Lauren Alaina’s ‘Getting Over Him’ EP Spills Feelings Over Her Public Breakups
Lauren Alaina is leaving the past behind, but not before putting her past relationships into song.
Alaina’s new EP, Getting Over Him (Sept. 4) hones in on her most recent public breakup and her emotions after processing that relationship. The six-song compilation includes two duets: "Getting over Him" with Jon Pardi and “What Do Think of?” with Lukas Graham.
Before the EP took shape, Alaina faced not one, but two breakups. The first was the ending of an engagement to longtime boyfriend, Alex Hopkins. Then came her breakup from Christian comedian John Crist. She jumped straight into competing on Dancing With the Stars after that, and specifically with her relationship with Crist, she didn’t have time to process the downturn.
Lauren Alaina says she's the girl who is always happy and looking to find the positives in any situation, so juggling her happiness and mourning the end of a relationship wasn't the easiest.
After finishing fourth on Dancing With the Stars, she left with more than just a ranking in a competition: She found new strength and confidence. She knew in this next season of life, it was time for her to take the reflection and healing she had experienced while competing on the show, and mold those reflections into songs.
"I felt like if I was going name it Getting Over Him, I gotta put all sides of the breakup in there," Alaina tells Taste of Country and select media during a recent chat.
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Although the EP is about a breakup — her breakup — it's not sad, but empowering.
“This collection of songs is me remembering to love myself when someone else doesn’t,” Alaina says. "I'd rather be alone and have this music, than be in a bad relationship and not have It, so I’ll take it."
There are two songs on the EP that were harder for her to release to the public, simply because of how vulnerable and true to her story they are, starting with "What Do You Think Of?"
"It's really kind of hard for me to listen to, like I almost didn't put it on here," the one-time American Idol star admits. "I remember just being so sad and I was on Dancing With the Stars, and was trying to pretend like I wasn’t sad all the time."
Although she's no longer sad about the breakup — she has grown so much since — Alaina admits that listening to her new music is hard for her, but she's confident in her decision to add it to the EP.
"I'm so thankful that Lukas Graham decided to do it with me, because that made me have the backbone to put it out," Alaina notes. "Everything in it is really true. You know, sometimes you write songs and they are about someone, but not specific to a story. That one is very specific to our story."
She mirrors a similar transparency with "Bar Back," another new track.
"Those two make me cringe a little bit. I get really nervous when I write songs about other people, too, and they are definitely going to know that they are about them. Other people are going to be guessing, but the guy is going to be like [mouth drop]," the singer says.
From what Alaina has shared, she hasn't given a heads up to the people she's written about that these songs are coming, so they will hear it for the first time along with her fans.
“Everything about this has been hard," she says, with the coronavirus pandemic and her breakup(s) in mind, "Except the fact that I was able to really take a deep breath and figure out what I wanted to say. I was gifted time for that."
Lauren Alaina's Getting Over Him EP Tracklisting:
1. “Run”
2. “If I Was a Beer”
3. “Bar Back”
4. “Getting Over Him” (Duet with Jon Pardi)
5. “Seen You in Your Hometown”
6. “What Do You Think Of?” (Duet with Lukas Graham)
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