Interview with LØLØ: “Possibility” Remains Plenty For This Talented Torontonian

With a new single, “possibility,” out now, and a whale of a summer lined up, things aren’t too shabby right now for Toronto native LØLØ.

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Stream: “Possibility” – LØLØ

“One, two, three, four… God, I’m one pathetic MF,” LØLØ sings on the opening of “possibility,” her latest single pulled from the deluxe edition of last year’s falling for robots & wishing i was one.

That might be an apt description for her character in the song, who is possessed by jealousy, paranoia, and the perpetual habit of “stalking you online just like a loser.” But it’s the furthest thing imaginable from what you’d say to describe LØLØ herself at this point in her career. “Impressive,” “accomplished,” and “on a hot streak” are far more accurate labels for an artist who’s had a practically nonstop string of releases over the past six years, along with plenty of festival appearances – with another huge one, the Warped Tour in Atlantic City, coming up in June – and an already largely sold-out US tour scheduled for the summer.

Paranoia has poisoned my mind
Thinking about your life
before you were in mine
And you told me you love me tonight
But you loved someone else
once upon a time

You broke her,
that means you could break me
It’s a possibility
Might be crazy, but I’m not naive
It’s a possibility

It sounds like the rockstar lifestyle, but LØLØ is staying down-to-Earth throughout this whole flurry. “I’m just a girl trying the best I can to be human,” she says. “I create music to let out my feelings and to let others know they’re not alone. Whether you’re crying to a song on the record, or jumping around and screaming, just know we’re all in this together.”

LØLØ (born Lauren Turner) details the international phone call that inspired “possibility,” the creative inspiration she draws from considering the dual personalities of robots, and much more in a candid conversation with Atwood Magazine.

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:: stream/purchase falling for robots…(deluxe) here ::

:: connect with LØLØ here ::

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Stream: “Possibility” – LØLØ

A CONVERSATION WITH LØLØ

LØLØ: Toronto has a really cool music scene now, and it had an even better music scene when I was growing up around it. I feel like now, a lot of people have moved to Nashville and LA, but at the time when I was growing up and just getting into music, there were tons of open mic nights and bars and people playing all the time. Growing up, I had an Avril Lavigne obsession and a Simple Plan obsession, and those were all big Canadian acts that everyone knew. They were just Canadian pop rock superstars. Growing up around that in particular area definitely affected me and affected the kind of music that I wanted to write and make.

LØLØ: When I first started writing songs, I was still kind of figuring out my style and such. My influences were like Avril Lavigne and Green Day, mixed with Taylor Swift. I feel like that kind of started developing around 2021. I think I was less afraid of making music, but I just wanted to make my own music rather than trying to fit this perfect pop mold.

I’ve been trying to do the whole pop-rock thing. It’s hard to call my music soul-rock, since it’s mainly these pop songs on guitar – kind of like alt-pop – but I think it’s pretty cool. I’m just making whatever I like now. I’m proud of that.

LØLØ: I always knew I had to make an album. Not “had to,” but I  knew there was this daunting task of, like, “I need a full-length album, I need a really big project.” At the time, I was just putting out a bunch of EPs and singles and that kind of stuff, and I thought, “I don’t know what I’m going to make my album about, I don’t know what it is. Hopefully, it just comes to me.”

Then when I wrote the last song on the album, which is actually the first song I wrote for the album, “u & the tin man.” After I wrote that, I was like, “Oh, this feels like a really special song, one of the best songs I’ve written. It feels like there’s a whole world behind this and I can really see something through it.” At the time, I was just searching for a slow song to put at the end of one of my EPs, and I was just like, “I don’t think this is the thing. I think this is part of something bigger.” And so, I put it in my back pocket, and I didn’t know what to do with it. This is a song that felt like it was meant for an album, like it was part of something bigger.

Basically, in the song, “u & the tin man,” I’m hating on a guy for kind of being “robot-esque” and not having a heart. And then, a year-and-a-half later, I wrote the song “wish i was a robot,” about feeling too many things and wishing I could just be numb like that – not have a heart and not give a shit about anything. So, after I wrote that, I thought, “Ha, that’s kind of funny that a year-and-a-half ago, I was making fun of this person for being a robot, but now I’m wishing I was one. That’s pretty funny.” And then I said, “Hmmm, there’s something pretty interesting about the two sides of this coin.” And that was the moment when I wrote down in my phone notes: “falling in love with robots and wishing I was one.” And I said, “I like the way that sounds. I feel like that should be my album title.”

Once I had the title, it was very easy to slot songs around the whole thing and kind of make it a concept album with all these different themes about feeling too much and also feeling offended by people that don’t feel anything. And that’s kind of how the album came to be.

LØLØ: It definitely made me feel like a real artist. It made me feel legitimized, like: “I finally did it! I made an album! And now I have to make another one, which is crazy.” I’m actually going to Nashville this weekend and start writing for my next album, which is crazy. But the second I put out my first album, my debut, literally the next day I remember waking up and thinking to myself, “Oh my God, I have to do this again!” Once it was out, I had to start thinking about the next album, which is crazy. But that’s just how it goes.

LØLØ: “possibility” was a single off of it, and there were a couple of other songs, such as the demo of “u & the tin man,” the sad version of “hot girls in hell,” and the live version of one of the songs called “die without u.” It’s just some sort of stuff for the fans that I feel like, if I were one of them, I would love her to put out a version like that.

LØLØ: I was actually in Nashville on a writing trip to try and come with a few more songs for my deluxe. That day, I had a writing session and was writing a completely different song. Then at night, I was staying up late in my hotel room, and meanwhile, my boyfriend was at a music festival in Brazil, where the most beautiful women in the world reside.

I was having a moment of anxiety and overthinking and being a psycho, honestly, all alone, even though he wasn’t doing anything sketchy and just told me, “Good night, I love you” on the phone. In my head, I was like, “Well, what if he’s lying? What if this, what if that?” And so I started writing “possibility” and I kind of just wrote the whole thing, thinking out both internally and externally, just about the fear of loving someone so much that you wonder, “What if they really do hurt you,  now that you’ve found somebody that you really do like?” It’s kind of how that came to be.

LØLØ: I love how the finished piece turned out. It’s actually really funny. When we filmed it, we were in Toronto and it was 0 degrees out. The heating went out, and there was no heat, and it was f*ing freezing. And the whole time we filmed it, I’m literally in between takes, warming up by a fire in my jacket. So when I watch the video now, I say, “I look like I’m freezing!” because I know I was literally freezing. But I think it turned out cool in the end. It was more like this cool visual aesthetic rather than a story, and I think it turned out pretty cool in embodying that kind of wilderness and anxiety.

LØLØ: I just finished my headlining tour in the US. I did one in Europe at the end of last year and I continued it in the U.S. this year. It was super successful, all sold out, and I’m super happy about that, because I had a lot of anxiety being a headliner after having been an opening act so many times. So, I wasn’t sure if people would actually by tickets to my show. But they did, so thank God. So, that was a big success, and now I kind of have a few months off, and then I’m heading to Europe for some festivals. I’ve got the Download Festival in the UK, I’ve got Nova Rock and Rock am Ring in Germany, and then I’m doing a couple of headlining shows on my days off.

Then I’m going on tour with Simple Plan, Bowling for Soup and 3OH!3. That one was just a long time coming because, on my first tour ever, I was picked to open for Simple Plan and New Found Glory, but Simple Plan had to back off because COVID was just starting to be really rampant, and they weren’t comfortable with it. I was really depressed, because Simple Plan was one of my favorite bands of all time and I was really sad that they backed off from the tour, and that was about four or five years ago. So, the fact that I’m now opening for them years later after all that gerfunkle is really great and I’m really excited that that’s happening.

I’m also excited for the Warped Tour. I wasn’t sure if I was cool enough to do the Warped Tour, to be honest with you, but apparently I am. So, I’m very excited to actually be there. I never got a chance to actually go as a fan, because I think that was a little out of my time and my mom didn’t let me go to concerts alone for a while. But I’m really excited to go.

LØLØ: Yes. I don’t know why, actually, but I wound up going there a lot for my album. I live in LA half the time and Toronto half the time, and then I’m also on tour on lot, but for some reason Nashville just became one of my favorite spots. I’m not sure why. I just like the vibe.

LØLØ: I really like the second verse, which is, “I wanna feel hot, hold onto power, I don’t want to be a jealous weirdo, I know there’s nothing sexy about a coward. Your tongue inside my mouth unlocked a fear, though.” I know that girls in general want to be chill – be a chill, cool girl. But sometimes situations happen and we just go crazy. I feel like girls have a reputation for being a little crazy sometimes. It’s just outside factors that drive us crazy and make us like that sometimes. I feel for all of the people that get seen as “psychos” or “crazies” because it’s hard out there.

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:: stream/purchase falling for robots…(deluxe) here ::

:: connect with LØLØ here ::

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Stream: “Possibility” – LØLØ

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