SPOTLIGHT: LYN LAPID

Photo By Caity Krone

Meet singer-songwriter Lyn Lapid and tune into her new album “BUZZKILL.”

Lyn Lapid’s breakout moment came in the form of a sharply written, acoustic-driven critique of the music industry, “Producer Man,” which shot to virality on TikTok in 2020. But with the meteoric rise came a familiar tension for today’s emerging artists: how do you stay authentic while navigating an industry increasingly driven by algorithms?

“I think for a while, I kind of got into this mindset that I had to make music for clicks and for likes and shares,” Lyn admits, reflecting on the early days of her career. “It kind of made music-making a little bit unenjoyable.”

It’s a candid acknowledgement from an artist who, despite garnering over 1 billion global streams and praise from stars like Billie Eilish and Jungkook, is still navigating what it means to make art in the age of virality. But for Lyn, the journey has been about recalibrating, “I was able to just hold a little bit less weight over time to the statistics, the numbers of streams, likes, followers.”

While the balancing act isn’t over, she’s found a more grounded rhythm. “I’m slowly making my way towards having a healthy relationship between the numbers versus making music for myself.”

Lyn Lapid’s early songs captured the intimacy of confessional bedroom pop. However, with buzzkill tracks like “I’ll Be Happy When,” there’s a clear shift.

“Recently I’ve really been digging this artist Olivia Dean,” Lyn shares. “Her music sonically, lyrically, thematically has just been such a huge inspiration.” She especially admires how Dean’s songs translate in a live setting, an aspect Lyn is now actively folding into her own process. “I knew that I wanted to have that as my goal for this recent album.”

It’s a natural evolution for someone whose career began during lockdowns, writing in the solitude of a bedroom with no live shows in sight. “Over the course of my career, I realized how important it is to keep in mind the live aspect of my songs and my music,” she explains. It’s a perspective shift that’s helped her sound grow up with her, turning introspective tracks into moments meant to be shared in real time.

With BUZZKILL, Lyn Lapid is going emotionally deeper than ever before. The album digs into themes of loneliness, belonging, and self-acceptance, but for Lyn, one song in particular stands out as especially cathartic.

Floater Friend was really healing,” she says. “It was most like a diary entry for me to finish and put out.” The track revisits the ache of isolation, drawing a poignant line between her past and present. “It’s kind of just about living in a new city and how it brought me back to my high school days, just being the kid that nobody knew, sitting alone at the lunch table every day for like seven to nine months.”

That quiet honesty hits hard, especially in a world where musicians are often expected to project constant confidence. For Lyn, the move to L.A. shifted her personality to fit into spaces, echoing the chameleon-like survival mode she once knew as a teen. “Doing that once again, but in a new city in my twenties, kind of just brought me back.”

BUZZKILL is enriched in emotional substance, and that meant facing some difficult truths in the writing room. Two tracks in particular, “Floater Friend” and “Backup Plan,” stand out not just for their lyrical weight, but for how raw the process was behind them.

“They’re the saddest songs on the album,” Lyn says plainly. “When I was writing these songs, I was experiencing the things I was writing about in real time.”

That immediacy brought a layer of emotional challenge that went beyond crafting melodies. “Being that vulnerable about situations I was going through in a writing session with a co-writer and a producer is scary, I would say, and pretty challenging.”

Still, it was the support system in the studio that made the vulnerability possible. “Thankfully, I was able to surround myself with co-writers and producers that I have loved working with in the past. So, I felt very safe to really open up about my emotions and my feelings.”

This would all result in two songs that ache with honesty, offering listeners an unfiltered glimpse into Lyn’s inner world, reminiscent that even the most difficult stories to write can be the most impactful when shared.

One of the most hauntingly resonant tracks on BUZZKILL is “Coraline.” “I had been living in a new city by myself for a while at that point,” Lyn recalls, speaking of her early days in Los Angeles. What was supposed to be a season of exploration quickly became something much heavier. “All these clubs, events, parties that I would go to for the sake of not being alone, I had never felt constantly being surrounded by people. I’d never felt so alone, like ever.”

The irony wasn’t lost on her. In a city buzzing with people and opportunities, Lyn found herself feeling more isolated than ever. “It’s really hard to find a true sense of community and belonging in a city like L.A.,” she says. “It’s so different from everything I was familiar with growing up on the East Coast.”

That tension between old roots and new realities forms the heart of “Coraline.” Even trips back home didn’t provide the comfort they once did. “My friends had made new friends at their colleges locally, and I felt like I couldn’t really relate to them anymore,” she explains. “So I felt like both back home and in Los Angeles, nowhere really felt like home anymore.” In Coraline, Lyn captures that aching in-betweenness with stunning clarity, transforming that feeling to art.

“When I was making this album, I didn’t really know how I wanted to wrap it up,” she admits. “It kind of started as just a bunch of songs about being lonely.” As she continued writing, the emotional weight of the material started to build, but the direction remained unclear.

This was until Lyn had a private Instagram account where she’d occasionally post demos, not thinking too much about who might still be following. “All of these songs were written about very real people, close people in my life,” she says. “I had posted these demos… and the people who I had written these songs about found out.”

What could’ve been a creative nightmare, personal subjects confronting her about being named, even if not explicitly, turned into something surprisingly healing. “I was terrified… But it ended up being a very honest and open conversation,” Lyn says. “She allowed me a platform to speak my truth, feelings I’d been bottling up and saving for my music.”

Rather than exploding, the conversation became a turning point not only in that friendship but in the emotional arc of the album itself. “It influenced me to take the album in a certain way where the moral of it was to surround myself with people who cared about me the same way that I care about them.” A shift away from loneliness and into intentional, mutual care helped Lyn find the narrative thread for what BUZZKILL would become.

The title track of BUZZKILL is the anthem of the album, setting the stage for the themes to come, kicking off the journey with humor, irony, and a candid self-awareness.

“When I was writing this album, my brain kept coming back to the word ‘buzzkill,’” Lyn explains. The title reflects a period of her life spent in a new city, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and experiences. “Everywhere I went, I felt like a buzzkill. I felt like I brought the mood down because I’d be meeting so many people that I didn’t quite click with, but I would hold onto anyway just for the sake of not being alone.”

In the track, Lyn pokes fun at her own emotional contradictions. The song’s playful tone is a lighthearted take on all the discomfort and frustration she felt at the time. “I make light of all these emotions that I’ve been feeling,” she shares. “I complain about being at these parties, surrounded by loud music I don’t like, wearing clothes I think are weird, and still going anyway because I don’t want to be alone.”

The track’s irony is built right into the lyrics, like the bridge where she sings: “I really want your pity invite just so I can say that I’d rather stay at home tonight.” It’s a candid moment of self-deprecation that highlights the album’s core tension, the struggle to balance loneliness with the desire for connection.

By opening the album with Buzzkill, Lyn sets the tone for a collection of songs that still feel intimate but are infused with a humor and honesty that make them feel universally relatable.

At first listen, “Death Wish” might seem like a dark title for a song, but Lyn Lapid flips that notion on its head with one of the more lighthearted tracks on BUZZKILL.

The song explores the complex, sometimes awkward dynamics of friendships as they navigate the waters of romantic relationships, specifically, how easily they can be threatened by the presence of a significant other.

“Even though the title sounds so serious, I feel like it’s one of the more funny songs on the album,” Lyn says. The inspiration for the song came from a candid conversation with a close friend while they were shopping at Target, both lamenting their single status. “I remember saying, ‘Man, I’m gonna be single forever. I’m never gonna find love.’ And then my friend was like, ‘I don’t see a problem with that.’”

The real punchline came when Lyn jokingly responded, “You don’t want me to find love?” to which her friend replied, “No, because that person’s gonna take you away from me.” Lyn laughs, “I was like, Yeah, you’re right for that.”

It’s a funny moment, but it bleeds a universal truth about relationships. “We both have friends who’ve gotten into relationships and started prioritizing those over their friendships,” Lyn shares. “And no shade to them at all, it’s just how things go sometimes. But we bonded over this understanding that, if we ever got into relationships, we wouldn’t abandon our friendships for them.”

Death Wish is Lyn’s playful way of calling out this dynamic, using humor to underscore a seriously emotional sentiment: Platonic relationships are just as important as romantic ones. “It’s funny because I say, like, having a death wish for my friend’s boyfriends, it’s just the extreme way to say that these friendships are as important to me as romantic relationships.” In a world that often pressures us to choose one over the other, Lyn’s unapologetic nature embraces the best of both worlds.

As Lyn Lapid gears up for her BUZZKILL World Tour, she carefully considers how to translate the album’s raw emotional depth into a live setting. “When I was writing this album, I had intentionally made most, or all, of the songs focus on the key instruments in my band setup,” Lyn explains. “Bass, keys, drums, and guitar are the foundation, so all of these songs have those instruments as the foreground of the instrumental.”

This careful attention to the live performance element of the album is already paying off. “I just finished tour rehearsals about a week and a half ago, and all these songs translate so well live because I had done that intentionally when we were writing the album,” she says. The synergy between Lyn’s vocal delivery and her band’s performance creates an experience that’s as emotionally charged as the album itself.

For Lyn, the live shows will be a chance to bring the full emotional range of BUZZKILL to her audience. “I think just having my band members play the music live and pairing that with the vocal delivery that I’ve waited so long to perform, that’s how we deliver that emotional depth in the music live,” she adds.

Fans can expect an unforgettable experience as Lyn takes them on a journey through the highs and lows of BUZZKILL, with every note, every word, and every beat reflecting the raw vulnerability and boldness that define the album. The BUZZKILL World Tour promises to be an intimate yet powerful celebration of growth, connection, and the beauty of being unapologetically yourself.

As Lyn Lapid continues to break new ground with BUZZKILL, her journey from bedroom-pop sensation to a bold, genre-blending artist is only just beginning. With her raw honesty, infectious energy, and a world tour on the horizon, Lyn is ready to connect with her audience in ways that feel as genuine and powerful as the music itself.

Ian | Founder of Recently Played

Hi! My name is Ian, and I run all things Recently Played! I believe in putting a face to a name, so please take this time to get to know me!

I started this publication because music has always been a guiding light throughout my life. No matter if I am on the verge of either success or sorrow, the answer is music. Either lifting me higher than I already was or grabbing my hand, directing me to the end of the tunnel, I always turn to music. I craved an environment to discuss all things accustomed to it!

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