Link copied
Sometimes the best thing you can do with all your worries and anxieties is try to have a little fun with them. That’s exactly what Lauren Morrow is doing in the video for her brilliant new single, ‘Only Nice When I’m High.’
“I’m sorry that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed / There’s a million tiny monsters running circles in my head,” she sings, fully aware of all the disquieting thoughts and feelings that threaten to derail her. But instead of letting them get the better of her, she’s found something that helps her stay on the tracks, as she explained to Holler:
“A few years ago, my husband Jason and I smoked a little joint before we went Christmas shopping,” she told us about the inspiration for the song. “While we were walking through shops and chatting about things, he turned to me and said, ‘You're a lot nicer when you're high.’ He isn't wrong. I struggle with anxiety, and it can make me irritable and pinched up - there are so many thoughts and worries running through my head at all times that it can be really hard for me to cut loose and just flow with life.”
The song has a suitably quirky video directed by Ryan Camp featuring (correct us if we’re wrong here, readers) the world’s first ever muppet doobie - designed and created by Adam Kowalski - dancing around and reassuring Morrow as she tries to navigate getting out of bed, falling out with her husband and getting it together enough to play a show.
“I find that marijuana not only takes the edge off, but it also helps me be my truer self,” explains Morrow, “not one that's rife with tension and self-doubt. The song is a very intimate look inside my brain, my thoughts about myself and how I fit in the world around me. I'm not a huge stoner or anything, but a little toke here and there helps me navigate my life and be the person I know I am inside when my anxiety isn't trying to derail me. I think the majority of the population can relate to that.”
The video is premiering exclusively on Holler below.
After spending more than a decade as the frontwoman of popular Americana band The Whiskey Gentry, Lauren stepped out on her own with her 2018 self-titled debut EP to widespread critical acclaim, but ‘Only Nice When I’m High’ takes her back to the music she spent her younger years obsessing over.
Taken from her forthcoming album, People Talk, it’s no surprise to learn that Lauren Morrow was influenced as much by 90s alternative, Brit pop and 80s new wave bands on this new record as she was country and Americana.
With its refreshingly light-hearted approach to mental health and witty wordplay, it’s reminiscent of Pageant Material era Kacey but with an added indie twist of Fiona Apple and Alanis Morrissette. It’s an intoxicating concoction that gives her undeniably country sound a juicy little kick that’s so often missing in mainstream country pop. It might be the start of a Geek Country revolution.
As a young adult, Morrow was still rattled by adolescent trauma and ultimately felt trapped in Georgia. “I wanted to get away as far as possible,” she remembers, “and by doing so, I was able to disconnect from that baggage, responsibility, and co-dependency I’d felt for my mom as a teen and really spread my own wings and discover myself.”
She moved to Newcastle, England and dug more into her songwriting and eventually found the confidence to perform in front of others. Up until then, she only sang in front of a very small group of trusted friends. Moving to the UK changed Lauren in a way she didn’t fully understand until she came back home to the states. As much as she wanted to get away, she missed the South. She returned home self-assured and with the initial building blocks of her sound.
A firm believer in timing and synchronicities, Lauren knows that every moment in her life thus far has led her to make People Talk. The untapped musical influences, the move to Nashville, the people in her life, her childhood, and decades of touring, writing, and fronting bands has all melded within her to explode in the form of ten songs that express a woman fully formed.
“I couldn’t be prouder of anything in my life,” she says. “It’s real, and it’s me. Finally.”
People Talk will be released on March 31st on Big Kitty Records.
