From TikTok to the Grammys? Vocal powerhouse Lauren Spencer-Smith connects with Gen Z
LOS ANGELES — Think of Lauren Spencer-Smith as a one-stop shop for Gen Z's most pressing emotional needs.
"Whatever you're crying over, I'll validate it," the 19-year-old Canadian pop singer told her young, mostly female audience during a recent sold-out concert — her first-ever headlining gig — at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. "Because I cry over everything."
Dressed in high-waisted jeans and an oversized denim shirt, Spencer-Smith was introducing "Flowers," one of several garment-rending ballads she's released this year with the clear goal of getting roomfuls of people to howl along with her word for anguished word. That's certainly what happened at the Troubadour during "Flowers," in which the singer looks back at a failed relationship with the brutal clarity of hindsight; it happened even more strikingly during Spencer-Smith's closer, "Fingers Crossed," which she called "the song that changed my life."
Similar to "Flowers" in its stately melody, its sparse arrangement and its theme of romantic betrayal — in this one she concludes that her ex wasn't just
