about half an hour, the four of us, and it became a single for her and I kind of sketched out like the goalposts, I knew where to kick between.
Okay, just to stopping you for one second. Four point people are involved. How do you split up ownership?
Four ways? Okay, because honestly, everybody was so integral to the melodies and building the track is really really important. I mean, right, didn't it used to be just lyrics and melody were important. I think in the days of Scott Storch, when suddenly he was doing tracks like in the Club for fifty cent and the track was a star before you'd even put anything on it. That was a new way of writing for me, by the way, But again, fifteen years ago started to be so interesting.
I'd walk in and the track sounds like a fucking hit already, and I'm like, it's kind of like sex that's already started and you have to jump in. It was new to me rather than just sitting at the piano, and I feel like I got really good at it just jumping on in and coming up with hot melodies and lyrics on top of a blinding track. So I think everyone it's like a soup and everyone's involved, and
I'm happy to split it four ways. Of course, now it gets kind of crazy because after you've written that initial day, suddenly some star will get involved and they have their team, and that's how you end up with ten writers on it. But initially I just split the song between who's there on that day when we start writing it.
So let's just assume you start at one pm. You say you wrote that song in a half hour. What's the longest it will take you to come up with a song.
Honestly, it's three hours. If I haven't got anything in three hours, I'm going to call the session. I'm just going to see no, I don't have the juice today, And it very rarely happens. It just doesn't happen because we're pros. You know, anyone who I know in this town, who's used to doing stuff. Even if you come out with I'm not saying everything I do is fantastic either, but it's kind of a practice to learn how to
weave a song together and get it done. I like to say that two hours is spent probably on writing the song, and then two hours will be spent on the vocal, and then probably another two hours will be spent on brushing up the production. Because the artist is going to want to go away with an MP three at the end of the day and they are immediately going to play it to their team. So I don't like to leave until I have something that sounds like a smash on that day. So I kind of divide
up the time like that. Very occasionally, I've been in the session where it's just the songwriting's not going very well, and it's just I would say it hasn't happened to me for years that I haven't nailed it in the day, You know, I don't. I'm not saying it's a smash, but we get it done.
Let's say there's a male singer or female singer, that's all they have. Will you hire musicians? How will that work?
You mean they don't play any instrument.
Well playing instruments, and there is no band.
Or that happens to me, that happens all the time. That's why I pick co producers who are amazing instrumentalists, you know, as otherwise I'd be doing it all myself if I could, if I could play really, really well, I can play piano, but I'm no virtuoso and I can't play guitar. It's just never been something I've got my head around. So I'm definitely picking co producers that can just fill in all the gaps. And you know,
I can do the vocal production. I used to do that in the Matrix all Averrols vocals I recorded, comped and tuned and consolidated, and nowadays can I still always record the vocals and I like to camp them too. It's really important to me. So when there's an artist who doesn't care, it doesn't matter because my producer partner and I are going to be actually coming up with the sounds. Okay, well, very it's important to us that the artist loves it.
I understand, but you're not saying I'm working with this person. So I'm going to call in a guitarist and a drummer.
But I do because I just think there's like amazing people. There's a guy I'm working with right now called Lowell Wolf. He's new and and I found him through an artist I was working with. She hired him to do a gig and he was so impressed of I hired him to do a gig when I played at Hotel Cafe and he played with me. And then just the other day I had in come and play on this Jasmine Bean record I'm working on for Interscope and Corky James. He played on all the Matrix stuff. Incredible. I'll hire
him and he's so great. I can send him my record and say I want some stuff like this, I want it to sound like this, and he does all his studio with all his amps and sends it right back to me. Victor Druso plays drums with Alanis Morissette now, who's Macy Gray's drummer. Same thing. He has his own studio set up. Victor, I need drums like this. We've already programmed the drums to be what we want, but we just want the real live thing. So yes, we
do hire people and violinists. Bianca McClure I use all the time.
I have some false they're not in the studio. You send them the track, they work on it, they send it back.
Sometimes like Lowell Wolf came in the other day and he bought his little pedal board and we did it there. That's not done on the day of writing, though, the day of the writing where we do the sketch of the whole thing. So at the end of the day we kind of have what sounds like a hit. If the label or their part of business managers say we love it, then the next step is, let's put some violin on this. This was some real drums on it, and generally we go out for the real drums, and
but violin will bring them in. Guitarists normally we bring them in, so that will be another day. We'll take a day on production once we've got the gig Okay.
Now, in the old days, these records were cut soup to nuts in big studios, maybe in the smaller room. Then it became we'll cut basics in the big studio, we'll do the rest at home. Where are you cutting this stuff?
Bo It's so strange, like it's so such a long time since I've been in a studio where there's a huge SSL desk. It's just not it's not needed anymore.
You know.
The song I'm Not Like Alice that I did with my girls, that was cut in my daughter's bedroom. We have like a studio set up in there. Everybody's just working at home. The quality is so good today, I believe. I'm sure Barbara Streisen is still in those big rooms. But like today, with the way the businesses, we're just
working in. Sometimes it's really nice places like publishing studios, but most of the co producers I work with John Levine, they have like amazing home studios, getting garage conversions, and just like and I would rather be there. In fact, every produce I co produce with wants to be on their own gear. The last thing they want to do is have to go down to Capitol Records and cut something.
The string sessions are done there. Of course, you know you need those rooms with the big for that, but not for what we're doing.
And what about getting the sound of drums.
Real drums, Well that's where we do go out, and like Victor has his own room that's tuned just to sound fantastic, so we will go out for drums. Definitely. John Levine has drum kick because he plays drums set up in his live room, which is in a garage conversion, and he just hops right up on the drums and yeah, okay, amazing.
The tr eight oh eight Roland came out really hit it stride in the early eighties, then disappeared, and it's like, on every record, what's your take with that sound?
Okay, Honestly, Bob, that is way above my pay grade. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Okay, you get those faking in claps. You hear them on both pop records and country records. They're set to a rhythm. They're quite obviously synthesized.
Yeah, I'm not aware of that. Again, that stuff that I stopped doing years ago, of looking for sounds and looking for drum loops that sound cool. I'm just like to my co producer, I feel like it should be like this, the groove should be this kind of feel. Can you make that happen for me? And I wouldn't be able to say, call up that sound on this keyboard. That's just not my bag. I'm too deep in the
lyrics with the artists at that point. Normally, as I saw Tody, we're building the plane while we're flying the plane.
Okay, so you're a pro, you're never gonna do something bad. But well, no, listen, it's a nature of the game that's not only a compliment, it's a nature of being a pro. Do you know when you have an eleven? Let's be very clear, eleven's are inherently weird. No one can create eleven every day.
But it's so funny because I just talked to a manager of an artist I'm working with this morning and he said, this song's an eleven, and I've never heard some had somebody say that to me. So it's fun so weird that you would say that today, and I I would say that most sessions I go to, I feel like it's a nine, like I'm really hitting hard. I'm so disappointed if it's It doesn't often happen to
me that I feel it's a dud anymore. But it will be that production and that other day that we take to brush it all up that can make it into an eleven.
No, But my question is a little bit different. There's a Eureka moment where you go, holy fuck, this is just fantastic. Do you know. You know there are people who say I made the record, I had no idea this would be a hit.
You know.
I'll give you a different example that's dated. Talking to Al Cooper produced Leonard Skinnyard and they came in a year before the record was released. They called up and they said, I want to cut a song. They cut home. They cut Sweet Home Alabama a year before it came out. I said, Dal did you know it was a hit? And he goes, it was sweet Home Alabama. Do you ever have that feeling like, wow, this is amazing.
Yeah, I did, honestly with the April Levine stuff. When we did Complicated, I was like, holy shit, this is a hit. And I remember Graham's dad playing it to him and us being so excited. He said, I don't think that's going to cut the mustard. We were like so disappointed and they were like, no, this is a hit. And Skater Boy I had the same feeling about it, just oh my goodness, I'm with you. I did not know. I did not know that that song. And my manager at the time said, I just think it's a nice
album track. That one took me by surprise, that it's kind of beloved by a lot of people. I look, I even put a tattoo on my wrist of it because it's actually my favorite song that I've written. It just meant so much to me. It's kind of dark and sad, and I didn't expect it to hit so hard. So that's a rare one, but quite often, like last Hurrah,
I was like, oh, this is a smash. I wished it had gone higher on the charts, but I think it kind of made a video that was like a priest in a bath with an upside down cross smoking a cigarette with a nun adjusting her habit, and I was just like, I think maybe the video was a little too edgy to make that song push into the top five at top forty. But I knew it was a hit when we wrote it. And right now I have about five songs. I have this song coming out
called Sweat Tomorrow Night with Hayden Henderson Thursday night. It comes out nine pm, and I think it's a smash. And my daughter's next single, boy Sober, comes out again Thursday night. I think it's a smash. I I'm so excited about the records I'm working on. Yeah, I feel there smashes and the day he wrote it, I was like, damn.
You mentioned it. Tattoo. It's very visible. This is not a video podcast, but it's very visible to me inside your right wrist. Yeah, is that your only tattoo?
It's my only one. When I went through my divorce, I thought, I'm going to get I'm with you put on my wrist because it's just me. It's just me, myself and I there's another song we wrote. And then I became a Christian in two thousand and nine and I realized, no, you're saying to God I'm with you. It's a decision you make, and he says it back to you, I'm with you. So it meant so much to me, and that when I put the tattoo on me, it wasn't just about me. I'm alone and it's just
me against the world. And then I thought, you know how nice I put this on my wrist because I really feel as a human being, I want to say to artists or just other human beings in general, I'm with you. Let me just let me just sit with you and we'll try and work it out whatever you're going through and put it into a song or just have a conversation as humans together. So I felt very comfortable putting that on. It's my favorite song I've ever written.
And yeah, it's a huge, great, big tattoo. It's no hiding it.
So you talk about working with your husband and then getting a divorce. Was a divorce caused by working together all the time or this business? Were those contributing factors?
I think? So? I mean, I got together with my ex husband when I was nineteen, I moved in with him, and I was with him until I was forty two. It's a good kick of the ball, right, And we had a very successful marriage, and we have two amazing children, and we created all these other babies with our songs. And I think just people grow apart and probably like you know, like me rolling over in bed and saying to him, what about that bridge? Do you think the
last line could be better? You know, I'm kind of intense about music and both of us. Graham is now married to a lovely lady, Sarah, who's not in music, and my husband's a business guy and a golfer and an actor. Funnily enough, all three things. And it's actually refreshing to come home after doing music all day to someone who doesn't particularly want to hear all about it.
And it was really difficult for Graham and I to just we lived and breathed it, and sometimes like after the session, the bands would come back to our house and then we'd party until like two am, talking about music and playing songs around the pool. And I just think Graham and I grew apart, and we're great friends and appreciate everything that happened with us, but we just grew apart.
And how did you meet your new husband?
I met him on a movie set, one of my really good friends inviting me to go down and see her filming, and when I was there, I met him and we've been together ever since.
Okay, let's go back to the records. You're talking about hits. The business has completely changed, certainly from the eighties to the first decade of this century. It was we lived to a great degree in a monoculture, certainly in the days of MTV, where if a song was a hit, it was ubiquitous, as on MTV, it was on Top forty radio, it might even slip over to other formats. Today there's the Spotify Top fifty. Terrestrial radio reaches a
lot of people, but has never been less powerful. And in addition, there are a lot of successful songs that are not on the Spotify top fifty. To what degree do your clients and yourself focus on those are the hits the Spotify top fifty, they do have the greatest market share. To what degree are you influenced in trying to penetrate that.
I mean, I'm always standing with the bat trying to hit a home run. And it's different now because I feel like if I wrote skate a Boy today, it might just be a niche thing that blows up a bit on TikTok. But we're talking about to go to top forty radio now. You really need to have over one hundred million streams before a record label is going to
put their muscle behind sending it to top forty radio. With the independent promotion money they have to spend, right, it's expensive and I feel like I just can't think about it if I do that, So I'm just going to get like miserable because it's so different today. Now, it's just so different, and I don't I think also with social media, like things become successful because you were a girlfriend of somebody who like at another artist who was
a Disney star wrote about you. And these things help, Like the tea as they call it, the gossip that spreads around social media can really elevate a song. And so it's a bit difficult to just come with a good song and a good voice. You know, it's like, what have you got going on in your life? Like to make it interesting to people? You know?
Okay, there are hits songs today there are one chord. There are hits that have very little melody, hits that are to a beat. So these are big hits in the Spotify top fifty. When you go into the studio, you're starting from scratch. Are you saying I want to fit in their quote into that matrix? Or do you say I'm a traditional verse chorus person. I just want to write the verse, chorus, bridge, et cetera. And if you do it well enough, there's always room for it.
I don't really think there's any rules to songwriting. I've written songs that are over one chord and things that are almost like a rap, and I just don't think there's any rules, and I'm down to adapt, you know, I really am. I had the number one hip hop song with Me myself and I and I just feel like I'm down. Let's evolve, evolve or die. You know, I don't want to just come writing kind of classic Elton John songs when I'm trying to fit into an artist that's more techno or you know, you just got
to adapt no rule and that can be great. You know, like something that's just so simple, remember liked How simple was that? To me? That's just one of the biggest smashes of all time.
Okay, we have the Beatles, we have classic rock. I could go through every genre. I'm not going to. But my point is, are you really as excited about today's music as you were about the music of the past.
Yeah, I am. I think there's an incredible music out there. I'm a big fan of Chapel Roone right now. I think she's amazing. I think her songwriting is fantastic. This guy, Hayden Henderson, I think he's a great songwriter, great singer, can really pull it off live. My daughters some of the best singers I've ever heard, and they constantly impressed me with their music and their songwriting ability is so amazing.
It's frustrating because I almost wish if it had been back in the averall day, I really could have helped them because all you needed was a smash song and a label that believed in you, and then they go to radio. And today that's just not the case. You know,
you've got to build it through social media. You had the olden days, it was I guess when I was an artist, we were sort of infantilized and that you just show up at the studio with your music and you make the music and then we'll take it from there. And the record label did everything. And now the record label's like, that's fantastic, good job. Now go blow yourself up on social media. So you have to be a marketing genius today to be an artist, and you've got
to work at it every day. And that's what's frustrating to me. It's like, whoa, it's not enough to just be like imagine if Elton John had had to you know, now, turn your phone on yourself and make short form content every day and do five stories on TikTok, and that's how you're going to break Elton. You know, it's a different time, but I think the music's just as good. I keep hearing them amazing music now.
You have a good presence on social media. Are you someone who's always been into the internet or does someone say, hey, you have to be on social media. What was the start of this?
Yeah, And I'm not at all like somebody who knew about it or was interested. But what happened was my daughters once they got signed to Warners, well actually before they got signed to Warners, they had a friend called Sam Short, who's a wonderful artist that I work with and she has a record coming out on Thursday night too, called Supermodel that I didn't do, but she's amazing. And Sam was helping my girls to get them used to
posting every single day. And she was ran at our house one day filming them and she says to me, Lauren, we'd be interested to hear about you. And I said, who is we and she said all of us young people in the business. She's like twenty one or something. She said, all of us would love to hear from you. And I'm like, well, I'm really behind the scenes, and she said no seriously, And then she said the kindest thing to me and always would be grateful. She said, can I do it for you? And I said, what
do you mean? She said, I will come round once a week and film you, and then I'll edit them and I will do three posts a week and we'll just see how it goes. Oh my god, no one's going to be interested. I think maybe two years before I tried a couple of times and got like fifty views and stuff and retreated fast because I was nervous about it. So anyway, we do a calf of things. She's just telling me point and she plays like complicated
above and a little box above my finger. I got like four point nine million views, and then I do it like another one and get like, you know, three point nine million views. I was like, okay. So then she started saying to me, Okay, I'm going to give you a list of what I think I I'll come round to your garden. I'm just going to ask you questions that we would want to know young people in the music business, and I would just answer them and then she'd edit it up for me. And I've been doing
it ever since. I do three a week, three posts a week, and it took off on Instagram, and it took off on TikTok, and it took off on YouTube. So it's kind of part of my business now, while I'm lying in bed three mornings a week, I take the little thing. I have a folder with everything that we drop in, and it really does come down to me too, because it's like, Okay, this week, I'm going to sit at the piano and play I'm with You and show how I came up with the verse. I'm
going to talk about bridges. I'm going to talk about who I think is the next five big acts are going to break, and so I kind of come up with ideas and I'll run them past Sam. I work with a lovely girl, Eva now because Sam got a big record deal and she said, can Eva do your editing now? So Eva hits me up. She just hit me up before I got here. What are we doing
this week? Lauren? If I go from my folder, I have fifty pieces of footage, I'll be driving in my car and I'll be, oh, let me talk about this, and I'll just put the camera on while I'm driving and I'll just talk about the music business. I'll send two or three things to Eva every week. She edits it for me, sends it back, and then I do the posting myself. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that's it. It's just
like another little business. And then I have my email at the top and I have a new emails, so it's just for business and people constantly hit me up. Sometimes it's scary the people who hit me up, and sometimes it's amazing.
Oh okay, let's just assume you're lying in bed, you get an idea, you film something. You ever say, Oh I filmed it. I'm gonna post it right now without going to the editor.
Yeah, I do so, they do.
So.
Actually even now cut it down to two posts a week for me, I do my masterclass Little Flyer. You've probably seen it. I post that once a week, and then I post me in the studio stories of me and the studio stories of me talking. I'll just post that stuff myself. Yeah, I would say i'd probably post like eight times a week.
Okay, just so we can get the time frame.
When did this start last July?
Okay, so like, are you sixteen months something like that?
Yeah?
Okay, what works?
Uh?
Oh, I think just being brutally honest works. I'll tell you what works is showing me sitting at the piano writing the songs. Like people don't really get to see songwriters really like saying this is how we did it, that really works, giving little secrets and tips about songwriting that really works, what works every time. But I don't like to do it because I feel like, yeah, everyone knows you're at the Avrolovine stuff. Is like if I could keep pointing to skater Boy and probably get like
millions of views because it's like the algorithms strange. It's sending out to new people too, so it's like you have to sort of you have to get over the fact that all your friends and family are looking God Lauren's work in social media again, because it's just new people that you're reaching, And I'm always like, why am I doing this so well? The reason I'm doing it is because I want to keep doing music, and songwriters
have kind of always been pushed to the background. I think it's really important in this day and age, particularly with them being so undervalued and streaming, to say, hey, we're the guys here behind the scenes. That there's no recording studios needed, no engineers needed, no mastering engineers needed, no producers needed, no record labels, A and R men,
nothing without a song. So that's what drives me to do it, is to keep saying, hey, folks, us songwriters are back here like starting your project off, We're the we're the beginning of it.
Okay, would you ever post like your grocery shopping You're in Whole Foods or erewhon and the fruit looks amazing. Will you ever shoot it and go wow, I'm here, it looks amazing or is everything music connected?
For me? Everything's music connected? Because who wants to see my old ass in the supermarket? You know? It's like No, for me, it's like I'm there to educate and help people and that's it. And I don't think anyone would be interested in me lying on the beach drinking a glass of champagne. No, no one wants to see that.
Okay, you talked that you could post Avril Levigne every time for obvious reasons. You're not going to do that. To what degree are you tracking? Like, Oh, I did this, it got amazing number of views. I did this. I thought everybody would love it, but almost no one saw it. To what degree are you invested by in that?
I don't even think about it, Bob. I post it and maybe at the end of the day I'll look and go ehh, damn, this one got like twenty thousand views. Wow. And then I take it really seriously to answer everybody who writes me. So maybe the next morning I'll spend like half an hour just writing back to people. And sometimes you get like five hundred views. Why whatever, it doesn't matter, It doesn't matter. I don't have anything that you know.
There's Instagram, wheels, there's TikTok. Do you find any platform is more productive than another?
I think equally TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts, and Instagram feeds right through to Facebook. Facebook's that my least successful one because somehow I kind of got off Facebook years ago and I feel like they won't let me back in. But I do post everything on Instagram and it goes through to Facebook. Somehow my algorithm has been hidden. And am I going to really care to go and figure out why? No, because I'm too busy making music, you know, just it's just fun.
For me, Okay. And what is the optimum length for a post?
Well, definitely less than a minute. Sometimes I'll do a long post like where I'll take a whole complicated and talk about how I wrote it. Well, I'll tell you one thing that did really well, I showed like the pictures of me and Arol and the original lyrics of I'm with You and skater Boy, and people love that. So that could be like a whole minute of me talking and really homing in on the page this is where we wrote this, see how we crossed this line
out and people dig that kind of thing. So, but sometimes eleven seconds it can be amazing and get a lot of views.
So tell me about this master class.
Okay, Well, when this all took off with my social media, my neighbor Angelie Pasad, who's an amazing artist, Canadian, very smart. She said, Lauren need to create a business of the fact that all these people are interested in you. I'm like, well, what am I going to do? You know? And she said, why didn't you start some master classes and career consultations? And so I had to think about that, like why
would I do this and what is it? And my husband was lying next to me and he said, you know what, I would pay to know how you write songs. You didn't go to Juilliard, you didn't go to Berkeley School of Music. You pretty much self taught. So I would really pay to just hear how you do it, and he says, I hear you sitting at the piano hunting and pecking finding the bass notes that you want against the vocal melody. Can you put that into words?
So I said, yeah, I think I can. So I started to write it with absolutely no limit of when it would be finished. And it took me about three months. And I literally just went every process that I do, from lying in bed or in the shower to hearing the melody? How do I do it? And I just analyzed it all and I just sort of free form rose all this stuff. Then a very nice lady who's a friend of mine called Aviva. I can't give her last name, but she's she's actually a speechwriter for the
president current president, and she's a friend of mine. She came to the house and I said, I'm in the middle of writing this thing, and she said, can I have a look at it? Showed it to her and she said, this is fantastic. Let me show you how to organize it. And she says, when I'm writing a speech, this is how we do it, because first of all, do this, what is your overview? What are your tools? Right, Let's let's break it down, you know, to how you actually do it, how do you put the melody to
the lyrics? What comes first? And she just kind of gave me all these bullet points and it really helped me organize the masterclass into something that I thought was very cool. So I decided that I would do it on Zoom and it's not that expensive, And to be honest, like I, I do like specials fifty percent off for like three months, so if everyone wants to sign up, they can sign up up in those first three months.
I'm only doing it bi annually. So next one's October fifth, twelve noon on Zoom, and it's an hour of me doing a breakdown crash course on how I write songs, and then half an hour industry crash course just my opinion on everything about the music business. Again, you've got to be the producer or the artist. Today. All the advice I would give to my own daughters I poured
into this. And then I do a fifteen minute guest speaker, and then I do a fifteen minute question answer and one member I pick their name out of a hat and I send them a home studio setup with a video that we've made of how to assemble the studio and how to record your demos so you can start to be a producer. And it's really very simple. I mean, if you've got a laptop, it's pretty simple. And I just wanted people to understand that for one hundred dollars,
you can get a little studio set up. You know it's and you can start doing it yourself, because you're going to write fifty songs to get one good one when you first start out, so you don't want to be going into a local recording studio and paying big fees when you just need to really be learning. And so that's that's how it started, and I love it. Now. I have kids from Teen Cancer America that I work with.
I have four spots every class given to students from there, and two from SONA and two from the NMPA, so I always have eight people in the class who kind of have scholarship spots. And then other people just from my socials hit up that email and I have a lovely assistant called Kelly, and she reaches out to everybody. They all sign a waiver and that's it. And then I have a lot of people calling me to do private career consultations and that really came from the fact
again of like how can I help people. I feel like I could give people short cuts in this industry so they don't come into peril in it any way. And I think that's really important to keep people knowing the truth. And even if the truth is you have to get a day job if you want to do this, because what is it, three percent of people in entertainment make money from it. So fund your love of music by having a regular day gig. Why not? You know I did for a long time.
So how many people might sign into one of.
These zooms At the moment twenty five, we're about there and it's twenty five thirty. I'm hoping it builds over time. But again I'm doing it for the love of it and to sort of give back to people. And if it was three people, I would do it.
You know, if eight people are scholarship to get the other seventeen. You're on social media? How often do you have to tell people about it? How often do you have to sell it?
I tell people every week. That's one of my things that I drop every week is sign up for my masterclass. Yeah, and then like on October eleventh, I'm doing a whole school in Exeter. It's coming and I just made a deal with them and I'm doing it on Zoom and it's going to be a class of fifty people and they only want the one hour crash course in songwriting, so it's going to be so easy.
And wait, well let me make you said, Exeter.
Exeter in England.
Yeah, they track you down out of the bluey.
They tracked me down from my social media and said would you do your songwriting masterclass to the whole school? And I was like why not? Why not?
Okay, so you're already very busy these one on one consultations. Do you have enough time for that?
Well, here's the thing. It's quite expensive to do, and I'm already doing that for free for people I just meet and love and want to help. So I'm pretty choosy. I have to again feel like this person's really got something going and they've really got a great voice before I'll take it on, you know. So I read through it and I'll i'll go at people. I don't really like to listen to submissions because that could open me
to a problem. So I like to say, have you released anything, and then I'll go and listen to what they had released, and if I think they're really good and I don't want to just like take people's money, it's got to be something that I really feel I can help them with and make a map. Had one nice lady who went to Berkeley. She came she'd written the musical and I'd been involved in working on the musical.
I'm still doing it right now. I can't really talk about it, but it's I kind of knew so much information about it of how to do it that she came away going, Wow, this is amazing. You've given me the next ten steps of what I need to do, and I felt so good. I was like, Wow, that's what I needed when I was younger, to just have someone lay out the map for me. So nothing feels better than that. Okay, that's why I do it.
If I don't call Lauren Christy, who do I.
Call Linda Perry. There's only two of us who've been nominated for Producer of the Year for Grammy, who didn't produce other people. I think Linda's a badass. There's other people because there's so many people. I'm just one of many in this town.
You know, Okay, you've had a lot of success. What do you do with the money? Do you manage it? You know, musicians frequently feel they're going to run out of money? How do you deal with it?
Okay, well, I mean so I used to live a pretty extravagant lifestyle when the matrix blew up, and you know, that's what happens, like bigger cars, bigger houses, all that stuff. And then when I went through my divorce, I just went through this period. Honestly. I became a Christian in two thousand and nine, and you know what happens when you become a Christians become incredibly happy and content. I was always a little bit itchy and like nervous about things,
and that all went away. And so the first thing I did was I don't want ever ever ever worry about money. And I said that to my husband. I don't want to ever lose anything. I don't want to ever lie in bed at night feeling like I'm biting my fingernails saying I need to have another hit. What do I do to accomplish that? And he said downsize? So I downsized everything. I literally live a pretty small life. I don't want to boat. I don't really like to travel.
I will if it's like to see my family, important things for my family, or there's a large check at the end when I get there. I live in the Los Angeles. I'm one of the rare people who thinks this is paradise. And I felt it when I got off the plane when I was twenty three. I was like, this is it. I love it. And so I don't live a big lifestyle and I can't really see the need for me to say, sell my catalog. I did sell half my catalog back in two thousand and seven,
and it comes back to me. Fortunately I kept the bi RISI's side and then I built a new catalog with Donna at Reservoir and it was it facilitated some stuff. But I kind of feel, what am I going to do buy a big mansion. It's just me and my husband. My kids have left home now, just me and the cats and Lawrence. So I don't worry about money. And it's nice. I'm gain making more money and I'll leave it to my kids. But I can't really think of
anything that I would want to do. I don't want to build a massive recording studio because, as I said, like I pop into my co producers studios, and they have all built their studios. I don't need to do that. I don't have ambitions on things like I I really want a house in the south of France or in Santa Barbara less as I get order less.
Okay, do you regret selling in two thousand and seven?
I can't say that. The only thing is I have a lot more understanding of why it's not so good to sell. And I actually loved your piece you did about it, calling everyone's suckers for selling it, because I thought it was so brilliant. You're going to end up potentially on a preparation h commercial with complicated or something, and you'd have no say in it. And so I
understand that. And mainly because my husband was a banker, He's like, well, if they're offering you twenty multiple of twenty in the front door, that's forty out the back door, and just know that and why we And so that's twenty years of money that you're going to receive or what happens in year twenty five or year thirty or year forty five? You know, wouldn't you rather just hang onto your hits And if they're they're drizzling in a ten grand you know a year, well in year forty,
that's not bad. Like if I sell it, and again, I don't know what to do with the money. And I know people say money's worth more now than it will be in the future. I don't know about that. It's an everyone's looking for passive income, you know, money you're making while you're sleeping. And that's what I have. And it's a nice piece of mind. It's a nice clean transaction. It doesn't gather moth and rust.
You know.
I had a house at the beach. I never stopped having to like redo the stuff that was rotting from the seawater, the pipes and everything. It's all these problems. So I just I feel like, keep hold of it. Why do you need to sell it? You know, and then what you put the money into could be risky, you know, earthquakes, fires, I don't. At one point I had four homes, one at the beach, one in Handcock Park, one in Studio City actually in two in Tarzana. I
didn't sleep well at night. It was like it got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I just don't feel like I don't want that I just want a nice small life and to have good health and peace of mind and get to do my music.
So at this point in time, how many houses? How many cars?
One house and three lease cars from the company for my for my kids, because I'm because we're smart about business and I need, you know, live the life or pay the taxes. And another car that we own, which is my husband's, and that's it.
So where did you grow up?
I grew up in Shirley Croydon. Surrey. Croydon's like famous because Kate Moss comes from there and David Bowie grew up around the corner in Beckenham. So it's South London. Took us about thirty minutes to drive up to Big Ben, so I felt like very close to the city, but it was very nice countryside vibes you calabasas vibes, I'd say.
And what did your parents do for a living?
So my father was the youngest comedian in England. He started professionally working at sixteen and had like a wonderful career. He opened for Shirley Bassie at the Palladium and he was doing very well right before TV really took off, like the Frost report became a big thing on TV, and his first marriage didn't work out. He had two children, my brother and sister, Stephen and Sharon, and when he met my mom, my mom was like, oh, hell no, you're not like traveling around the UK doing this anymore
with all those hot show girls. And so my father quit and my mother was a stay at home mom and did it brilliantly and never stopped talking to my brother Brandon and I about his years on the stage and performing and he was the biggest supporter for me of my music when I showed an inkling, you know, I wanted to be a ballet dancer very seriously, and I auditioned for the Royal Ballet School and I didn't
get in. I was devastated. But a girl at the audition said you should audition for this other school, Bush Davies, and it's the optional school to the Royal Ballet and they do instead of just doing ballet, they do jazz and tap, singing, acting everything. So I was like, Okay, I'll try auditioning, thinking I'm not going to get in there, and I got in and on my first day of having to go to boarding school when I was eleven, I met Michelle Hatch and her dad was Tony Hatch,
who wrote Downtown for Patula Clark. And that's the moment that changed my life because I was like, what songwriting? What's that? That's a job? She said, yeah, my dad's really successful. And in every ballet studio there was a piano and so I before I knew, I wasn't interested in ballet at all. I just wanted to sit and
write songs. And that's how it started for me. And my dad was like, Okay, let's buy you an amp and a mic He was just so supportive because he had it in his blood to be an entertainer, you know. And my brothers ended up doing music too, and he is a great singer, the music for TV shows, and it's just it really came passed down through our dad of just kind of his frustration to not be able to perform anymore because he stayed at home. Was a
really hard working father. He became a manufacturer's sales agent of furniture and did very well at it, and his gift of the gap just he would travel all around London at all the stores, and every shop owner loved my dad's showing up and he'd just come back and saved like fifteen orders today. You know, he was a businessman, but still he said to me, don't do this because you want to do it, do it because you have to do it.
So you went to boarding school at eleven? How long did you stay there?
Till I was sixteen? And when I was fifteen, I became a day girl, so I would travel it there every day. So yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, why did you be coming?
What is that?
A day girl? That's what they called it. So instead of going, instead of sleeping at the school, you got to get a day girl, they called it. So you would just show up like I get a day girl.
Okay, if I was thinking of a job, I mean, you didn't board anymore. So yeah, what was it like going to boarding school to eleven?
I mean I always tell the story about how my first night there, I was the only kid not crying. We had a room of twenty girls in the beds all around this big dormitory room, and a nanny who had this little room at the end, and she kissed everyone good night. Right before I went to boarding school, we had a burglary in my house where a man broke into our house, and it was terrifying and my dad had to chase him down the street. So literally, I was going to boarding school the next week. And
that safety and numbers thing really worked for me. I was like, I feel safe here with all these kids. All these girls were crying they missed their parents, and I was like, I'm so fucking glad I'm not so it was terrifying this guy breaking into our house.
Okay, I went to college and forty five percent of the people went to prep school, boarding school, and they had a radically different upbringing in that you know, it's almost like one of these movies where they grow up real fast, they understand the system they're acting out.
What was your experience, Well, I feel like it's kind of like being raised by wolves going to boarding school, because they give you prefects, who are girls who are like fifteen who are in charge, or sixteen, you know, the older girls. And it was it was crazy, like it was a crazy time. It was like being in It was like a mini Los Angeles for me, Like last night, we had the entertainment capital of the world. We had our own theater, we had constant musicals being done,
and it was it was incredible. I could just pop off with a like a boombox to a studio on my own. And I was really into choreography as well, which is very close to songwriting, and it was incredible. And we also could be really naughty because they just couldn't watch us. I was often having a cigarette and a Gin and tonic before ballet class, you know, at fourteen. So I grew up very young and we had boys like sneaking up to meet us in the woods or in the car park at night. Your parents had no
idea what you were doing. It was. It was kind of a wild time and I loved every minute of it. I wouldn't regrets it. It's like when I talked to people who went to Bush Davies, We're all like, yeah, it was. It was something that no one would ever understand, kind of like Centrinians. I don't know if you know the cent Trinian's books of like the Wild All Girls school that's a boarding school. It was very similar. I would say it was definitely Hogwarts Vibes in the countryside
in England, a big old house. It was. It was amazing and I think it set me up for the work ethic of being in this business that I'm in.
Now, Okay, you're sixteen, you stop going to that school. What do you do?
Then I did some photographs because I still thought I'm going to be a dancer. And this is where my brother Stephen, from my dad's first marriage, we're really close. And he had a best friend called George McFarlane and he was signed in a band called The Quick, and he had his fabulous recording studio, and when I was fourteen, he agreed to do some of my demos and that was so amazing for me because the school heard the demos and then they wanted to use all my songs
in the school shows. So I'd already like had this kind of this is what I'm going to do with my life. And I had other people saying, are you crazy. You're such a good dancer, you need to be a dancer, And I was like, no, I'm going to do music. So I went to this photographer to get my shots done to be a dancer, and he said to me, you know a friend of mine starting a band and Bruce Forsythe's daughter's going to be in the band. And Bruce Forsythe at the time was one of the biggest
comedians in England. He had this show called The Generation Game and it was one of my favorites. So it was just such a big deal to be invited to go to an audition or this band that this girl was going to be in, who was pretty famous. I went to do the audition, sat down at Wigmore Hall in London and I played a song I'd written at the piano and they immediately said, you're in the band.
And so for the next two years sixteen seventeen eighteen, I you know, to get a record deal with this band, and we didn't get a record deal, and it was kind of disappointing. I was like, oh, how am I going to get into this business? But one of the producers I'd worked with with that band, he offered to do some demos with me, and at that point he introduced me to a bass player who came to one of the sessions, and that's my ex husband, Graham, and Graham said, you're so talented and can I take you
for dinner? And we got close and got together and around about that time this is an incredible story, but Tony Hatch, my friend's father, offered me a publishing deal because he'd been listening to the demos I've been doing because I was still friends with Michelle, and I think it was like for seven thousand pounds. I was like seven thousand pounds, Oh my god. And what happened was Graham said, do you mind if I'd just played to my friend Alan Jacobs em and I was like, they're
not going to be interested. I went in and I had a meeting with Alan Jacobs and it was the worst meeting of my life. It was just cold, nothing. I came out saying I'm going to sign to Tony Hatch and the next day I get a call from Alan, the nicest phone call ever. I think he was trying to like just be tough with me in the meeting to see if I had what it takes, and he said, I think you're it. I want to sign you. So I ended up signing to EMI when I was nineteen, and that was the beginning.
Let's go back a chapter. You met this girl when you were eleven whose father wrote Downtown. At what point did you literally start writing songs and what did that look like?
Right then? I said, will show me how to do it. So we sat at the piano together in the music room and we wrote a song called I'm Sick of Your Trick. That was our first one that we did. And then Michelle was not interested in writing songs. She went on to become an actress and she's fabulous. But was it just clicked with me? And then the fact that my brother Stephen had this friend and who had a record deal, and that will became very glamorous to
me of getting a record deal. That was the path for me.
Did you already know how to play the piano?
Yes? Yeah, My mom and had given me piano lessons from a piano teacher when I was like five, so I could read music a bit. But again, I never I've never ever gone, let me really study this. My brother became a brilliant pianist, but for me, it was the songwriting and I'm just like, let me figure out these chords rather than I have to. You know, I can't even be bothered to this day when I write songs,
I'm just like chill. Before before I'd like to play bass notes to find that special melody and then I can fill them in too if I want to. But I'm not really that interested. I never got better. I wish I had that soul too late.
Now, when you're sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen and you're in this band looking for a record deal, where are you living and what are you living on?
And when I'm sixteen, I was still living at home with my mom and dad, and we had like a garage with carpet in it, and we had mirrors set up, and we were the girls and I. We were in the three of us krashishi haha, and we were doing all these dance moves and stuff. And I just after about a couple of years, I'm like, this isn't working. And then one of the producers who'd worked with us said, I'll do your demos and then as I said, I met Graham, he played them to EMI had I had
some really good songs. I had a song called my jeans I Want Them Back about one of my ex boyfriends who when we broke up, he said I want my fucking jeans back. That was his last words to me. And I was like, ooh, wow, my jeans, I want them back, you know I was. That was one of the first songs I got signed on to EMI. And then EMI introduced me to my first manager and my first manager. His name was Andrew Tribe, God Rest his soul, and he said to me, we need to go to America.
This is I don't know if you're going to get signed here. There was an A and R man heard my stuff and basically said, I just don't really think it's good enough. And then what happened was my manager went over to America and he met this fabulous man called John Carter. And that's John Carter who was behind Tina Turner's success with Private Dancer, her big comeback. He's the guy in the documentary and Tina Turner who got on his knees and said to the A and R man,
you can't drop her. So John Carter signed me without ever meeting me. He just talked to me on the phone and there was no FaceTime back then. He loved my geenes and want them back, and a couple of other songs I had, And at that point, I'm still doing my demos on an eight track and I moved
in with Graham and John Carter said that's it. So he signed me and gave me some money and I paid off my debts with the money, and then they gave me some money to make a record, and so we're in the studio making the record and then we get a call that they fired everybody at Atlantic and John was gone. He's like, I'm so sorry, Lauren. And now I look back on it, I'm like, this was kind of a crazy story. But my manager convinced me to go to my bank and get alone for like
one hundred thousand pounds to finish the album. Bad idea. I did it and made the rest of the record and then like, my man's like, it's amazing, let's send it to Atlantic Crickets. No one responded. So I'm stuck with all this debt at twenty one years old, twenty two years old maybe, And I remember at night just thinking I'm fucked. That's what I thought. I've completely blown it. I'm screwed. And what happened was John Carter did not let me down. He said, I'm going to my friend
Tom Vickers. I don't know if you know Tom Vickers. He is an amazing, amazing A and R man, and he's responsible for me being in America. And he took it to Ed Eckstein, who was the head of Mercury Records, and Tom and Ed worked very closely together. And they flew me to New York and I'm like, tainted goods. I'm signed to Atlantic, right this is? And I sat and played for Ed in his office and he said, let's make a deal, and so they literally bought me
off Atlantic. Doug Morris was very nice. I had to write to him because no one would reply to me all the messages. My management said that no one would reply, and Doug Morris FedEx me a release and the advance from Mercury Records paid off the one hundred thousand pound debt and all my lawyer's fees, and I showed up in LA in ninety one at twenty three. It took me that long, Bob, from nineteen to twenty three. I know it's probably not a long time, but it felt
like forever. And I taught tap dancing to supplement myself in that time. And so I show up with one hundred bucks in my pocket and they told me you're going to get a PIDM of fifteen hundred bucks a month. And I was like, what, this is amazing. And they put me up at the Oakward Apartments on Woodman Avenue, and that was the beginning. I kind of felt like I'd just been so much struggle, and I almost like quit, you know, because I didn't think it was what am
I doing? Chasing this dream? And so I showed up in La and that was the beginning of good things.
Okay, let's go back. Why did the bank lend you the money? Did your parents have to guarantee it or something?
No, they didn't. I don't know how they gave me the money. I don't. My dad knew the bank manager quite well, and I don't know how might my dad. It's not with us anymore. I would love to ask him, what were you thinking? Dad? But he didn't guarante all the money. They could have lost it easily, but I paid back every penny. It was just a stupid move because, you know, my manager just believed in me so much. He thought Atlantic, the new people at Atlantic would be
won over by my amazing record that I've made. It was a very bad move. Don't don't finance your own stuff, do it for free.
Okay, the label puts you up in Oakwood on Woodmanten. Where's Graham?
So Graham he came out with me and he became part of my band, and he was in a band called Breathe as well, who were doing quite well in America. They had that song Hands to Heaven, and so when he came out, he kind of had stuff to do and he was quite busy, and but he joined my band and we got like work visas through the record label and it was great. It was I started making my album with Tony Paluso from the Carpenters. Well, it was so weird. The first thing they did was they
put me with about five different producers. One was called Michael James Jackson who produced Kiss. There was Pieter Vanetta and his partner who were very nice, Tony Paluso. They all did one song for me, no different to what I do today, taking that shot like chopped. And Tony came through and he was one of the funniest people I've ever met. I love him dearly to this day.
And we made a great record together. It was a beautiful experience, and that record I got a Best New Artist nomination at the American Music Awards in I believe nineteen ninety five, and I had a song called the Color of Night, which got a Golden Globe nomination for that Bruce Willis movie, that thriller I don't know if you remember it. The color of the night, but still close, but no cigar. I knew that this is a money business and my record had sold one hundred and fifty
thousand copies and that wasn't going to cut it. And then I had left the company and Tom and they bought in Danny Goldberg and I'm at a brand new company again, and at this point my manager and I had kind of just grown apart. It did it did not work, and I went to my friends at Hits Magazine. I knew a girl who works at Hits Magazine, and she said, you should go and talk to Lenny, and so I went and took Lenny beer for lunch at
the IVY. I remember him being very amused that I pulled that cash from my purse to pay I wanted to pay for him. And I asked his advice and what she should do. And I said, I'm stuck on this label. Now Ed's gone, Tom's gone, what am I going to do? And he said, let me go and talk to day Annie Goldberg. And they listened to my music first and they were like, this is really good. And they made me come over to his house and sit at the piano and play and they you're really good,
like back to the beginning. And they came back and Danny Goldberg gave me some money and then I made my next record, which was called Breed because at that point I really started to think, how am I going to have kids? Like I'm twenty seven or something like that, and how am I going to do this? Like I will the clock sticking? So I made that album with my friend Gary Clark, and Tony did some of it too, I do believe, and had the song in the Batman movie.
And then I remember Lennie calling me one day and said record label doesn't want to do another single. It's not reacting, it's over. Oh dagger to the heart. I remember crying all the way home and then just like am I going to do?
It?
Was bad? I'm in La. I'm like, why am I in La? Why am I living here when you know all my family's in England? What am I going to do? And at that point a friend of mine, Gavin McKillop, who produced Tone in the Wet Sprocket, he said to me, let me do some demos view and he came around and set up a studio in my house. Very nice of him, and we did four songs. He said, let me play it to my manager. Played it to his manager, Sandy Robertson. Sandy said, I think I can get you
a deal. I'm like, okay, fantastic, because I think you need to go to England and meet this a ANDR guy. He's interested. So I flew all the way to England to sit down the restaurant and the guy said to me, I don't know that I see you as an artist. Could I have this song called Sugar Snow that I'd written with Gary Clark? He said, could I have that song for Natalie? I'm Brulia And I was just like, ooh, this is over. It's over. Maybe I was twenty nine. Anyway,
it was nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, so I was. I was thirty, and I was like trying to pretend like I was twenty six, and you know, it's an age's business back then at least it was so where am I in the story, Bob, I just lost it.
Well, the guy says, can I have this song? You're thinking about having kids?
Okay?
Thirty?
Yeah. So I get on the plane to come back, and on the plane, I'm just like don't cry, don't you cry? Like this be tough. And I was like, I kept seeing when I was in London at these meetings, this girl Britney spears all over the TV and I'm like, who's behind this? And my man and this guy Sandy Robertson kept talking about Max Martin, Max Martin. So I did some research and Max Martin had this company called Shaeron, And so I'm on the plane saying don't cry, and
I'm like, it just came to me. I'm going behind the scenes and I'm going to be Max Martin and I'm going to have share On and I'm going to start it with Graham because Graham was signed to RCA. And I'm like, we're going to be Shareon, and I'm going to ask Graham to ask the other guy in the band, Scott, who does all the production, who's like a genius with all the gear, if the three of us can form a company. So we came back, we sat and had a meeting, the three of us, and went,
let's do it. I called my fancy management who managed Fleet with Mac that Lennie had hooked me up with, and Lenny was kind of co managing me He's always been like my godfather in the business and I love him. And he said, I said, Lenny, I'm going behind the scenes. I'm not going to do this artist thing anymore. I just want to write and produce. And He's like, okay, fine, And I said, I'm saying goodbye to you as a manager.
Is that okay? Because I need to go be managed by this guy, Sandy Robertson, And he said that's fine with me. Lauren, I love you. And I called Tony Demitriardist and I remember his partner said, Lauren, what makes you think you can just go behind the scenes and be as songwriter? And I said, I don't know, but I'm going to do it. And that was the beginning
of the Matrix. And we came up with a name because we'd looked like what could be a cool name before the movie had come out, and we thought the matrix means the womb if you look up in the Oxford English Dictionary, and we're like, ooh, we'll be like this womb where artists. I don't think they'd been really
apart from Sharon and Max Martin like a team. The Neptunes came up at the same time as us, Well, we can I just can just come and hang out, like sit on the floor and eat pizza with us, and we'll just like let them incubate with us, and we'll kind of find a direction for them. And that's how the Matrix started and we didn't look back.
Okay, we live in a world where there are almost no bands anymore. Everybody's a solo artist. Everybody's sophisticated about finances. You got three people doing the job that one person does, you got to split it three ways. Anybody thinking about that, Well, not.
Really, because as I said, we all made up for each other's weaknesses, you know, and it just worked out and we made a lot of money. And also it's like we had a studio at my house then our main studio, so we could be running two sessions at the same time, and then invariably Graham would be at a different studio like routining a band and getting them ready to record. So, you know, when there's only one person, you can only only be one place at one time.
So we had music going on all the time, every day, and we worked ten to seven every day.
The dearly departed Sandy Robertson, did he get you gigs.
And I got to tell you, Sandy was the hardest working man in show business. This is how I met you. Remember at the party and I met you and you said you haven't done anything that sucks yet, And I said, I'm going to try and live up to that bomb and not do anything that ever sucks. So Sandy worked so hard once he realized that he had this team, and it was shit or bust. I was pregnant, by the way, but I decided I'm just going to get pregnant.
Dangerous thing to do. We didn't have any money really when we started, and we took out alone for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars again, and then we.
Once again banks don't give you money for no reason. What was one hundred and fifty k? What was the collateral your house or whatever.
I don't know how we did it, but we got fifty grand each and we bought like a portable studio that we could take anywhere in the world with us, like rolling in all the great big rigs of stuff. And that's how we started. And Sandy, oh boy, I've never known anyone work people like this. It was I would sleep in the studio when I was pregnant, sometimes till like four in the morning. And it's very exciting when you get someone like Sandy who believes in you.
He would tell me you're the best songwriter out there. That's why he would say, you, guys, there's no better team out there than you. And we didn't even believe in ourselves, but he believed in us, and he just never stopped hustling and going to every He was on a plane to New York all the time, going around all the labels, the Matrix or the next big thing. You've got to work with them. And so I would
say that started in nineteen ninety nine. By two thousand and one, we were easily making half a million dollars a year between the three of us, just on stuff that wasn't successful, stuff that was you know, back in the day, they would commission you to do five songs, ten grand a song, you know. So our schedules was like jam packed with these money gigs that we were doing, and none of it had become successful, but we were having a blast, and you know, we bought houses, little
houses to start. Oh and of course Sandy signed our publishing too, with warners like a joint venture. So we got some money from that too, not much, but it was it was an I felt like, my god, I'm successful. Finally after all the close but no cigar, the Matrix was rolling and then one of the people that came along was Avril Lavine's.
We were a little bit slower before Avril shows up. You're making money, but you're having no success. Does that taint your image or you just still keep having gigs? You know you would normally didn't want to work with a hit maker.
Well, I would say that we were getting b sides on rolling keating. We were making albums for people and then they would get dropped just because everyone got fired at the label. When we talk about the stars having to align to become successful, there was just so many things where I was like, oh my god, what are we going to do? We got to quit, We've got to do something else with our lives. I remember going back to my mom and dad and just saying, I don't know if we're ever going to have success. I
just don't. Our ship has not come in, but we're making money and we're paying our mortgage on our house, little house that we had, and I and I got pregnant again. So this is two thousand and one, I get pregnant for the second time. It was still you know, it's the first good money I've made in the business. And that was when Sweet Aril Levine, well were a little bit slower.
How does the Matrix get hooked up with Arril Levine?
Well, that's what I'm saying. So what happened was Sandy called me, as he did most weeks, like you're working with this band this week. There's three of them. They're called the Swallow members from Canada. You know, we were just he just fired stuff at us, and we would show up ten to seven, six days a week. We would do this just NonStop. He calls me up. There's
this girl. She's only sixteen years old. She's been signed to Arista for a couple of years and they don't really know what they're doing with her or where it's going, and they and they're a little so we're like, bring around, let's have a meeting. And so this little sixteen year old walks into the room and she has toothbrushes melted together into bangles all the way up her arm on both sides. I was like, this girl's interesting. She's beautiful.
She's got crazy like braids, like little braids that she's done herself, and and she looked kind of like in a bad mood. And so we were like, okay, what do you want to do? And she's played us a few dems. She goes, but I hate these demos, and I'm like, oh, so, what do you want to do? And she said I like this and she puts on system of a down the Band. I don't know if you remember them, but yeah, right, and we were all like, Nah, this isn't going to work, this is not going to
work now. I just finished my Breed record, remember, which had caused had not happened for me. Had a song could I Want what I Want? Which was in the Wild Things movie with Denise Richard's I think her name is, And I played Avrol some of my last records in particular. She loved that song I Want what I Want, and she goes, I like that vibe. So we were kind of like, ah, okay, we know what to do with this.
And I was kind of very influenced by say, Garbage the Band and Butch Big and that kind of stuff. So she went away and the three of us sat down and just started like fleshing out a few ideas. I think she came back the very next day and we had the basic chords for Complicated and we started writing that and she said, you know, complicated frustrated. I'm like, oh, complicated frustrated. That sounds cool. We typical, no different to today's session, start at one o'clock, kind of come up
with a loose format for the song. Quite often I'll sing the demo because the artists is so like rushed off their feet with people like calling them about other stuff. I'm like, okay, do we have all the parts that we like? Okay, I'm gonna pop in. I'm going to do a quick demo for you, like just a one take vocal and you take it away and we'll meet up the next day. And so I did the rough vocal, and then when she left, I was like, this verse
isn't good enough? And so that's when I had that chilled out yellnivo lay back is I'm being done before? And I was like, ooh, this melody is amazing, but I know it's something else. It's so catchy. So I called my brother, who's like an encyclopedia of music. I said, you know this, da da dad, da da da dad. What is that? He's like, I have no idea. I called five other trusted sources, no one could put their finger on it. So I was like, I think it's ours.
I think that's it. So I went back in recorded that verse, sent it over to Averrol's manager. He called me back and he said, she's been driving around for the for the last three days listening to this in the car with a very serious look on her face. And I said, well, she doesn't like it, and he said no, she thinks it's too pop, but she knows it's going to change her life. And I was like,
that's it. Come around. So Avril shows up one night and it's just me and her, just has avel and I and we have this weird studio on Saint Clair Avenue, and Studio City is just a house that we've converted into our studio. The living room's got all our gear and then there's a bedroom which has no windows and it's just made of wood, all inside wood ceiling.
It was a.
Perfect vocal booth. So and we put like a double door on it, closed that door, and I said, are you ready to do it? And she said yeah, So I hit record and she sung the whole thing down and it was unbelievable. I was like, hang on a second, can you do that again? She said yeah, she does it again and it's just as good. I said, do it one more time. She does it again. I'm like, okay, that's all I need. Come on, sit down the couch and I just comped all the vocal then and there,
and it was it was like goose bumps. There's a sounds of her voice that cuts like really, no one I've heard you know, Adele, you know someone putting it in a magazine that she can set off car alarms. It's very strong her voice, and it was so much better than me singing it. But she got a lot of my intonations and just nailed it. It was incredible. So that's how we started, and Avril and I became very close. We had this I call it well Josh
Sarabyn and La Read I got a handsOn. They just they listened to complicated and this song called Falling Down, which we did, which ended up in that movie Sweet Home Alabama, funnily enough, and they said send her right back there for the summer. So she came back for the whole summer and we had this crazy summer and we just wrote songs. I remember Josh coming round and us playing him skater Boy and him just like lighting up, and you know, like things don't often go the right
way in life or the way you expect it. But when we wrote these songs, and then La Reid and Josh Sarabyn said, Complicator is the first single, Skater Boys the second single, I'm with You's the third single. I'm like, sweet Jesus, thank you for making everything go right, you know it just I'd never seen anything happen like that.
And then it came out and we always had TRL on the TV in the background while we're working, so that we're aware of what the hot songs are, what Britney's doing and all that, and Avrol goes on and suddenly we see like these like kind of sea of kids all singing Complicated, and I remember just crying, just thinking, Dahn, this is going to work out. You know. It was amazing, and it didn't stop that. You remember, Complicated was number one for I would say, I don't know, maybe like
four months or five months. It was number one constantly, and then Skater Boy came out and went nuts, So we had the number one spot on the chart, I would say for a year and a half, because then I'm with You came out, and of course then I wanted the next single to be this song anything but Ordinary, which was what I thought the first single should have been. And at that point, I think maybe Averrol's management were like, let's try something with something that the Matrix didn't do.
And I remember thinking, don't be greedy, Lauren. You've had a year and a half of number one songs. Your life's been changed. Barbara Kane and E and I came and sat and talked to me and the guys and said would you like a check? And I was like, what, never made any major money in my life? Life and everything changed from that point.
Okay, you have this success forgetting the money, which is good. What other opportunities come down the pike is a result of this success.
So people want to work with the person who's number one on the chart. So a lot of people came through our studio and we had a lot of great success. We had a bank called Lilox. We had Jason Mraz come by and wrote the Remedy with him. We had Liz Fair come by and we wrote why Can't I, which was a huge hit for us, and Extraordinary, which did very well too. A lot of things that miss too,
like you Know you Can't. They're not all hits, but I would say we consistently kept having stuff on the chart, so much so that people at Sandy's office were complaining that he turned us into a cottage industry and they were leaving him because they were like, all you care about is the matrix. And he really did put a
lot of time into us. But I think one of the most incredible things that happened was that Korn decided that they wanted to try us out, and we had been kind of known as the people who did female artists. Shakira took us to Madrid and we spent a week in a farmhouse with her and got the first single with her called Don't Bother. It was just wonderful opportunities
over and over again. Heineken commercials where we were paid a lot of money to just rip off a song identical to make a new master of, like a Pussycat Dolls song, movie stuff that we got asked to do. David Bowie asked us to do a remix and we got to like record vocals and Graham sang on it. It was incredible. But Korn was an interesting one to us because one, I'd never done any music like that, and when I listened to it, I was like, Ugh,
what new metal? What is there? But there was something about Jonathan's voice I loved, and I said, this guy's an incredible singer. He's got really one of the best singers in the world. I would say, the notes he can hit, let's do it. So he was trying out a few different people to go in there, and I think the idea was that this was their sixth album. They were out of a deal, the deal had ended,
and they were just up for trying anything. And so we went along to the studio kind of nervous, the three of us, and the whole band's there and they're like quite intimidating, these guys, and they looked at us like who the fuck are you guys like you pop guys, and we were like, Hi, nice to meet you. And Graham and I went out in the live room with them, and Graham picked up the guitar and it just drew a blank. They looked at us like you guys are about to be kicked out the studio. That's the vibe
they gave to us. And I was like ooh, and I think Scott said, let's have them play. Let's have them So all this stuff was set up. It was their studio, so all the drums are already miked, and we said just jam and so they went in and started playing this thing and so it was like and it had all their the guitars that have been like tuned down the way they do it. And then that night we said goodbye and they all looked at us like see ya, like we'll never see you guys again.
We didn't do anything except record them, and then that night stayed up half the night. Chris Holmes, our engineer, Scott Spark, edited this recording of them into what we would call a pop song with a verse, a pre, a chorus, bridge, everything, and I came up with this lyric twisted Transistor, and I had like a verse and
a pre and a chorus. Went back in the next day, Graham and Scott and I came up with melodies to these lyrics that I'd written, and we were like, we're about to for sure get kicked out today, Let's just shoot for the moon because who cares, right. It was a fun experience for our rolodex of memories, right, and we played the track and they were all like, yeah, that's good. And I said, Jonathan, I've got this idea.
I don't know if you're gonna like it, but here we go like, hey you, hey, you Devil's little sister, listening to your twisted turns sister. Hold it between your legs, turn it up, turn it up. Vibrations coming too, you know this? And he's like, what the fuck is this?
And then I like, because the music, dude, and it is reaching inside you forever preaching fuck you two. Your screams are whisper heng oh you twisted jan sister.
And he's like, what the fuck is this? And I said, I don't know, but would you try singing it? And he's like, I'll try singing it. He got up on the mic and it sounded incredible. I have the video of me recording him. And then we wrote the rest of the pre together, Jonathan and I. We wrote the rest of the lyrics, so the next verse we kind of put a bridge together and all the rest of the band Field monkey. I can see they're thinking what's going on here? And Jonathan was kind of in it
at that point, and so I took a chance. As we were about to leave at the end of the day, I went up to him and we had a three week holiday that we'd convinced Sandy to give all of us because we'd been working so hard. It was kind of nuts. And I went up to Jonathan at the end of the day and I said, we've got a three week holiday starting tomorrow. Do you want us to come in and work with you because we could cancel
our holiday, And he didn't really react. I remember going out for dinner that night and Sandy calls me while I'm at dinner and he says, your book for the next three weeks with Corn. So we go in and we recorded twenty three songs with them in three weeks, and they got their huge Live Nation deal off the back of those songs, and had we wrote Coming Undone and that's their second biggest song to this day, it's
one of my favorites. And I'm still friends with Jonathan, really good friends to this day, and I've worked with him. Then we did the entire next album too, called The first one was called See You on the Other Side, and then that was their sixth album. Their seventh album was untitled. We did that one too, and I have worked on their record, I don't know three years ago and had a number one at rock with them. I
still work with him. I did his song with him with Gary Clark what It Is on Jonathan's solo record, and a couple of others. He's probably my favorite person in the music business as an artist, because it's just he loves that band, it's his band, and he just he nurtures it like it's a never ending thing. And I feel like they're ageless. You know, they're on tour right now. I'm going to go see them in November.
Unbelievable, Okay, but the matrix was not timeless and endless. How did that end?
Well, you know, my marriage fell apart in two thousand and eight, and we kept it going for another two years, working constantly because again that's a hard cruise ship to turn around. But then slowly people start to find out the interests Scott. He's a very clever guy, and he also had a big interest in cars, and he built a car, a charger, and he did it all himself, and then that car became the main car and the Fast and Furious. You know, it's the famous car from
the First and Furious. It's called Maximus. And so Scott had that interest and Graham, like had some other interests. And also I just felt it was a little unhealthy that I was still working with my ex husband all the time, and and Donna called me and said, will you go to a session with this guy DJ Frankie, And I hadn't really done many sessions outside the matrix, and this is just to go as a writer. And I went and popped a hit. I wrote this song
Tonight I'm Fucking You. It was called and I didn't want it to be called that at all. I wanted to be called Tonight I'm loving You, which is how it is how it went to radio. But we wrote that song and three weeks later it was number one all around the world. I've never had anything happen so fast, and so then suddenly I'm in demand as a writer on my own, and it was just a breath of fresh air to not be in the studio every day with my ex husband. And that's the truth, that's kind
of And Scott was losing interest. You know, you run something for ten years, like everybody grows apart a little bit and it just doesn't seem as fun. But it's very amicable, you know, no hard feelings. And I've still worked with Graham to this day. Things will come up and we'll do it together.
Did he ever get remarried.
Yes, he's remarried and has two lovely children. He's married to Sarah Weinstein and has William and Emily his children. And he's just being nominated for an Emmy, a second Emmy for his wife. Works for PBS and makes wonderful documentaries and he does a lot of the music for them. So he's still got a lovely life in music.
How do you ended up working with bb Rex?
Bb Rex that I met on the steps at the bm My Awards and someone said, uh, I think it was Samantha Cox at B and My. You guys should work together, and she hit me up. We did a couple of things. First song we did together with a song called I'm Going to Show You Crazy. She said that a couple of producers had said, nah, that's no good. We did it and it went to number one. I think in Germany it was it wasn't huge in America, but it's kind of sealed our deal of writing together.
And we loved it. And BB's actually a genius writer. She's a trumpet player, and her melodies, if you look at that, hey my mam, mama, hama, I'm getting the JOm like them did they She's she's like messing with like trumpet rhythms and melodies. She's so cool, and we had a period of time where we just worked probably four times a week, did some really great work together. One of my favorite songs I've ever done is Me
Myself and I and I Got You Last Hurrah. My favorite song is a Bad Bitch Gateway Drug and Small Doses. And she actually just hit me up like three days ago and said I need songs like these three again, and I'm like, let's do it, you know, because we have something special. She'll she'll like, the hardest thing is having people who respect you. You know, sometimes you meet new artists and they hear or your old stuff, but they don't know what you did in it. So it's
really nice when you've got someone who respects you. He'll say, hold hold up, listen to Lauren what she's doing and I feel the same about her, like I trust in her instinct. She really can make things great.
Okay, what happens if you have success with somebody and then they go to work with somebody else.
Well, I mean, of course, it's endless heartbreak over and over and over when you because you feel like you have this special connection. But you know, I kind of feel like artists are bees and we're the flowers, the producer, songwriters, and the bee wants to go from flower to flower and that's okay. You just have to be okay with that, and it's averroll. I didn't work on her second album, and I'm a big believer, if you know, don't go
where you're not invited. And it served me well. So I just don't really worry about it because people always come back. You know. I've never really fallen out with anyone, and so it's people will come back because they remember the experience they had, and it's just they know that I'm going to take it seriously and I really want what's best for them, so I don't. I try not to trip too much.
Okay, you've been in US for a long time and I love Los Angeles too. What do people in America. Not get about the UK. What is different?
M I mean, because I'm so out of touch with the UK. I did go back for the first time in sixteen years last year. Literally I had a sixteen year break and that was because I moved my parents out. My parents my mom had a stroke and my dad had dementia, so I moved them out to live in la and my brother was already here. I have cousins here. It's like, you know, the valley along Venturrea a boulevard is littered with my family and we all play tennis together.
My brother and sisters back in England, though, so they would come and visit us. I felt like I had no connection to what it's like to be in the music business in the UK. And it's just because I made it in America and not there, and they've had I probably have more success internationally than I do even in America from my songs when I look at my statements, but I would say that it's quite difficult in Los Angeles to say, you know, it's like a jaded ordience
to get them out to performances. And in England, my daughter's just open for Manchester Orchestra at Union Chapel in Islington last year and I went as like Mamager T shirt sales lady because I wanted to see my family and also just support my kids. And what I realized is that people take it a lot more seriously going to see live music. You could hear a pin drop people that were there, like there's no alcohol allowed in this place because it's an old church, and people were
just there to like soak up the music. So I think there is kind of something special. Because my daughter's the Citizens of UK two, they're going to go over and spend some time there working because they just loved it. And so I think that's the difference, is that it's a good place to really sort of incubate if you're an artist, because there's so much support on the live scene, you know, But there's no place like La. Bob Yeah, yeah, became the capital of the world.
I could complain about La all day long, but there's nowhere I'd rather live.
Yeah, okayd the traffic case tell.
And all this other stuff, but I'm not moving. But in any event, you had a couple of solo albums with major label releases. You had some success in addition to being a songwriter. If someone were to listen to those records, you have a very good voice. To what degree in the back of your mind do you say, hmm, if only I wish, or you're totally happy where you are? Oh?
No, I'm totally happy where I am because the most important thing to me is that I wanted to be a mother. It was like in belt to me since I don't know when, like probably when I was a kid, to want to be a mum, And there was a time when I was twenty nine and it wasn't going right for me that I was like, how do I have kids? And so to being blessed to have the stability of being able to make money and to be able to own a how elson be able to be
around my kids, and it's just been incredible. There was a moment where I was very sad, like when I had that song in the Color of Night and it was really about to pop off, and there was some political stuff at the label that caused it to get kind of shelved, and that was very upsetting to me because it was kind of my shot. I saw like stardom for a second, and the label was ready to make it happen, and I can't really go into it
because I'll get sued, But something happened. One day, I'll put it in a book where another act had to like basically said stop promoting that it's going to get in the way of us. And they were a big act. But no, sooner had I given up that dream. I told you, like on that plane, I'm tough, I was like, no,
look forward, don't look back. And so, as you probably know, I've I decided after twenty five years of not releasing any music that it might be time to just have fun because I have the ability to make music for free. So I started doing this. There hits My Way project and it's just all my biggest songs I've done reimagined versions and they're one take vocals because I was like, the last thing I'm going to do is get in there and be like, you know, taking everyone's time up,
Like no, just got to be perfect. So I made sure it's literally one take vocals on each one. And I've loved it. But I can't tell you that I would like to be Adele or Taylor Swift. I think it's it's an It's incredibly hard work to you know, I said to my girls, do you realize that the destination if you're successful is to be on planes traveling around the world and performing great, big places and selling T shirts. That's where all the money is, right and
so are you game for it? Because I think now so it's kind of serendipitous that I ended up going behind the scenes because I'm kind of a homebody. I like to be home with my cats in my pool. If I'm not in a session, I'm with my mom and my brother and his new baby and the family and hanging with my kids.
So do you think there's any parallel to your father being a comedian and then coming home to you being an artist, and then being home and shifting to behind the scenes.
Gusha, nobody's ever said that to me, But it's kind of making sense now, is that. I have to say my parents had the most incredibly happy marriage, and my mom says it's because dad quit doing show business to stay home. And you know, I have no regrets, because I just don't know if that would have worked out for me. My equilibrium's not so good to be like shot on, like off on tour, and I did do quite a lot of touring I opened for Kenny Loggins
at Red Rocks. I got the taste of it. Chastain Park in Atlanta did Kenny g and I got to do some amazing thing. But my true love is making records. It's exhilarating to me being in the studio. I say, that's the hit for me in that moment when you write the song. I feel like every song edifies God. Even if it's a mediocre song, it's not the best. If it's a six, it's not an eleven. So I feel that that's the excitement for me, more exciting than
really like, it's so funny. We're on the road with our girls and they're playing like the Fox Theater in Oakland, and it's so like, this is four thousand sister ed Sheeran's playing there in two days time after my girls and I said, girls, this is it. You see this dressing room, how cold and dark it is and shabby
and cold, and this is it. This is the big time, you know, And I said, and the really big time will be flying on a private jet everywhere and going into the dressing room and then getting out on stage. And that's really great for me. It's more exciting being in the lab, creating something that could be viral on TikTok. Let's face it. It may not be on the radio
today because it's so hard to get on there. But you know, I'm about like touching people and changing people's feeling in their heart for the day and lifting people up. And I can do that just from sitting in a little studio. Now, this is the best gig ever.
Okay, you're doing all this work. Do you ever go on vacation and can you turn it off? Or in your mind? Is it always going?
Oh no, I'm good at relaxing. I'm really good at relaxing. But the thing is is that I always have my phone next to me, and there's always like ideas. I'll watch a movie and just go, oh, that line, I teach this in my masterclass. Just write it down in new lyric notes. Or I'll start crying about something in a movie and I'm like, oh am I crying? Oh it's because of that. Write that down in your lyric notes. So it's like a never ending thing. I mean, I'm
a songwriter, it's my whole. My husband says, who you are is not what you'd do, and I'm like, hmm, I think it might be. I think who I am is what I do. So I do take vacations, but it's normally like last year, I did the go back to see my family and that was very important. Family is so important to me. I'll take I so my mom off to Newport Beach to see all the Christmas ships go down and Balboa Island, all all the ships are decorated, and I love it and I can just
i can switch off and relax. I'll go down to the Coronado Hotel for two days. It's just paradise here. As we said, I got to Lake Arrowhead. It's normally when I'm completely exhausted and I've just finished a project, mixing it and everything, and I'm just like, I need two days off and I'll take these like mini breaks. But I have not gone to Spain or you know. And my parents also traveled us as kids. We had a home in Spain, and so I felt like the first part of my life we were in New Zealand,
where my mom's from Australia. I've been to call Through and Greece. I've been so many amazing South of France making albums. Madrid with Shakira I'm like, yeah, I've seen Europe. It's amazing, but I'm not jonesing to go back to.
To do that.
And the reason I would go back to England is because I love my family and I want to see them or my girls. I have to go on tour and they need me and they want mom to come. You know, they don't even need me anymore, so that's not going to happen. But I don't really take vacations now.
Well, thanks so much for taking this time to speak with my audience.
Lauren ah Bob. You know, I'm such a big fan of yours. I read you every week and I like your personal stuff that you do too as much as I like this stuff about the music business. But I can say I've been listening, I've been reading you for thirty years. I would say, amazing. Thank you so much for having me.
Well, you know I could go, well, we'll do this on our own time. But you know it's funny if you nail the personal stuff that resonates more than anything. Really, If you want more of Lauren, certainly follow her on social media and of course she has her master class. So in any event, Lauren, thanks.
Again, thank you so much Bob.
Until next time. This is Bob left stets