Lemon Lord: TO INFINITY AND BE BLONDE

My name is Lemon Lord and I'm a pop music artist living in Los Angeles. I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to share my music and my thoughts with So She Slays. I'd like to start by sharing a question with the readers, and the question is, "What's the freest thing you've ever done?" I don't know where I first encountered this question, but it continues to pull me in, and I reflect on it quite often, dreaming of new ways to answer it. In November of 2020, I released my debut album Be Blonde, and the name for the album came from a slogan I made for myself which read, "To Infinity and Be Blonde," a play on words from Pixar's Toy Story.

I myself am a natural brunette but enjoy the empowerment and absolute delight that comes from the power to live life as a blonde or to have any color hair I choose. My slogan means -- go for your dreams, and be whatever version of yourself you want to be along the way. During the work of writing these songs and lyrics and co-producing the album as a whole, I did a lot of reflection on my life before I was Lemon Lord when I was a professional violinist under my given name and made a living playing violin on television, on albums and with bands and celebrities of all sorts. My desire to achieve a high degree of freedom was born in those days, and there were so many ways that I desperately wanted it. I wanted it creatively, to be able to make art without triangulation or societal approval. I wanted to be free as a woman, to be able to dress and speak the way I wanted without having to walk the familiar but exhausting fine line of intriguing but not insulting my audience, which at that time was almost all men (something that as the years went on, affected me more and more), and I also wanted the freedom to be more than one person, that is -- to pursue more than one dream in a lifetime. This is something that Jim Carrey, Oprah, Seth MacFarlane, and others have done so well. Jim Carrey is of course an actor, but also a painter. Oprah is a journalist, but also an actress, and Seth MacFarlane is a producer and voice actor, but also a jazz singer, for instance. I think one of the freest things I've ever done is to embrace Lemon Lord, my alter ego, and to embrace Nora, the person I was born, as simultaneous personas who both have the right and the obligation to have their dreams realized. Sometimes an opportunity to test the limits of our own freedom comes unexpectedly. I think of the 1998 Grammy's when Aretha Franklin filled in at the last moment for Pavarotti and sang his aria in a way that was absolutely transcendent -- in style, confidence, delivery, and spirit. Anyone can watch that on YouTube. Other times, the opportunity to test the limits of our own freedom has to come from within. We have to make the decision to be the hero that we need, and we have to cherish our vision even if we are the only ones who understand it, acknowledge it, or fully realize how precious it actually is. That's why I continue to ruminate on this question of freedom that I started with, especially during 2020 and during this year of the pandemic when the concept of life, love, and connection was incredibly limited for most people. It will be harder,

I think, to get out of the pandemic than it was to get into it, emotionally speaking. But, in this unique and challenging moment in history, we have an opportunity to try things we've never tried before, and to really show up in the world in a way that makes each one of us proud of ourselves. Maybe we need to skinny dip more often, or maybe we need to wear our best dresses more than once a year. Maybe we need to give ourselves room to grieve the fact that after this pandemic, most of us are not the people who we were a year ago, and in that sense, the world will feel like a new place, to be experienced in some ways for the first time, which can be scary. My album Be Blonde is all about finding the strength to feel all these things head-on and to celebrate life, celebrate ourselves, and never stop dancing, no matter what happens.

Thank you so much for listening to my songs, and I'll see you on Instagram. I believe in you!

Music: songwhip.com/lemonlord

Store: shoplemonlord.com

xo LL