A Conversation with Laleh – HuffPost 10.8.14

Mike Ragogna: Laleh, your new EP Boom contains the song “Some Die Young,” which became a healing anthem after the Oslo terror attacks of 2011. It was a Norwegian #1 release, certiefied platinum 14x and you performed it at the Nobel Peace Concert where you and Bruce Springsteen were the only non-Norwegian artists to perform. It brings a lot of weight and credibility to your debut US EP. What are your memories of that time and those events and since it ties-in to your personal history, catch us up on that as well.

Laleh: It was an honor for me to be a part of a healing process for an entire country, and to be able to do something like that. Even though I wrote the song, they co-created it in a way and gave it a purpose. That’s very inspiring and makes me wanna continue to write songs.

My personal story definitely affects what I write, but I was a very curious child, and always asked a lot of questions. I would ask question after question about life and death. In the end, the answer is always the same, because we will all die eventually. I have a song that might be on the album that’s called “Sway” where I sing:

“What do the trees know,

letting their leaves go,

What do the trees see,

that is beyond me,

sway,

beauty in the fall,

in the loss, autumn leaf, sway.”

MR: Does this experience or success or impact encourage you to creatively continue down “Some Die Young”‘s musical and lyrical path?

L: Ever since I started writing songs, I’ve been writing about life and death and the big issues that I normally don’t talk about with other people. I mean, there aren’t many situations in life where you can have those conversations with people, it’s much easier to write songs about it.

MR: What has the whole experience left you or taught you?

L: I wrote this song when I was sitting alone at home. I never thought so many people would relate to it. The only way to know if a song is worth finishing is if it makes me cry or really feels like an out of body experience. I wanna write songs that are bigger than me, that are larger-than-life and make it all worthwhile.

MR: Laleh, go over the rest of the EP, its topics and perhaps its creative process?

L: The EP starts with my song “Colors” where I sing “I had a talk with the shadow and the light fighting for me. They said put your tricks aside and for once believe. How can I, I dont know how to.” And then there’s a choir that sings to me while I’m stuck in the light and in darkness saying, “Just because it’s black in the dark doesn’t mean there is no color, colors colors!” And then colors take over the song. So in the chorus, I wake up and realize everything’s not just black and white.

Then we have “Boom” and some of the lyrics are, “Stand by me, we leave the dirt in the earth to bloom. Tell the morning we’ll be there soon. Before you go, let your heart go Boom.” I just did a lyric video for it where I filmed people on the street looking directly into the camera, with deep feeling. I feel we are all rushing through life and in this song I suggest, “Before you go, let your heart go Boom.”

The third song on my EP is “Some Die Young” where I balance the title with “You better hold on. so many things I need to say to you. Please don’t let me go. We said we would die together.” It’s that feeling you have with a best friend saying, lets hold on to this life, let’s live forever together, hold on, survive.

The next song is “Stars Align,” where I ask myself, God and the stars if they will align. And later on in the song I sing, “This world is in mad hands, the world that I’m so much apart of. It’s a beauty when the streets are wet, there’s a sense of hope and change to it…and I love it how the moon shines, but will our stars align?”

In the final song “Elephant,” I sing that I was born in the desert, and “I can hear the children play with the guards of the jail. I’m thinking of a new name that I can give my self, one day I’ll be myself, one day I’ll be my own.” I also sing about hitting the devil on the nose and that me and my sisters will “rise up like an elephant from the mud, in your care free sleep we will break free.”

MR: By titling your EP Boom, are you hoping for it have a strong impact?

L: I feel my heart go “boom” with the release of this album, but the main reason is that one of my songs on the EP is called “Boom.”

MR: Who were your musical influences and do you feel your moving country to country possibly have introduced you to musics you might not otherwise have been exposed to?

L: I’m not sure… It’s always difficult to know who and why we are who we are, or who I would have been without the kind of experiences I’ve had in my life–that’s a philosophical question. My best guess though, would be yes, I’m definitely influenced by my past. But it’s also important to me that my music and my art are not overshadowed by my story. I always try to remember that I have the power over how I tell my story today.

MR: Given your unique experiences to this point, your perspective will no doubt be unique or even powerful. What advice do you have for new artists?

L: Do the things that really matter to you and those that really make your life meaningful–that will be your path for success. Nowadays, success is not always what we expect, which is also important to remember.

MR: What are you hoping to achieve in the next couple of years?

L: I’m hoping my music will reach everyone out there that’s ready for me. I’m hoping to have the kind of success an uncompromising artist is able have in this world, and I’m hoping for more happiness and to see new things.