Conversations in friends’ living rooms, months of relationship complications and a two-minute-and-fifty-two-second voice memo inspired Lady Laz’s debut single.
UF alumna Taylor Allen released “Normal People” on Thursday, Oct. 7, under the stage name Lady Laz, a nod to American poet Sylvia Plath.
Allen sees Lady Laz as a personal creative and emotional outlet, where she can openly sing about her emotions without restrictions. “Normal People” portrays just that: the complex feelings that come with ending a relationship that’s run its course.
“When your heart is breaking, it feels like the biggest thing in the world,” Allen said. “I was feeling so many things at once. I was angry, I was sad, I was confused, I was scared, I was lost. By putting that in a song, I was kind of reclaiming the fact that I am someone who is very emotional, I am very sensitive but maybe that’s not so bad, and maybe I can just have pride in it.”
Allen was inspired to write the song after sending a confessional voice memo to her ex-boyfriend in early June, launching a tough conversation about complicated feelings.
“I walked away from that conversation that resulted from that voice memo, and I was like, let’s make beauty out of pain,’” Allen said.
Allen details the specific real-life experiences that shaped this relationship, like dancing to a French song and fearing coming off as mean by being honest.
Allen named the song after the 2018 Sally Rooney book of the same name. Like the book, the song narrates the relationship complications of a couple falling apart and failing to find a middle ground between intense but problematic romance and total detachment.
The author’s approach to relationships and emotions inspired Allen’s songwriting.
“I think the way that the way that she’s able to touch on human relationships and the way we interact with each other and the way we’re messy with each other and the way we can be selfish and the ways that we’re emotional is very humanizing,” Allen said.
Confessional and honest, the song is a conversation with a friend at its core.
Shortly after sending the voice memo that initiated that difficult conversation, Allen started working on a project with Driveaway lead singer Trenton Ropp, who produced the track.
Allen credits Ropp with helping her put together the puzzle pieces that eventually became the song.
“As a producer, it’s definitely an exercise on listening,” Ropp said.
Recording the song between living room sessions and Zoom calls in the early weeks of June, Allen and Ropp worked together to figure out how to properly portray the complicated emotions attached to the situation through music.
Most of the early production occurred in Ropp’s living room, where he set up a studio space that he said felt intimate and authentic.
“In this song, most of what you’re hearing is the first take,” Ropp said. “The way it was played is very special. I was trying to keep it raw, I didn’t want to overproduce it, I didn’t want it to sound too clean”
The emotional song emerged right as Allen moved to Brooklyn, where she lives now.
Throughout this process, she emphasizes the valuable role that the people she met at UF played.
“I just made really great relationships with the people that I met in Gainesville, especially through Swamp Records and in the Gainesville music scene.”
Shot by fellow UF alumnus Cam Hunter, the single’s cover art represents the transition Allen experienced in her life while the song came about. The Coney Island beach reflects on the coastal town where she grew up, and the iconic Ferris wheel represents the new chapter of her life in New York.
“I just wanted something that felt like home,” Allen said. “You don’t just have one home, you can have multiple.”
Allen recently started remotely working with Ropp on a new song that she hopes will come out early next year.
“Normal People” is out now on all streaming platforms.
Contact Kristine at kvillarroel@alligator.org Follow her on Twitter @ktnedelvalle.
Kristine Villarroel is a UF journalism senior and The Alligator's Summer 2023 Engagement Managing Editor. She previously worked in the Avenue and Caimán desks as an editor and reporter. In her free time, she looks for dusty fur coats at antique shops and pretends not to be a hater on Twitter.
