Country singer Lauren Alaina says the hardworking, faith-filled people of her hometown of Rossville, Georgia, shaped her long before Nashville ever did.
“I come from a long line of hardworking people and believers and dreamers in their own way, whatever their path was,” Alaina told Fox News Digital. Those values carried her from a 15-year-old AMERICAN IDOL contestant to a 31-year-old with a fourth studio album now in stores.
Movieguide® has followed AMERICAN IDOL closely over the years, and faith has surfaced again and again on the show’s stage — from a dedicated “Songs of Faith” episode to contestants who use the platform to talk openly about what they believe. Alaina’s story fits that pattern well. She has spent 15 years building a career after her Season 10 run, and she says the foundation was set long before any judge heard her sing.
That foundation, Alaina explained, wasn’t identical to her family’s.
“Mine obviously looked very different than the rest of my family because my working hard and my dreaming was leaving home and going to a new place, which people don’t do a ton in Rossville, Georgia,” she said.
Still, the habits transferred. “Working hard and being kind to people, and if you work hard, it pays off,” she said of what she took from her hometown, adding that she also picked up on “being kind, being grateful [and] being funny” from the people around her.
Related: Lainey Wilson Says Farming Family Instilled Strong Work Ethic: ‘Rolled Their Sleeves Up’
She traces the work ethic itself to the example set at home. “I do think my work ethic definitely came from watching every one of my family. My mom worked really hard, my dad worked really hard, and my grandparents,” Alaina said.
That family history carries weight now because of loss. Alaina’s father died unexpectedly, and grief runs through parts of her new album, Stages, which she describes as a record built around three phases of her life. “The songs about my dad are definitely the hardest. It’s the biggest loss I’ve ever gone through,” she said.
One of those songs, “Heaven Sent,” reframes the loss through her daughter. Alaina said the track “is about my dad sending my daughter for me to help me heal and move forward” — grief and gratitude sitting side by side, which is often how faith actually works rather than how it gets portrayed on a greeting card.
“I became a mother,” she told Everything Nash of the album’s origin. “I got married. I lost my dad very unexpectedly. Those are really, really big life changes. And I recorded music before those things happened, and then I recorded music as those things were happening, and after they happened. I turned the album in, and was listening to the music and I was like, ‘What am I trying to say here?’ And the word ‘Stages’ came up.”
Looking back at the 15-year-old who walked onto the “AMERICAN IDOL” stage in 2011, Alaina said she’d tell her a decision like that reshapes everything that comes after. “Thank you so much because this decision you’re making changes your life so much,” she said she’d tell her younger self, before pointing to where that decision led. “All the things that you dream of having, you get them…I have this amazing husband and this beautiful little girl and, like all of our dreams came true.”
It’s a tidy bow on a story that hasn’t always been simple — a hometown upbringing, a public loss, a marriage and a daughter, and now an album meant to hold all of it at once. Alaina isn’t claiming the path was easy. She’s claiming it was worth it, and that the people who taught her to work hard and stay grateful get the credit.
Stages is out now.
Read Next: Do Christians Need to Work Hard? Savannah Banana Star Says…
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
