Laura Marano is no stranger to the entertainment industry having starred in ‘Austin & Ally’ as a teen and in movies like ‘The Perfect Date’ on Netflix, but now she’s carved out a new space in the industry.

With the pursuit of a career in music, Laura is a creative force to be reckoned with. Since launching her music career Laura has had great success with over 40 million total streams on Spotify. We caught up with Laura to learn more about her new deluxe ‘You’ EP, what inspires her creatively and more.

You released a remixed version of ‘Honest With You’ in April. Can you tell me a bit about the process of making it?

It’s one of my favourite songs that I felt really connected to right away. The song meant a lot to me based on where I was emotionally at the time. I then wrote another song that that ended up on my EP called ‘Lie to Me’, which showed a different perspective and side of the story. So my EP was really born from the concept of, “what’s on the other side of the screen?” There are always two sides to every story and in the case of relationships there are always different perspectives. So with that premise,  I was really quite excited to continue that by doing some duet versions, and previous versions of a lot of my songs on the EP.

What was it like collaborating with Alextbh on this song?

When I first found out about the singer Alextbh I was actually  thinking about having him on one of my earlier songs that I released last year. But it took a little while for us to officially start working together but I knew I wanted his voice on the song and I was really amazed when he recorded it. I was in LA and he was in Malaysia so he recorded it and sent it over. When I heard it I was amazed at how great he sounded right away.

Were there any specific sources of inspiration for the ‘You’ deluxe EP?

It’s an interesting question to answer, because I guess I have to kind of categorize the different inspirations. Of course, there’s personal inspirations, the different kind of experiences that I brought to each of the songs on the EP and then theres musical inspirations that I was really drawn to. There are plenty of artists that inspire me and different genres. But there wasn’t anyone specific that I was like, “Oh, I love this person’s music, and I want to kind of emulate it.” I think for me, I was just really drawn to the kind of moodier and darker tones that I didn’t really have as much. But I love this slightly darker place that this music is kind of living in. I felt like we really did accomplish that with the different music collaborators that I’ve worked with.

Lyric wise and songwriting wise, it definitely came from a few different experiences and some very personal places. It was very based on falling in love, falling out of love, falling in love, again, the different ups and downs and what happens when you try to look at the other side of the relationship, the other side of the story, you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and exploring what happens then.

Do you have any rituals that you follow when you’re getting into a creative headspace before writing?

Yeah I’m a big tea drinker. So even just having that time of making the tea and going through the process helps. Sometimes I’ll have a specific, tea that I drink, and I’ll make a ginger, lemon and honey tea from scratch. So that time and just kind of being in my own zone, and getting that ready is weirdly helpful. Other times it helps to just make the time and space for the creativity to come in that moment. I’ll dedicate time to it, like “today I’m writing  at 1pm”  and that opens up my creativity too.

But there are also a lot of times where I just get an idea that’s comes to me out of nowhere. It almost always comes near the end of the day or late at night. I feel like I’m more creative near the end of the day. I feel more productive early in the morning, but not necessarily as creative. So creativity wise, I can sometimes have an idea that just comes to me like my song ‘Run’ that I wrote last year, that’s on my EP. It was a song that came to me when I was having a hard day. I was at my home alone, and just kind of started singing it. Over the course of a few days I ended up writing that song.

Are there any words of advice that you live by?

I think the biggest one that I have definitely said before, but it’s just something that really resonates with me, is not thinking of failure as the opposite of success. I think that it is such a vital mindset that I personally struggle with. Fear of failure really makes you feel stuck in place and it doesn’t allow you to grow. I think failure is something that we shouldn’t be afraid of but something that we should weirdly embrace as hard as it can be. Because when you don’t, you push yourself and you don’t end up failing, you don’t end up learning and you don’t know any better. So, I know for me, there are still moments that I struggle with, “should I do this? And what if it fails?” I really try to stop that mindset in its tracks as it’s happening and remind myself if I truly want to do it and if I’ll feel happiness while doing it. I always try to push myself to do it, because I think the only way to really find yourself and to really grow is to push yourself out of your comfort zone and push yourself out of your comfort zone is to push past anything familiar.