LO RENZ’s ‘Coming of Age’ Is the Song She Needed to Hear
There’s a desk, a laptop, a very long, tiring day, and one question looping in LO RENZ’s head: is this how everyone feels? She didn’t just answer it. She wrote it.
That song is “Coming of Age,” her newest single, and she says it matters more to her than anything she has released. An independent artist from Southern California, LO RENZ went from posting covers on SoundCloud during lockdown to releasing her debut single “111” in 2025, then her first EP The Obsession and “Nobody Else”, in 2026. Now she is closing the year with the first song she has written that isn’t about a relationship.
“I want people to feel seen, and I want them to feel like they’re not alone in having these feelings and this experience.”
The song that isn’t about love
LO RENZ wrote “Coming of Age” in a single day, starting from exhaustion and ending with something she calls “such an honest song.”
Do you have a process for writing a song, or does it just happen?
Honestly, each one is pretty different. For “Coming of Age,” I was sitting at this desk doing work and I was just so overwhelmed and exhausted. I was like, oh my gosh, is this how everyone feels? Am I ever going to feel fulfilled? So I opened up my laptop and I was like, I need to write about this, because it’s so relatable, especially nowadays. Everyone’s struggling financially. Everyone’s trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. It literally just came out. This one was a really, really lucky one that just kind of happened.
She started and finished it the same day, on a single sheet of paper. She crossed out two words and left everything else exactly as it was. “The lyrics were flowing out of me like there was no tomorrow. I’ve only had a few experiences like that.”
I read the lyrics and when I listened, I thought, yes, everyone is going to feel this. Is that what you wanted?
Yes, girl, that’s it. It’s such an honest song, and the only song so far that I’ve written that hasn’t been about a relationship or love. It’s about me and life and the progression and everything. So it’s really important to me.
It also sounds different from anything she has released before. She wanted something slower and lower-key, and the result is warm even though the lyrics are sad. “It aches your heart, but it’s also like, okay, I’m not the only one that thinks this or feels this way.” She didn’t plan for it to sound comforting, but she’s glad it did. “It has its own story and its own voice.”
I also asked whether she really believes the worries in the song are small, or whether that’s something she tells herself. “Probably both,” she said. “As much as my feelings are valid, my problems are very small in comparison to what a lot of people are going through.”
“Everyone in their own way, no matter what age you are, is feeling some sort of variation of the song.”
A meadow at sunset, a car at night
I always associate music with places, so I asked her where “Coming of Age” would live if it were a movie. She thought about it for a second, and then the image came fast.
If this song were a place or a movie, what would it be?
I feel like it would be set in a very tall grassy meadow during sunset. I just imagine slow motion, running through the meadow, and you’re by yourself, and it’s you in the world and that’s it. But it also has the duality of being a night-driving song. When I was mixing it, I would always listen to it in my car, a lot of the time at night, and I would get so sad. I’m like, oh my gosh, this is so intense.
I told her the sunset struck me, because it’s beautiful but it ends. “I love that,” she said. That duality, something lovely that is also slipping away, is all over the song, and it’s exactly what she hopes listeners recognize in themselves.
What do you hope someone who feels stuck takes from this song?
Everyone is confused. Whether you’re in high school wondering where you’re going to go to college, or you’re out of college wondering what you’re going to do with your life, or you’re in your mid-50s thinking, oh my gosh, my life is halfway over, what have I done? The future is so delicate and so unknown, and it is very scary, especially right now. But I hope people take away that they’re not alone in feeling scared, and that if we all come together and have community and love for one another, everything will be okay.
“Everyone in their own way, no matter what age you are, is feeling some sort of variation of the song.”
The song talks to her younger self as much as to who she is now. So I asked what a sequel would say if she wrote it at 30. She laughed. “I’d be like, girl, stop worrying so much.”
Eight years old, a vocal teacher and a different dream
That conversation about time got personal fast. I told her I’m 21 and already feel like I’m running out of it, and she understood immediately. Her younger sister had just turned 21, and she said those three years feel close and far at the same time. We agreed you grow up a lot in between.
What have you figured out at 24 that you didn’t think you could?
More independence, and that I’m okay being alone. When I was younger I was so codependent, I couldn’t be by myself. I’d be like, well, what now? But now it’s like, okay, I have all these things going for me, and it’s my one life, I’m going to do what I want to do.
That independence shows in how she works, too. Still, she admits that saying things out loud is harder for her than putting them in a song. “In real life, I’m a big overthinker and pretty indecisive,” she said. “In a song, you can communicate one lyric, and it’s up to the listeners to decide how they interpret it.”
To understand how she got here, you have to go back to when she was eight. Her parents signed her up with a vocal teacher, and the first songs she remembers singing were “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus and “Love Story” by Taylor Swift. The dream back then looked very different. “The goal was like, let’s get you on America’s Got Talent or something,” she said. “Now it’s so different, having the freedom to do what I want to do.”
Her parents have noticed that shift too. They have always supported her, but now they see the career as something realistic, because she is the one steering it. The covers came first. Then, in high school, something changed.
When did you realize “this isn’t a cover anymore”?
Probably in high school, when I wrote my first original song. It was about a previous relationship that just went down the drain. I posted it on SoundCloud and it got a pretty good amount of traction for never putting anything out. So I was like, okay, this is something I seriously want to do.
The real turning point wasn’t a number, though. It was the moment she stopped being embarrassed to say it out loud. Her friends and family had always told her she was talented, but once she told them this was what she wanted for her life, they understood it was more than that.
“It’s not just a hobby to me. It’s my heart.”
Looking back, she can barely believe the shy girl from lockdown posted anything at all. If she could talk to her now, the advice would be simple.
What would you tell the version of you posting covers during lockdown?
Keep going. Everyone’s worried about themselves more than they’re worried about you, and if it’s something you love to do, you need to do it, no matter what.
The Obsession and everything behind the curtain
The song that locked it in came later, around midnight, in her bedroom. “111” was her debut single and her first release on every streaming platform. “This one was so catchy, I was like, okay, I need to put this out.” She didn’t expect much from it.
When did you first realize people outside your circle were listening?
When I released “111.” It got a crazy amount of streams for a first song, way more than I was expecting. We broke 2,000 in one week, and streams were coming from all over the country. It kind of locked it in, like, okay, I’m meant to do this.
She still carries that song into everything she writes: a love for real outros instead of a repeated chorus, and a sound she says you can always trace back to it. But going from a single to a full project was a different kind of challenge. She came up with the idea for The Obsession a year ago, and since she’s independent, almost everything landed on her. For the first time, she brought in a mixing engineer. “I needed someone to take something off my plate,” she said. “I can’t do this alone.”
How did it feel when it finally came out?
So much fun, but so much work. The marketing, the social media, the photo shoots, so much was going into it, and a lot of people didn’t see how much time was going into it. The day it released I felt so emotional, because it’s an expansion of me as a person.
That invisible work is what she wishes more people understood about independent artists. Her first piece of advice is to find your people. “You need to surround yourself with like-minded people, and people who love and support you no matter what you do.” The second is to remember everything that happens before a release. “They don’t see me crashing out over the chords or the mixing, or all the trial and error to get it right.”
But before “Coming of Age,” there was “Nobody Else,” released on October 2 and reviewed here at Frontlight. I wanted to know where she was emotionally when she wrote it, and her answer had a twist we didn’t see coming.
When you wrote “Nobody Else,” were you still in it or already on the other side?
I was on the other side of it. I was writing it as past tense. But then someone on your team at Frontlight did a song review, and their take was completely different from what I had imagined. I was like, wow, it works both ways. It could be, I don’t want to kiss nobody else but you, or, I don’t want to kiss nobody else ever again, I’m done.
Heartbreak is where a lot of her songs start, but she’s clear that pain doesn’t automatically make them good. “It’s so much easier to pull from that place of hurt. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good, though. It’s a lot of trial and error.” And sometimes the story isn’t even hers. Her second song, “Ventriloquist,” was about a coworker’s relationship. She never told her it was about her. “But she definitely listened to it.”
Influences and what comes next
If there’s one thing LO RENZ refuses, it’s being stuck in one sound. “Each song in my brain is its own universe,” she said, and for every new one she makes a small playlist of references to set the mood. Above all of them is Stevie Nicks, “musically and also in work ethic.” What comes next will be a turn away from “Coming of Age”: “more pop, more high energy, just something fun.”
She dreams big about collaborations, but she starts small.
Who would you love to collaborate with?
Honestly, anyone, famous or not. Since I’m so small right now, I just want to meet people in the industry and hear their takes on my music. But if I had to pick, I’d want a pop girly, maybe Olivia Rodrigo, and a really great producer, maybe Tame Impala, because I love that synth, psychedelic rock sound. I would die if that ever happened.
A song you wish you wrote?
“Deja Vu” by Olivia Rodrigo.
A song you listen to in secret?
One Direction, but that’s not really a secret, because I’m still obsessed with them.
A song that defined your teenage years?
Another One Direction song, “Midnight Memories.”
A question nobody ever asks you that you’d love to answer?
What are you listening to lately? I discover new music every day and I’m always making playlists. I would go crazy.
So we ended the call with a promise: she would send us recommendations. For now, the best one is hers. Press play at sunset, or at night in the car. She says it works both ways.
About the Artist
LO RENZ is an independent singer-songwriter from Southern California. She started vocal lessons at eight and began posting covers on SoundCloud during lockdown, before writing her first original song in high school.
Her debut single “111” crossed 2,000 streams in its first week. In 2026 she released her first EP The Obsession, which she handled almost entirely on her own, and “Nobody Else.” “Coming of Age,” her first song that isn’t about a relationship, closes her year.
If you love Olivia Rodrigo’s heartbreak, Stevie Nicks’ storytelling and songs that sound best on a late-night drive, LO RENZ belongs on your playlist.
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