Lauren Weintraub’s journey from ‘Boston’ to country music success

The northeast-born and southern-based singer-songwriter’s success highlights nation’s nationalizing enchantment

When Sudbury, Massachusetts native — and the creator of November 4’s “This Is Your Mind On Love” EP — Lauren Weintraub was eight years outdated, Taylor Swift’s “Our Music” was a top-selling nation music chart-topper with crossover potential. The track additionally broke into the mainstream not simply due to its reputation within the Midwest and South but additionally due to the impression of northeastern-based nation radio stations like those closest to her — the then-year-old Waltham, Massachusetts-based WKLB, Nation 102.5.

Nation radio’s affect — in addition to her rural upbringing — has the 24-year-old former Belmont College pupil based mostly in Nashville. She tells The Tennessean that rising up in Sudbury makes her consultant of “nation” music as a result of the city of fewer than 20,000 folks is half-hour away from Boston and 10 minutes away from the Assabet River Nationwide Wildlife Refuge — basically a 2,230-acre forest in Middlesex County, Massachusets.

“I grew up round a small city vibe the place everybody knew everybody else, and I used to be a theater child who liked listening to pop-friendly nation songs with intricate tales,” says Weintraub.

Fifteen years have elapsed since Swift’s first large hit. In that point, feminine artists that the singer-songwriter has grown to respect, together with Lori McKenna and Maren Morris, have represented a number of the few feminine artists to realize some method of stardom by way of the format. These moments are notable when forged in opposition to moments like New York Metropolis’s Nation 94.7 music station abruptly switching codecs in October 2021. Nevertheless, for what northeastern cities are dropping in an abundance of full-time programming catering to the style, they’ve gained in country-popular feminine artists and creators like Ingrid Andress and Kane Brown’s spouse, Katelyn, being educated at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. Westerly, Rhode Island, additionally claims Taylor Swift as a resident.

Although probably seen as benign, the impression of nation musicians not being geo-specific to rural cities or southern metropolises is slowly integrating itself into the style’s most chart-impacting and influential sectors.

Weintraub is cresting the wave of viral and real-time reputation surrounding “Boston.” Her newest single, co-written by Swift’s longtime collaborator/producer, Nathan Chapman (on her first 5 albums, “Taylor Swift,” “Fearless,” “Communicate Now,” “Purple” and “1989”), is unlikely fashionable not a lot due to Weintraub’s hometown, as a lot as as a result of it namedrops Beantown landmarks Again Bay, Fenway Park, Harvard Sq., the “T” subway service, Washington Road and area-specific slang like “depraved.”

It is persevering with a pattern.

Weintraub’s “Boston” evokes how Could-to-December romances gone awry conjure extra longing heartache in regards to the attainable moments missed than manic anger about imminent heartbreak.

“My style’s nation — but it surely’s additionally non-fiction,” she says with a cautionary tone.

These relationships occurring for followers primarily in nation music’s teen-to-post-teen feminine fanbase is vital. Not since 19-year-olds Taylor Swift or Maddie and Tae achieved chart-topping nation stardom has the uppermost tier of labor in a ten-year city that ages girls previous their twenties on the trail to “in a single day” success has unrepentant youth been so considerably represented within the style.

32-year-old Carly Pearce is on the prime of the style as a result of an album highlighting the devastation she endured at 29. Nevertheless, that album’s feelings aren’t but written in stone for a youthful demographic.

“I am fortunate to have the ability to capitalize on my youth to jot down songs for individuals who wish to be emotionally seen and heard,” she says.

To that finish, regarding her half-million TikTok followers which have aided her climb, she provides the notice that she’s grateful for having them round throughout the pandemic when she was unable to achieve them by way of reside concert events. Nevertheless, she provides that she “loves” participating with the platform however doesn’t want to have the platform fully outline her artwork.

The rising singer/songwriter notes that her fondest reminiscences are of Boston within the fall, which she describes as “stunning,” but additionally a time when the loneliness after a spring of skipping courses for Dunkin Donuts runs alongside Interstate 90 (Weintraub most well-liked a location in Sudbury’s neighboring city of Harmony) settles in and the ache of getting to return an ex-boyfriend’s beloved baseball cap persists.

Comparatively, the EP’s nearer “Not Like I am In Love With You” has gaggles of younger girls aged 16-plus at her reside exhibits screaming, “I ain’t been staying up overthinking us / tripping throughout these emotions, naw that’d be dumb / it is nice, yeah it is cool / not like I wanna make a transfer / it is nice, yeah it is cool / it is not like I am in love with you.” The kicker? Once they pause, as Weintraub does within the track, it is earlier than letting out a bittersweet concession to the love they know they’re in:

“S***!”

It is evident that alongside materials by Lori McKenna, Weintraub counts Brandy Clark’s Grammy-nominated 2016 single “Love Can Go To Hell” as an essential inspiration.

Weintraub’s one among 4 youngsters (a triplet with two brothers and one other brother) and her want to “flee the nest” additionally led her to Nashville and to Belmont College. The vibrancy of the town’s songwriting group — particularly on condition that many nation stars don’t write their materials. She recollects her “jaw [being] on the ground” when attending exhibits at venues just like the Bluebird Cafe and Listening Room, “[hoping] to jot down songs of the caliber [of what she was hearing] sometime.”

Her concentrate on attaining success led to her being the primary songwriter signed to a three way partnership between the beforehand talked about Clark’s All BC Music and Large Machine Music in 2019.

Weintraub feels that she’s Clark’s “adopted song-daughter,” highlighting her humor, kindness and song-crafting as resulting in an “invaluable studying expertise to this point.”

When requested to sum up the previous 5 years of her life, Weintraub’s face is critical however smiling.

“I used to have imposter syndrome, however I am now settling into the truth that I labored my ass off on so many 19-hour days to get the place I’m. Sure, I am nonetheless shocked that it is all taking place, however so long as the universe retains bringing the appropriate folks to me, I will preserve absorbing these moments.”