LØLØ's Alt Z Anthems Hit the Fillmore

Lauren Mandel, known by the musical moniker LØLØ, creates honest, grungy breakup anthems and hot-girl bangers that mix genres and confuse categories. Since the artist's first EP, 2019's Sweater Collection, her music has been described as pop punk, pop rock, future alternative and even Alt Z, a genre that appeared on Spotify's 2022 Wrapped list.

"I don't even know if I have an intended sound, really," Mandel says, reflecting on her music's perceived genres. "I feel like I have a couple of different sides to me — one being upbeat, like pop rock, and another one being more singer-songwriter-y, and I try to get both of those elements in my songs.

"But honestly, I'm not too precious about what people label my music as," she adds. "Everyone always calls it pop punk, when I don't think that it's pop punk at all. But I'm like, you know what? Call my music whatever you want." Someone once described her sound as "psychotically sentimental," and that seems to be the classification that resonates the most with Mandel.

Her distinctive, genre-bending music makes total sense if you consider her formative musical inspirations — artists that range widely from Taylor Swift, Green Day, Simple Plan and Avril Lavigne to Broadway musicals. Lately, she says, the lyrical musings of R&B pop artist Julia Michaels and indie group Boy Genius have been sparking her creativity. Although she can't identify exactly how her favorite artists have influenced her music, she knows their swirling blend of sounds and chord structures is imprinted on her personal brand.

Surprisingly, Mandel didn't grow up writing music — in fact, she had never even considered it. She was a theater kid at heart, and it wasn't until she was in the ninth grade that her guitar teacher encouraged her to pick up the pen. "I was just like, 'Absolutely not. I'm not telling the world my personal secrets, no way,'" Mandel remembers of her initial reaction to her teacher's suggestion. "And he was like, 'I'm not coming back next week unless you try writing a song.'" Once she did start penning lyrics, Mandel inevitably loved it, and she admits to writing "a million shitty songs" before releasing her first EP.

Now her Spotify bio reads as a one-line contradiction of her former self: "I used to write my feelings in a diary but now instead I tell everyone." While she used to be scared of spilling secrets, her lyrical honesty has become a natural reflex; sometimes Mandel thinks she reveals too much. "Sometimes my parents are like, 'Do you really need to be that open on social media and in music?'" she says. "And I'm like, 'Oh, God, am I?' I guess that's not normal. It's not normal — but for artists it is."

Nothing represents the musician's radical honesty better than her newest single, "faceplant." If listeners doubt the validity of the track's lyrics ("Face-planted onto the floor, never felt this feeling before"), one glance at the song's cover image — a picture of Mandel in a hospital gown with stitches in her chin — is enough to convince them.

"I literally face-planted in March," she admits. "I fell and broke both sides of my jaw, my nose and my chin, and I lost a couple of teeth and had to get implants. That was really painful. And I was leaving a guy's house when it happened. In recovery, I was like 'Holy shit, I really fell for him.' I'm just making fun of myself."

After that incident, Mandel could barely open her mouth for several months, let alone sing. "Luckily, I didn't miss any shows or anything. But I definitely missed out on a lot of writing sessions and stuff," she says. "It was really shitty. It was probably the worst time of my life, and I just felt really stupid. You know those moments when you do something and then you're like, wow, if I could just go back one millisecond and do it differently, this wouldn't have happened."

Although she still can't eat hard foods (she experimented with a carrot the other day), her jaw has recovered enough for her to tour. Mandel is on the road with Boys Like Girls, State Champs and the Summer Set, and will be at Denver's Fillmore Auditorium on October 14.

"I'm from Toronto, Canada, and I went on this big U.S. tour, and I looked down to the audience and people were singing, and I was like, 'What the hell, this is crazy,'" Mandel says. "I was in Vegas last night, and I see people singing and I'm like, 'These people from Las Vegas know my songs and they're all singing them to me? This is so wild!' Meeting and seeing all of my listeners and my fans, it's just mind-blowing to me. ... I create music in such a bubble, like on my bed or in my studio, and then you get to sing them, and it's just so rewarding."

LØLØ and Boys Like Girls, Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 North Clarkson Street, 6 p.m. Saturday, October 14. Tickets start at $53.