Lauren Weintraub Looks to Push the Barriers of Country Music: 'Never Get an Untrue Story Out of Me'
Mick Bodie Lauren Weintraub
Lauren Weintraub has spent her life surrounded by men.
"I have three brothers, and I grew up wanting to be just like them," Weintraub, 23, tells PEOPLE from her Nashville apartment while sitting just under a neon peace sign hanging on the wall. "I tried sports and everything, and I just had terrible hand eye coordination! I clearly remember being in the outfield of a baseball game, and this baseball just grazed my face, and my dad was like, 'All right, that's it.'"
From there, the little girl born and raised in Boston went and tried dance and theater, but that too led her to another dead end. "I just wanted to start telling my story instead of playing a character every night," says Weintraub.
So, the self-proclaimed old soul went and began writing songs — the first one being the one she wrote when she was 14 years old titled "You Don't Know."
"It was so dramatic," laughs Weintraub, who was nominated as "TikTok Songwriter of the Year" at this year's iHeartRadio Awards. "I had never even kissed anybody, and I was writing this whole saga about how I was in love."
Shore Fire Lauren Weintraub
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Nevertheless, Weintraub spent the rest of her teen years refining her songwriting skills, doing her best to find ways to let her authentic self find its way onto the page underneath her pen.
"I always felt like I had this inner voice," says Weintraub, who moved to Nashville in 2017 to attend Belmont University. "I think it took me three to four years of writing to really flesh it out and have the bravery and confidence to put that inner voice into my songs."
Now, with the release of her debut EP This Is Your Brain on Love, Weintraub is letting herself flow freely through her lyrics and her music, exceptionally well in fact on songs such as "Before We Knew Too Much," which she wrote alongside Carlo Colasacco and Josh Byrd.
"('Before We Knew Too Much') is about the first person I ever dated and how you don't know anything about the outside world yet because you've kind of grown up in this small-town bubble," explains Weintraub, who says she wrote a total of 800 songs for the project but narrowed it down this time to a six-song project. "You think you're going to get married and be together forever, and then you go to college and all those thoughts change a little bit when you realize there's a big wide world out there."
She pauses. "I make country music, but I also laugh that I call it non-fiction music because you will never get an untrue story out of me."
It's this creative foundation that has made many compare Weintraub to another famous wordsmith who has long straddled the line between pop and country.
"I think Taylor Swift was one of the first people I saw live," reflects Weintraub, who is currently signed to Brandy Clark's publishing company, All BC Music and has also inked a major deal with Virgin Records. "I always just loved the way she was such a storyteller. And to me, that's part of the reason country music still pulls me in — because it's such a storytelling genre. And I think there's a space to be filled right now, and that music can be as much for a 13-year-old as it can be for a 33-year-old. I try to make the kind of music where it includes all the details, but you can also fill your own details in too."
Greg Weintraub Lauren Weintraub
But make no mistake — Weintraub just might break the rules a bit while getting to where she's ultimately going in country music.
"Growing up, I was inspired by those artists in country who were doing that," she concludes. "And not only them, but Pink and Lady Gaga and all these artists who were showing up at awards shows wearing whatever they wanted to wear and saying whatever they wanted to say because it was what they believed. They weren't there to please somebody else. So, I feel like that is my mission within my music — to push the envelope and show people it's okay to be your true self, even if it's a little weird."
She sighs.
"Country doesn't have a dress code anymore, thank goodness. I've always reminded myself that if every single person out there likes you, you're probably doing something wrong."
