Meet IU senior, pop singer Lauren Vogel

Backstage, Lauren Vogel is obsessing about her hair. The IU Kelley School of Business senior is playing the role of pop star for her first big show at the Bluebird Nightclub, called “Bass, Booze & Skittles.” More than 300 people are attending the event, according to Facebook. It’s the largest crowd she’s performed for as a solo artist.

The growing crowd outside is enjoying the Wednesday night special of 15-cent beer and tonight exclusively, $1 Skittles shots.

All Lauren can think about is her hair. It is long and brown, often worn down in loose curls off to the side. She scrunches up her face in the backstage oval mirror, which is mounted on graffiti-covered walls with faded band stickers.

“Should I wear it up or down?” she asks the room of men. They’re all friends. Seniors Brice Fox and Danny “DJ O” Olson sit on a Sharpied bench across from Lauren. They are performing a few songs with her and don’t seem to be nearly as worried.

“Guys like girls with their hair down, but you’re the artist,” Brice says. He pauses for a second to observe her. “You look cute.”

“Ugh, no, I don’t,” Lauren says.

She darts out the room for the 15th time and returns to open a bottle of Bud Light from the tub of free beers brought in earlier by the club owner.

“When I was in Ladies First (IU’s female a cappella group) we used to drink champagne as a toast before going on, so I got used to that, sort of,” Lauren says with a laugh.  

Lauren’s appearance seems opposite of her actual state. She’s dressed casually in a black leather jacket, a red top and black jeans. Lauren rifles through her makeup bag and decides to apply the Lancome lipstick her mother gave her.

The color: visionary.

***

Lauren’s upbringing in St. Louis provided her the ideal formula for future pop stardom. She practiced singing on a karaoke machine for performances in church, and her parents enrolled her in private voice and dance lessons. Lauren appeared on the local TV station’s version of American Idol for kids and even had a brief stint as an ad model for Kohler, the plumbing fixture company where her dad worked.

“I wanted to be like Britney Spears, but brunette,” Lauren says.

Lauren learned early on that she had to believe in herself if she wanted to be successful.

Her grandmother, a freewheeling woman who was “natural and spiritual,” as Lauren calls her, was a huge influence. Lauren’s grandmother would tell people she’d been to Venus in one of her past lives while had been Native American in another. Apparently, she was even doing splits in the hospital as one of Lauren’s younger sisters was being born.

“She was crazy to everyone else, but I thought she was brilliant just because of her mental and spiritual state,” Lauren says. Lauren says her grandmother also believed people could fix things themselves, and as a result, never visited a doctor.

Lauren’s grandmother taught her that there was always a way to make things happen, and before she died, she gave Lauren a cross necklace. “‘You’re gonna be a peacemaker,’ she told me. It really stuck with me because she really believed in me.”

Lauren’s parents divorced when she was 10 years old, and her father was subsequently diagnosed with kidney cancer.

“He had a hard time,” she says. “It’s not my mom’s fault.”

Lauren’s aunt lives out in Arizona. Her mother took her daughters (Lauren has two younger sisters, now ages 17 and 20.) there for a few months. Lauren admits to being blind to what was going on.

Lauren’s voice hardens, and her bright blue eyes grow coolly reflective.

“It was the first time in my life,” she says, “that I had to learn to be strong.”

Though Lauren’s father is now cancer-free, it was during this time that she gained strength through music.

Her favorite song to sing as a kid was Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” and the pink wallpaper in her room decorated with ballet slippers gave Lauren comfort in dancing by herself.

“I discovered during that time that I’ll be happy no matter what,” Lauren says. “If I’m all alone in an apartment at age 60, I’ll be OK.”

Lauren pauses a second, picks at her red nail polish and smiles sheepishly.

“It’s like music is my boyfriend.”

***

The recording studio is Lauren’s “favorite time.” Next to the stage, it is the place where she forgets her fears.

Most of all, being in the studio has helped Lauren realize her dream. In high school, Lauren spent long hours in and out of a jazz ensemble and a dance team. In her free time, which was any spare moment, she was writing about the things that inspired her, including every teenage girl’s first moment of angst: having your heart broken by a guy that “turns out to be a huge dick.”

Her first song featured lyrics like, “I might not be strong enough, I admit, but everything you gave me could be worth it.”

And now, she’s recording a song about a recent heartbreak.

Danny, who produces most of her music, is twiddling with knobs and a keyboard that spans the length of a flatscreen television in his bedroom studio. Brice sits on the bed across from Danny and Lauren.

Lauren hums the melody to a song tentatively called “Lonely Heart.” The lyrics: “I talked you up / Put you on a throne” were written in Lauren’s messy bedroom.

“Does ‘You-know-who’ know this is about him?” Brice asks as Danny pounds out melancholy chords in G major.

“It has to be triumphant sounding, though, too,” Danny says, focused on the keyboard. “We don’t want this to be sad.”

Lauren stops singing for a moment to ponder Brice’s question. She smiles coyly.

“Actually, no. I don’t care,” she says. “I hope he hears it, and it’s like a slap in the face.”

The trio switches gears to another track.

Lauren seems to be experiencing some writer’s block. She’s throwing around ideas with Brice and Danny, to a club-friendly beat with synths that sound like race cars.
Brice begins to howl in a falsetto a la pop band 3OH!3. Danny mentions it reminds him of wolves.

The three friends somehow talk about wolves, S & M and malnourished children.

As crazy as the conversation is, Lauren seems to be enjoying it. She is smiling, doodling away in the corner of a piece of notebook paper. First a circle, then petals.
 
***

A few odd months ago, a friend of a friend sent Lauren’s tracks to Jack Minihan, an up-and-coming concert promoter, who was working on pop-rap artist Mike Posner’s Midwest tour. Jack contacted Lauren and asked her if she wanted to go to the concert in Indianapolis for free.

Lauren didn’t have time to go shopping, so she ran from the business school and grabbed a few of her girlfriends. She borrowed a black dress — “You can never go wrong,” one of her friends advised — and dashed to Indy.

After the show, Lauren and her friends were invited backstage to meet Mike Posner.

“The keyboardist in his band was Gaga’s or something,” Lauren shrugs.

It was one of those moments where Lauren had very little time to think about nerves or the rush of being backstage, getting the VIP treatment. Jack, having heard Lauren’s tracks, asked her to sing for him.

Lauren belted Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.”

Jack asked Lauren on the spot if she wanted him to be her manager.

Though Lauren didn’t make a hasty decision, the experience was an eye-opener and the best night of her life.

“People are hearing me,” Lauren says of her thoughts at the time. “And I’m hearing, ‘You can do it’ from people in the industry who have much more say than I do. That has to count for something. I just can’t wait for the day that I get to work with the people I most admire.”

***

Lauren is freaking out. Minutes before she is set to go on with Brice, Danny and local artists Lin Z and Broderick Thompson, she asks everyone to leave.

Lauren’s still nursing her beer and just had an impromptu prayer circle and a celebratory Skyy Vodka shot with friends who hugged her and took lots of pictures.

One of Lauren’s closer friends, Rachel, grabs her by the wrists and says, “You are so beautiful, and you are going to be so very amazing.”

Lauren hugs her and leaves the room for one last bathroom break.

“Let’s not fuck this up,” Lauren says to herself before she walks on stage.
The huge crowd is screaming. The Bluebird hasn’t been this packed in a while. Lauren nervously approaches the stage. The orange-and-blue lighting creates the atmosphere of a hazy basement rave.

The beat to “Body Work,” an original song about spotting that lucky boy across the room while dancing, starts to play. It is synth-heavy and, as Lauren would say, “fist-pumping.”

Lauren looks out at the crowd. Some have never heard her music. She sees strangers, and she sees her friends.

The crowd begins to sway. Lauren runs up to the mic.