Lauren Alaina review: NASCAR set freely changes lanes, from country to rock and pop
Lauren Alaina is in her honeymoon phase, and the country singer was intent on spreading the love Sunday as she opened up the final day of the NASCAR Chicago Street Race. “I’m winning in the wife department today, getting to play a show before NASCAR,” she joked with the crowd. Like the Saturday turnout, it was curiously a very small draw.
Alaina’s attempts to coax her newlywed husband to the stage failed, but that didn’t stop her from talking about her other half several times during the set, including remarking on how marriage has made her rethink her longtime songwriting muse.
“I’ve been on a roll with breakup songs the past few years, but I’m writing a new record, and I woke up one day and thought, 'Huh, is this the end of my breakup song era?' … But I decided I’ve gone one left in me.” That slowed-drawn track, “Breaking Up With Single,” is unreleased, but Alaina gifted it early for the NASCAR crowd.
It was the sole ballad punctuating an hourlong set that was otherwise an amplified genre-bender emphasizing Alania’s crossover appeal, easily migrating from country standards to Southern rock and contemporary pop. Her three backup musicians easily could moonlight as a rock troupe. The band slyly added in bars of Metallica and Muse along with slick guitar solos that baited the 29-year-old powerhouse vocalist to quick-switch from twang to gritty rasp.
The effect was most prominent on “One Beer,” Alaina’s collaboration with the rock-country king Hardy. “Who’s already drinking this morning?” she asked, earning a loud affirmative response. “That’s my kind of crowd!”
Back in 2011, the Georgia-born talent found her first taste of fame as the runner up on Season 10 of “American Idol” and she would eventually go on to win awards from CMT, the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association. She’s also the youngest inductee of the Grand Ole Opry. Today, Alaina is still using those “Idol” show cues in her live sets — in particular, her camera-ready personality and an MO for popular mashups. Alaina started the NASCAR set with her biographic tale “Georgia Peaches” bleeding into Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls”; later, her ode to Britney and Christina, “Ladies in the ‘90s,” was paired with Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”
Towards the end of the set, Alaina had one more unreleased, unrecorded song to deliver. Called “Boots on the Ground,” it was dedicated to veterans, including the many servicemen and women she and her band had played to on military bases the past week, as well as her family. “I come from a long line of heroes, who fought in Desert Storm, Vietnam, World War I and World War II, and I always wanted to write a song for them.”
Alaina ended with “Road Less Traveled,” her first No. 1 hit on the Billboard country chart back in 2017, allowing her to reflect on her fortuitous journey. “I’ve been in Nashville the last 12 years writing songs and living out my dream. I’m the luckiest girl in the whole world.”