Lauren Jauregui Talks Believing In Her Own Songwriting Skills

Lauren Jauregui takes over the cover for Ladygunn magazine’s new issue.

Here’s what the 21-year-old “Expectations” singer shared:

On getting over imposter syndrome as a songwriter: “The main lesson I learned [while finding the confidence to write my own songs] was that I was the one holding myself back. There was no one actually stopping me but me. It was my fear of failure and rejection that was stopping me because I love music and art that much. I love consuming it and there are so many incredible artists out in the world right now who inspire me, who I’d like to be like in some ways. But at the end of the day, that’s not how it goes. All of those people got to where they got to because they never gave up on themselves and they always worked hard and got better and practiced. It was about realizing that and telling myself over and over again, even when I didn’t believe it, ‘You can do this. This is what you do. You know you can write.’ You can’t wait for someone else’s approval or for someone else to tell you that you can do something just to be like, ‘Oh shit, I’m actually good at this.’”

On toxic masculinity/why the world is in the state it’s in: “Toxic masculinity is one of the main reasons the world is in the state that it is right now. It’s toxic to want to destroy another because you don’t understand them. It’s toxic the amount of wars we have, all of them started by men—and mostly over ego. The fact that we value ego and money over human life stems from toxic masculinity. It’s this power play of, ‘I’m important, and I do a lot, and I am powerful.’ I feel like that 100 percent contributes to a lot of the shit that we see going on today. If you feed your ego too much, and you don’t listen to your actual gut, it’s always about how much more you can obtain. It’s insatiable.”