Lauren Alaina’s new single, “The Road Less Traveled,” has already touched so many people who are going through a difficult time. Lauren says she has had trouble accepting herself the way she is, especially being in the public eye at a very formative and impressionable age.
“It has been a struggle for me to kind of accept who I am, and I’m on stage every night, and I’m in interviews and I look super-confident, ‘cause I’m outgoing and whatever else, but I have insecurities just like everybody else. It’s been a process,” says Lauren. “I came into the spotlight at 15. I was a baby, I was a baby. [laughs] I was so young, and I was just thrown into this whirlwind of I had a record, and I was on tour with Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan, all these [things] that I ever dreamed about doing, I had in my hand. But I got caught up in what people had to say about me. I was 15 and kind of in that transitional phase of being a child and into being a woman and my body was changing, and people said things about my weight and the color of my hair and the freakin’ clothes I was wearing, and it ate me alive. I had everything I ever wanted in the palm of my hand, but I was sad and lost.”
The song, which Lauren wrote with her friends Meghan Trainor and Jesse Frasure in the aftermath of recovering from an eating disorder, is on her current self-titled EP.
Lauren is on the road with Alan Jackson’s Still Keepin’ It Country Tour. The trek stops in Toledo, Ohio on Friday (August 19th) and Elizabethtown, Kentucky on Saturday (August 20th).
Audio / Lauren Alaina says it's been a struggle to accept herself.
DownloadLauren Alaina (RLT-foundation) OC: …and lost. :59
“It has been a struggle for me to kind of accept who I am, and I’m on stage every night, and I’m in interviews and I look super-confident, ‘cause I’m outgoing and whatever else, but I have insecurities just like everybody else. It’s been a process. I came into the spotlight at 15. I was a baby, I was a baby. [laughs] I was so young, and I was just thrown into this whirlwind of I had a record, and I was on tour with Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan, all these [things] that I ever dreamed about doing, I had in my hand. But I got caught up in what people had to say about me. I was 15 and kind of in that transitional phase of being a child and into being a woman and my body was changing, and people said things about my weight and the color of my hair and the freakin’ clothes I was wearing, and it ate me alive. I had everything I ever wanted in the palm of my hand, but I was sad and lost.”
Audio / Lauren Alaina says she wrote “Road Less Traveled” as a reminder to herself.
DownloadLauren Alaina (RLT-foundation) OC: …to share. :47
“I had an eating disorder for four years. I struggled with an eating disorder for four years because I wanted to try to fit into what I thought someone else wanted me to be, and that is horrible. I mean, it’s still a process. I want to share this message because I don’t want other people to feel the way that I felt, and I still feel that way sometimes. It’s an everyday process to wake up in the morning and be nice to yourself. There’s always gonna be someone skinnier than me and someone more blond and someone that can sing better than me or write better songs, but they’re never gonna be me, and they can never offer what I can offer, and that goes for everybody. We’re all unique. I wrote this song as a reminder to myself that, ‘Hey! It’s cool to be different, and you can achieve your dreams and your goals, but you have to believe ‘em. You can’t achieve something that you don’t believe in and you’re scared of.’ So, that’s kind of what I want to share.”
