Indie Light

I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with Lauren Alex Hooper, and you can check that out below. However don’t forget to check out my review of her single ‘Write This Out’ by clicking here.

Tell me about yourself?

My name is Lauren Alex Hooper and I’m a neurodivergent, disabled singer-songwriter. I actually started out wanting to write novels but when I discovered songwriting, I was just hooked. I went to university in London to study songwriting and got first a BA and then an MA; I also met so many amazing friends and collaborators, most importantly my producer, Richard Marc. I live in Brighton with my Mum – my disabilities make it all but impossible to live alone, for now at least – five cats, and a dog (who is smaller than the smallest cat). 

Do you play any instruments, and if so how long have you been playing your respective instruments?

I’ve always been a singer first and started having lessons when I was eleven, even though I was excruciatingly shy and found singing in front of people terrifying. My voice is really my main instrument but I do also play guitar as an accompanying instrument, which I picked up when I started writing songs at sixteen. I also had piano lessons when I was young but then didn’t pick it up again until I was about twenty when I started studying songwriting. I use them to write and I can accompany myself but I wouldn’t call myself a guitarist or a pianist individually. 

Who are your biggest influences?

I’ve been surrounded by music for longer than I can remember, with musical parents and parents who ran a studio in London, but it was hearing Taylor Swift that opened up the world of songwriting for me; the way she tells stories, uses imagery and metaphor to evoke such specific emotion… I started taking her songs apart, analysing them, and then building my own songs the same way. So she was a really big influence and people point out similarities on a pretty regular basis. That’s certainly a compliment in my books. But I’ve also been hugely influenced by Sara Bareilles, by Halsey, by Lauren Aquilina, by Jack Antonoff and the music he makes with Bleachers, by Kalie Shorr and Candi Carpenter… And while I was studying songwriting, I was surrounded by so many amazing songwriters, many of whom I learned a lot from and helped shape me into the songwriter I am.

What song(s) do you remember most from your childhood?

The artists that really stand out from my childhood are Annie Lennox, Joan Baez, and k.d. lang. Whenever I think about the house I grew up in, their voices are the soundtrack: in the evenings before dinner, on Sundays mornings as we emerged one by one, every year when we decorated the Christmas Tree… There isn’t a single song that stands out but if my childhood was a film, they would make up the soundtrack. 

Do you perform covers and if so what’s your go to?

I don’t generally perform covers, unless I’ve been asked to by the organiser of the gig or someone I know makes a special request, but I do have a handful up my sleeve in case I need one. I think the cover I’ve performed most – simply because I love it so much – is ‘I Just Want You’ by Sara Bareilles. It’s a gorgeous song and it’s such a joy to sing. 

What genre of music do you consider your work to be?

I’ve never been entirely sure what genre my music is because I’ve listened to such a range of music and when I write, I end up pulling ideas from all sorts of places. I’ve been described as alt-pop and I think that’s probably pretty fitting. I feel like if mainstream pop was a planet, my music would be a moon or a satellite orbiting it: I have very strong pop sensibilities as a writer but my songs rarely fit with whatever’s in the charts at any given moment. 

Do you have a process for writing your songs?

I’ve had songs come to me in all sorts of ways and sometimes it feels like I’m discovering them rather than writing them but when I sit down with the intention to write, I usually have an idea in mind that I want to turn into a song. That usually has a handful of lyrics attached and from there, I know what kind of mood the song is going to have so I can use that to find the right chord progressions on guitar or piano. I prefer to start with the chorus because then I know the central idea that the song is expanding from (and usually returning to) and then I’ll use the other sections to fill out the emotion or the story that I’m trying to tell. Having said all of that, if I’m writing with or for someone else, it can be completely different every time and I love that; I love figuring out their unique language as a songwriter, what they would or wouldn’t say and how to get to the heart of what they want to convey. 

How has the reception been to your music so far, and has it surprised you?

It’s been a slow start. After all, it’s been over a year since I released music: my single, ‘House on Fire,’ in April 2023. So I’m basically starting from scratch but the streams and the reviews are coming in and that’s really exciting. I always knew this project would take a while to find its audience because it’s so specific: autism isn’t exactly a common topic in the pop world. But that was one of the big reasons I started writing songs in the first place: because I wasn’t hearing music that I related to, that described my experiences (which I now know were autistic experiences). But from the responses I’ve had so far, I know that it is resonating with people and we’re only one song in. I’m so excited to watch it grow. 

Do you have social media, if so please provide links?

Absolutely! I’m not sure you can be an independent artist right now without social media; you just have to find a way to do it that’s fun for you and doesn’t make you want to cry!

You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube.

Have you performed at a live venue, if so what has been your favourite and least favourite venues?

I’ve performed a fair bit, especially before 2020, and I’ve played at various venues, from small and intimate spaces to theatres to big fields for festivals. One of my favourite places to play was The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Tennessee because there’s just so much history and reverence for that history and the passion for storytelling. Having said that, I think my absolute favourite performing experiences have been at Brighton Disability Pride Festival. I played every year it ran and my favourite year was the last one, where I was singing to a field of people and, behind them, the sea – it was magical. My most difficult live experience was actually an earlier year when I was in a tent with a generator and I could not hear myself – my voice or my guitar – at all. I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t had many negative performing experiences, which I’m very grateful for! 

Following on from that question, if you do perform at live venues, will you be performing in the near future? And if so, where and when?

I haven’t announced anything yet but I am so excited to perform my new music so watch this space!

How do you balance your music with other obligations?

It’s hard – and if you work with other people for production or for cowriting, you have to fit around their obligations too. Sometimes I think it’s the biggest frustration: that the magic of creating music has to wait for a convenient time, whether you’re working alone or with someone else. I honestly haven’t figured it out and have a tendency to work until I crash in order to get everything done, which isn’t healthy for anybody. I try to allocate time to writing and create slots throughout the days and weeks to keep myself accountable but it’s not a fool proof system: the world has a way of knocking you off course just when you think you’ve got everything under control.

What has been your biggest challenge as a performer and have you been able to overcome that challenge? If so then how?

Personally, my biggest challenge is how difficult performing can be with my disabilities: I struggle daily with debilitating pain and fatigue so, as much as I’d love to grab every opportunity and perform every night of the week, I physically can’t. The music world is very inaccessible and ableist and there’s very little space for change and very little willingness to try when there are hundreds of independent artists trying to land the same opportunity; it’s easier to choose one that doesn’t require any extra effort or changes than one who does. I think everyone’s too comfortable with the way things are – which includes ignoring disabled performers – and that’s a massive shift that a lot of people and organisations are working towards. I’m particularly grateful to Attitude Is Everything, both for their amazing work industry wide and for how they’ve helped me personally. It’s a slow process but I have to hope that it will get better. It’s part of why this project that I’m releasing is so important to me: disabled and neurodivergent voices are so underrepresented and a big part of that is because releasing and performing are so inaccessible to many disabled and neurodivergent musicians. 

What advice do you have for beginners?

I think the best advice I have for songwriters, especially those who are early in their writing career, is to write about the things that matter to them, rather than what they think they should write about or what is popular in that current moment. Writing something that you really care about will always resonate more powerfully with your listener over something that doesn’t really mean anything to you. By all means, experiment: play in different styles and genres and use different techniques because it will make you a stronger songwriter. But if you don’t care about the core message of the song, your listener isn’t likely to either. You might end up with a smaller audience but that audience will be so much more passionate about your music. 

And let’s end with something a little more fun… Which famous person, living or dead, would you have dinner with and why?

This question honestly took me longer than all of the others! There are so many possibilities! My knee jerk reaction was, of course, Taylor Swift because I’ve been a fan for such a long time and I have so many questions about her creative process, in all aspects of her career; it would be a very long dinner! But there are so many interesting, creative people that I’d love to talk to, especially about their creative work: Halsey, Elizabeth Gilbert, Tim Minchin, Jack Antonoff, Amanda Tapping… But for the sake of this question, I’m going to choose Sara Bareilles. I’ve been a fan of her music for as long as I can remember and, not only that, she’s had such a creative, varied career: releasing her own music, writing the music for a musical, writing a book, performing in multiple musicals (including Waitress, the one she wrote the songs for), writing music for TV shows, acting in TV shows… I’d love to hear about her experiences of each of these projects and I just have so many questions about what has been such a diverse and unusual career. She’s been such an inspiration to me for so long and, of course, I’d love to thank her for the impact she, and her music especially, has had on me.