Two-time Grammy Award-winning artist Lauren Daigle is not immune to criticism, and in fact, has received more than her fair share of hate since becoming an artist a few years ago.
In an interview with the Christian Post, the twenty-eight-year-old artist shared how she deals with the hate, and on her future as a Christian artist.
Daigle explained that she has been asked by a few people if she plans to change her music, now that it is played on secular radio stations, and what her plan is for the future of her music.
“I’m not leaving anybody. Someone asked me, they said, ‘Hey, now that you’re mainstream, are you going to change your content?’ I said, ‘If I changed the content that would change who I was in order to meet a format, and the format (audience) that is actually receiving this. Why would I change? It would make me inauthentic,’” she explained.
“There’s nothing in me that’s going to change. It’s loving where I came from and loving where I’m going. That’s how it is,” Daigle said.
The singer went on to address the pressure and anxiety that can build while she’s on tour, and how she handles the hate that comes her way.
“Pressure is a real thing and I think there are times where you have to acknowledge it and then times where you just have to tell it to be quiet. ‘Just be quiet. You can’t control me,’” Daigle shared.
“I think that a lot in life. Like with social media, there can be moments of positivity and joy, and there can be moments of criticism and pain. And that can get really difficult, but as long as you focus more on the positive …”
She added that there are always going to be people that like you, and people that don’t, and the magnitude of these opinions just increases as your fame does.
“I’m that person that can have a million people say, ‘I love you,’ and then that one person say, ‘but I don’t.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait, why? What did I do?’ I think that is perpetuated by social media,” Daigle added.
The Louisiana native shared that when she faces these moments of self-doubt and insecurity, she turns to God, and focuses her mind on being still.
“If you just have moments of getting away, stepping back for a second, being still, and it’s those moments, honestly, that I find myself collecting myself. And then I can go back into the war zone of negative things that are told about me,” she explained.
“I’m girded up with a strength that it supersedes all of the unkind words,” Daigle shared. “‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.’ It ain’t true!! Words have power. There’s power of life and death in the tongue. So I think we need to celebrate the words that bring life more than the ones that don’t. Stop spreading mean messages.”
Back in March at a Look Up Child tour event, Daigle shared how she works through anxiety.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m an anxious person until anxiety comes,” Daigle explained. “It happens a lot. There are times when it’s like ‘this isn’t me!’”
She shared that one day, she felt convicted over one specific Bible verse, 1 John 4:18 which reads, “Perfect love casts out all fear.”
“I listened to that over and over again,” Daigle explained.
“I know someone who loves me beyond my wildest dreams,” she said. “He has a love that is so rich for me. He’s actually looking out for yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
“So, even now, as an adult when more anxiety has been added to my life, I have to say ‘OK God, I want to know what you see for tomorrow. Can you come and give me that peace, so that I can rest tonight? I might have fear here, but If I really believe in that perfect love, I can push that aside,’” the singer said.