The Bachelor is one of those reality shows has been on so long that the first time I earnestly watched an entire season I still lived at home with my parents. But in the last couple years, the show has begun to shake things up, and has seen a big resurgence in popularity. This season’s current Bachelor, Nick Viall, has been a contestant on a couple of other seasons, and now it’s his chance to be in the spotlight and pick from an array of women who want to be his wife. For this week’s episode, he and a contestant named Rachel went on a one-on-one New Orleans.
If you’re down in The Big Easy, going to see a live show is pretty much a no-brainer, even for someone like Viall, so he took Rachel to see Lolo, a Tennessee native, who performed two songs off last year’s In Loving Memory Of When I Gave A Shit. You can watch that clip here, and honestly, a minute and a half of hearing Lolo perform — combined with that album title, which is one of the saltiest and best I’ve seen in a while — made me completely forget about the show and piqued my interest in Lolo. Her fiery performance was a lot more tender and real than any chemistry between the two reality show contestants. She did “Shine” as well as another song off that new record, “No Time For Lonely.”
Anyway, Lauren Pritchard, aka Lolo, is a singer and actress from Jackson, Tennessee, who released In Loving Memory late last year, and despite the defiant title, it’s a gritty yet tender record that splits the difference between rock and pop without slouching on either end of that spectrum. Her voice is a complete powerhouse, and her songwriting skills are on par with any other pop star working right now — which is probably why she helped write parts of the new Grammy-nominated Panic! At The Disco record.
Prior to releasing this record, her debut as Lolo, Pritchard was over in the UK and released her debut back in 2010. But it sounds like returning stateside, and getting back to her roots, was exactly what Lolo needed to reconnect with her strongest artistic impulses. Aside from the new full-length, she also wrote and starred in the off-Broadway musical Songbird, and has previously appeared in a role as Ilse in the musical Spring Awakening.
Those two acting stints help illuminate just what makes In Loving Memory so accessible — every song is told from the perspective of a fully-formed character, something that’s tough even for veteran songwriters to pull off. Combined with her smoky, rich voice and Lolo just might be one of the breakout acts of 2017 — sometimes those fourth quarter albums take a couple months to catch on. Her lead single “Shine” has been up since the Bachelor performance, and it’s one of those uplifting, brutally honest anthems that’s all too easy to listen to when you’re feeling low. I have been, but In Loving Memory Of When I Gave A Shit is definitely my new motto, and this album is my new soundtrack — it’s smoky, bluesy Tennessee pop magic. Listen to the whole thing below.
