Today we’d like to introduce you to Leah Marlene.
Hi Leah, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Leah Marlene has been making music since she was big enough to hold a guitar. Taking third place on season 20 of American Idol gave her career a boost, but she’s been working intently on her music, singing, and songwriting for as long as she can remember. She already has two self-produced albums; The Space Between and Many Colors, as well as an EP, Arrow, and several singles to her credit.
“My dad was in a band called Honeymoon Suite long before I was born, and the house was always full of instruments,” she recalled. “I had my hands on them before I even knew what they were. I started learning guitar when I was eight and started singing for family, friends, and at school. I got my first paying gig when I was nine, doing covers with my dad backing me on guitar and singing harmonies. We played coffee shops, farmer’s markets, and the little Circle in uptown Normal [Illinois].”
“My mom started a YouTube channel for me when I was eight, but I didn’t write my first good song till I was in high school. I had gotten my heart broken. When a song came out of it, I wanted to keep writing and see what else I could come up with. During that time, my dad had been going to Nashville for co-writing sessions. After I had a few songs under my belt, he offered to take me on his next trip.”
By the time she was 14, Marlene was joining her father on regular writing trips. “My dad set me up with some of his co-writers and found me some open mics. I quickly took over booking my trips, cold emailing people, and setting up sessions. After high school, I moved to Nashville and went to Belmont University to study songwriting. I’d always enjoyed learning, but I fell into a dark time pretty early in my college years. I had hit rock bottom. Then Covid happened. A lot of music came out of that time. I produced my first album, The Space Between, as I was in the thick of my healing journey.”
After pushing herself through her second year of college, it became clear that it was time to move on. Marlene dropped out and headed home to Illinois. “I was less focused on music and more focused on my well-being and my desire to escape and travel the world. Then American Idol contacted me about an audition. Being on TV was the last thing I would have considered that year, but I had a strange gut feeling about it and so did my mom. So I thought, ‘Why not just do it for the fun of it, no expectations?’ and that’s exactly what I did.”
She impressed the judges from her first audition. Luke Bryan said, “You’re tremendous. You’re just entertainment in a little life form. There’s nothing about you that we’re going to be able to predict.”
That sentiment remained true for the rest of Marlene’s American Idol journey. She continued to step up her game and reveal the many shades of her artistry with every round, from performances Lionel Richie hailed as “spiritual possession,” to bringing Katy Perry to tears on multiple occasions. Leah “hold(s) the room in the palm of (her) hand,” when she sings, Perry said. “If I could go get a 12-foot ladder and stand on that for your standing ovation, that’s what I wanted to do,” Bryan said.
The judges all agreed Marlene “can do anything and she has just begun.”
For the season finale, Perry joined Marlene to perform her legendary hit, “Firework.” “I found out about the duet with Katy a few days before,” Marlene said. “We had one rehearsal and my dad played guitar with us. It was a really special moment.” As her time on Idol was nearing its end, the program released a single of her song “Flowers.” It hit #6 on the iTunes chart and got more than 500,000 hits on Spotify. “Releasing ‘Flowers’ on Idol was a very full circle moment. Having just gone through the hardest few years in my life before the show, then less than a year later, getting to share my song of hope with millions of viewers was surreal.”
Just before she went on Idol, she had strategically released her second self-produced album, Many Colors. It picked up over half a million plays while she was on the show.
After Leah’s American Idol journey came to a close in May of 2022, Leah was determined not to waste the precious momentum and opportunity being on a national TV show afforded her. She quickly moved to Nashville, launched a Patreon, and booked a hometown show that ended up selling close to 5,000 tickets to concertgoers from 30+ states. Leah would go on to spend the majority of 2022 and much of 2023 traveling around the world playing all kinds of shows. Between her travels, Marlene has been hyper-fixated on writing her most authentic and creative songs yet. “I’m writing a lot of music and taking my time. The art is too important to rush.”
Leah Marlene’s music is informed by her deep desire to move souls. “I’m a lover of people,” she said. “I hope that my music will meet you exactly where you are and help you feel whatever it is you need to feel in any given moment.” On stage, she’s full of quirky banter. “If you come to my show, you’re going to feel like we’re best friends by the end of it.” Her set will transport you on a journey through time, genre, and feeling.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I hit one huge bump in the road in 2019. I hit rock bottom mentally and my ability to function completely crumbled for a long time. There’s so much I can say about this time, and I am happy to answer follow-up questions, but I don’t want to bore you with a bunch of scatterbrained details haha. It took me about 2 years to start to come back to myself again.
That period of my life completely changed just about everything about myself and the way I perceive the world, in a really beautiful way I think. Coming out of this time, I had planned to go be a nomad and travel the world, free of any thoughts of the music industry. Then (plot twist) American Idol reached out. I had the strangest gut feeling and opened myself to the opportunity. I was able to be my most grounded, joyful, authentic self on that show because of what I had just gone through the two years prior.
The period coming off of American Idol was very confusing and difficult. Although I had already been working in the industry for years before, it was very challenging to know the best path forward in such a unique situation. I had tremendous momentum behind me and the work ethic to make the most of it. But I had no true guidance or direction. I felt like my energies were spread over so many scattered areas just trying to find the right place to land, and I had wished at the time that those energies could have been placed into much more strategic and effective decisions if only the right person or team had come along.
It was hard to see a lot of my friends from the show having people join their teams and help them bridge the gap of this crazy experience when I felt so in the dark about how to make the most of the unique position, I was in. I met with anybody and everybody I could think of, and I continued to feel increasingly confused and misunderstood. I don’t fit into a box, and I never will, and it was hard to find people on the industry side who wanted anything to do with that at the time.
Thankfully, I now have slowly but surely found a few people who embrace the eccentricity of my art. There are people in my corner now that I wish I knew then.
But I grew and learned so much in the not knowing, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’m still running this operation on my own, with the help of my lovely mother and booking agent. And every day still feels like I’m shooting arrows into the abyss. But I think life is the same way. Nobody knows what they’re doing, we are all just giving it our best shot. I’m just happy to be on my journey and timeline, knowing that I’m making the art that is most genuinely me.
I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a songwriter, producer, artist, performer, blah blah blah. I think my main focus is on writing and everything else that follows. I love to move through genres, sounds, and various influences from all the music I’ve absorbed over the years.
I am desperate to create something that I’ve never heard before, something that feels fresh and weird. And although everything “new” is still borrowed in some way/shape/form, this desire shapes the way I approach music. I also tend to be a pretty bubbly, quirky, warm person which I think is also a part of what may draw people towards me and my music. There’s not a separation between myself and the music I make, it’s all one thing.
I have several moments in my career that I feel very proud of. I think learning how to produce and release my first self-produced project was a big moment for me at the time. And obviously, my American Idol journey is also something I feel very proud of, but on a very personal level. It has nothing to do with how far I made it on the show. I just feel so proud of myself that I was able to enter into a very intense, high-pressure situation and find so much joy, stay grounded, and put my most authentic foot forward.
Especially after coming out of such a terrible 2 years before. I proved to myself that I am capable of so much more than I ever imagined, and that’s a really powerful thought. Also, the way my hometown came together to support me when I was on the show was mind-blowing. I am so proud that something that I did has the power to bring people together in such a meaningful and joyful way on the scale that it did.
I am actually about to release a new EP on FEB 9th called, “We’re All Buying into a Dream”. This project is a small selection of songs I’ve written in the past year and a half since coming off the crazy whirlwind of American Idol. The rollercoaster trajectory of the whole experience left me with a lot of questions to answer for myself.
Lyrically, the EP is the beginning of the process of asking those questions. It’s a reflection of what it means to love, to dream, and to be human. Musically, it’s a distillation of all the music I’ve ever loved. It kind of feels like a re-introduction to me as an artist. An opening statement to all the music yet to come.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
In general, I would define success as the ability to find joy in the small moments of the day-to-day and to be able to love (and receive love) well.
In a career sense, the broad and simple dream is to be able to create art I love and share it with the world and be able to make a comfortable living off of that. With the caveat of being able to do so at a sustainable pace without the chronic stress that it’s so easy to fall into as an independent artist.
But there are so many tiers of success that can be found within the journey of working towards that dream.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.leahmarlene.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leahmarlenemusic
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leahmarlenemusic
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/_LeahMarlene
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/LeahMarleneMusic
- Other: https://www.patreon.com/leahmarlene
Image Credits
Davis Smith, Sarah Brianne, and Samuel Greenhill
