Lydia Night of The Regrettes on Their Second Album How Do You Love? and Finding Self-Love After a Burning Romance
At just 16 years old, Lydia Night released Feel Your Feelings Fool!, an incredibly self-aware, empowering pop-punk debut album, as the lead singer of The Regrettes. And in the two years since its release, she’s done a lot of growing up, soaking in the latter part of her teenage years.
“I think the difference in being a 14- or 15-year-old [compared] to being an 18-year-old is a lot of sh*t changes, and you have to grow up, whether you’re prepared or not at all,” Lydia, who is now 18, tells Teen Vogue. Lydia has since felt herself mature from being on the road with The Regrettes. “Touring ages you,” she says. Lydia recalls that her younger years spent on the road were focused on trying to have as many friends as possible, which she realizes now is “silly.” The frontwoman has since learned to prioritize the quality of her relationships over the quantity of them because her time at home is limited.
It’s safe to say that while The Regrettes’ debut album at the time may have reflected the full spectrum of the teenage experience, everything from flirting to owning your confidence, the group’s sophomore LP, How Do You Love?, finds Lydia still very much learning.
For five weeks, The Regrettes — comprised of Lydia, Genessa Gariano, Brooke Dickson, and Drew Thomsen —recorded How Do You Love? in both Nashville and Los Angeles. A departure from the band’s 2018 fun, angsty EP Attention Seeker and their stand-alone anti-Kavanaugh anthem “Poor Boy,” How Do You Love? details the rise and fall of catching feelings for someone. It would be easy to assume the band’s sophomore LP is about Dylan Minnette, the 13 Reasons Why star and Wallows singer whom Lydia has been dating for the past year. Lydia admits there are a few songs about her current partner, but How Do You Love? had mostly already been written before their relationship began. Lydia and Dylan may struggle with being apart — touring with their respective bands and with Dylan’s acting projects — but their drive to see each other succeed has solidified their bond. “We miss each other like crazy, but I think it’s also what we admire about each other,” she says. “It’s really hard to be in a relationship with someone who does what we both do, but we understand it, and that’s where we can come together, and be stronger in it.”
How Do You Love? is instead an amalgamation of different relationships that form one relationship story. “The whole album is a tale of falling in love, and a cautionary tale to falling in love,” says Lydia. The record, which highlights the romantic (and not so romantic) phases in a relationship, aptly begins with the poem “Are You in Love.” “I wrote the poem, and I thought it was going to turn into a song,” she says, which begins with Lydia telling the listener they’ve been “infected” with a “love disease.” Lydia realized that the striking opening would be “the perfect way to set up the scene” and help people better understand the ethos of the record. “That is just kind of the beginning of the crash,” she says.
Influenced by The Exploding Hearts and The Replacements, How Do You Love? is less of a punk-rock album than The Regrettes’ debut. While it wasn’t a “conscious decision,” the record finds itself in power-pop territory. Included in the “falling in love” section of the album are songs like opener “California Friends,” which meditates on the excitement of meeting someone new, as well as “Pumpkin,” which is the first song Lydia ever wrote about Dylan. (“He loves it,” she gushes. “He listens to it all the time.”) But nearly halfway through the record, the honeymoon phase of the relationship fades as she sings, “Stop before we lose control/ Let’s take a breath before we go, go, go” on “Stop and Go.” The back half of the album is full of angry anthems and post-breakup tunes. Everything from “Dead Wrong” to “Has It Hit You?” chronicles the dissolution of a relationship. Lydia divulges that “Has It Hit You?” is probably her favorite track on the record at the moment, exploring the emotional aftermath following a split. That leads into the record’s finale — the titular “How Do You Love?” —which wraps everything in a bow, reflecting on the entirety of the album’s tumultuous love-filled journey, which ends up more about self-love than romance.
With “How Do You Love?” concluding the record, it sums up the aha moment Lydia experienced herself: That receiving love that is platonic, or self-love, is something that will never leave you lonely. “We’re trying to convey more of the female-empowerment aspect and the very strong cautionary-tale theme was all kind of a choice to be on your own at the end of the album, [which] is expressed in a way at choosing yourself over the person,” she says.
Fully embracing everything from a rush of butterflies to an explosive breakup, How Do You Love? ultimately finds Lydia at peace by the close of the 15-song LP. “The music is just a reflection of learning more, and there’s a lot that goes into that as a person,” says the singer. And with a handful of her teenage years ahead, Lydia is still very much still discovering all that.
Related: Singer-Songwriter Phoebe Bridgers Isn’t in a Rush to Make Her Next Great Album
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
