Who is Lydia Loveless?

Music | July 15th, 2015

The rocker on her love for pop music and disgust for “women in rock”

It seems that things are only looking up for Lydia Loveless. The singer-songwriter is currently on tour in support of last year’s “Somewhere Else,” an album that garnered critical praise across the board and scored her legions of new fans. There’s even a documentary in the works, cameras trained on Loveless and her band as they toil away at her upcoming fourth album, hoping to answer its titular question, “Who is Lydia Loveless?”

Now hit albums don’t just appear out of happenstance and few 24-year-olds find themselves at the center of a full-length documentary. For Loveless, her current success has been brewing for almost a decade, built on years of writing and recording deeply personal – often biting – songs, steeped in a witch’s brew of rock, country and pop music. Though many of her vocal supporters have been quick to sum up her razor-wire writing and performing as the latest and greatest in the realm of “alt-country,” she’s quick to point out that descriptor, like most heavy-handedly applied genre tags, doesn’t fit right.

“I think people picture me on the bayou with an acoustic guitar a lot, and that’s not really the case,” Loveless says.

She says her upcoming album may surprise many of her newly attracted fans, as her songwriting in recent years has increasingly flirted with straight-up pop music.

“I pretty much only listen to bad dance-pop, so the influence will definitely manifest itself somehow,” she laughs.

Despite the tune-out-the-world songwriting time she carves for herself and her tour van’s stereo being in a current state of “broke-ass,” she’s happiest taking in the high-production bliss of Ke$ha, Katy Perry and even U2, all of whom rank high on her list of dream drinking buddies, as well.

If even a fraction of her poptimism is to be believed, its synthesis with her already sharp writing and her band’s white-hot musicianship ought to launch her into full-blown rock stardom. Just as she works to scribble out the “alt-country” tag thrust upon her, she’s wary of critics segregating her in a disturbingly long tradition of drawing lines in the sand between male and female musicians.

“The label I’d really like to see f--- off and die is the ‘women in rock’ thing, where all these amazingly talented musicians and songwriters are … in a different section of the magazine. I know that they are trying to be complimentary, but it’s actually really insulting. Why is Chrissy Hynde not in the same category as Keith Richards?”

Her complaint hasn’t just come from her recent splashes of favor from the likes of Rolling Stone and SPIN. Touring for years, she’s dealt with countless sound guys talking down to her, as if she were only holding her guitar – which she wields quite menacingly, mind you – as decoration, and she were just a helpless little girl on stage. “This is called a DI [Direct Input]. This is where you plug it in, where it says ‘input,’” she recalls, mockingly. “I had one old bandmate be like, ‘Don’t think I’m going to adjust your mic stand or carry your stuff.’ He wasn’t in the band very long.”

If the question remains, just “Who is Lydia Loveless?” you owe it to yourself, rather than sitting on your hands waiting for her silver-screen exposure, to get an answer in the form of a live, raw-nerve performance.

IF YOU GO:

Lydia Loveless

Monday, July 20, 9 p.m.

The Aquarium, 226 Broadway, Fargo

$10

The rocker on her love for pop music and disgust for “women in rock”

IF YOU GO:

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