Lorelei Marcell doesn’t feel like every other pop star on the move. Only a week after finishing her run as the opener for Jesse McCartney’s All’s Well Tour, Lorelei returned to the studio and began preparing for new shows. She’s busy, and she’s working hard. When we talked on the phone, Lorelei battles spotty cell service. She has to plant herself in one place, so her stories and laughter come through clearly.
There is a lot of pop spirit in Lorelei’s approach to music. She’s going through the transitions we see in the best pop stars. Only a year and a half past her debut album, her old songs feel more like a moment in time than her current reality. She’s more selective about her releases than she was when she moved to Los Angeles from Boston at 18. Her music is finding (just a little) more bite than before, and she’s mixing genres.
Lorelei has always been interested in music. Growing up she had other loves like English class, and she knows her passion for mental health awareness could have become a career of its own. Music always felt like more. “It always felt really really important to me,” she shared. “I never had that in common with my family or friends growing up…It’s always felt more personal, and I think that’s why I really got into songwriting.” Lorelei dove in headfirst when she became a teenager, using music as an outlet that eventually led to her moving across the United States to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music.
As for never having a backup plan, Lorelei says that kind of determination is the only way to move forward with music. “It’s kind of the way you have to be,” she said. “I feel like I’m constantly living in this state of delusion. ‘Yep. This is it. It’s gonna happen.'” That belief pushes her through recording sessions that range from four to eight hours and the constant work of figuring out who she wants to be and her sound from project to project.
She says her sound is a work in progress. “I think, in a lot of ways, I’m still searching for that in every session and everything that I do,” she said. It’s not about picking a genre. Lorelei is deciding how she wants to connect with others and herself. “I think it just comes from really knowing my voice. I think vocally there are a lot of things that I lean into that I don’t necessarily lean into in my writing all the time. I love singing R&B music, and I grew up taking jazz classes in high school. And I was really into that world of music which I think betters myself in the lane of pop music that I’ve chosen…I also draw a lot of inspiration from the people I listen to and what I subjectively deem is good music.”
For Lorelei, range is one of the biggest features of good music and good touring. She takes inspiration from the rock music her dad listened to when she was growing up. The female artists she saw dominating the charts and the stage are a source of power in her live performances. “I think I always saw these female icons like P!nk or Alicia Keyes—obviously Alicia is much more pop-soulful—but I think I just saw them being powerhouses on stage.” She feels more subdued in day-to-day life, avoiding confrontation—”Inherently, I’m not a sassy person,”—but on stage, she can show everything she feels and the power in expressing those emotions.
As music today becomes more genre-blended, Lorelei is poised to create something unique. We discussed the moves that today’s pop icons are making, including Sabrina Carpenter’s country influences on Short n’ Sweet. “Maybe this is controversial, but I think genres have started becoming defined by the artists. I think Sabrina Carpenter is kind of getting into her own genre, and she’s this beautiful blend of all of these pop and singer-songwriters and country artists who have come before, and it’s getting harder and harder to define genre music,” she said. “It’s exciting. There’s no real way to define those artists because there’s so much range there.” She sees this as an opportunity for herself and music in general.
Part of watching others is deciding who she wants to be. Lorelei shared that she went through a phase where she wanted to build the skills to perform on stage with just her songs and a guitar, the acoustic set that people love to see from major names like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish. But she realized she doesn’t have to. “I thought there was a point where I wanted to do that. I think it’s so fun and really leaning into the audience engagement and having your moment…It just creates a really fun space, and that’s what I love about going to concerts.” Now she wants to focus on having range in her performances. Her dream is to perform live with a full band and backup singers, and while she’s not a dancer—she calls herself more of a “mover” than a dancer—she’d also learn choreography to match her songs.
Her recent performances on Jesse McCartney’s All’s Well Tour were more stripped down, featuring just Lorelei and her keyboardist/guitar player, Mark McKee. Even though Mark is in the background of her performances, on stage, they feel more like a duet. After working together for the last three years—most of Lorelei’s professional career—they have built a natural back and forth, and Lorelei says Mark is family. On the Charleston, SC stop of the All’s Well Tour, Mark interrupted the set to have the audience sing “Happy Birthday” to Lorelei for her 22nd birthday. “He’s been OG Lorelei. He’s the best,” she said. The music is Lorelei’s, but Mark has a keen understanding of her vision, and his role on stage and in arranging her sets is a major part of her live performance.
Touring is Lorelei’s favorite part of her journey so far. Opening for Jesse McCartney was a chance that brought her childhood fandom and her adult career together. “It’s crazy. I still haven’t honestly processed it. I’m still grateful that they took a chance,” she said. Touring brought her to new audiences to scream and dance with, to her music (and to her favorite song, “Breakeven” by The Script).
Her forthcoming song “Rearview” is an unreleased part of the setlist that Lorelei shared with audiences on the All’s Well Tour. She thinks sharing the song this way gives them a real experience with the music. “I love seeing songs live. Even if they’re not out yet, it gives them a new space to live.” The song’s chorus includes the line “Thanks for the gas money!” which Lorelei shouts with the crowd. The song isn’t about anyone in particular, but Lorelei thinks “Rearview” is the perfect scream-in-the-car song to vent about whoever you’ve had to leave in your rearview. Despite her confrontation-free vibe, Lorelei loves that “Rearview” is the song equivalent of a wreck room, breaking things without consequence.
Lorelei’s next EP has more of that edge, and in 2025, we’ll get to hear songs about growing up and becoming an adult. The songs are stronger. Lorelei feels wiser and less willing to let people take as much from her. “I’d say it’s the edgier one, but it does fit,” she said, comparing “Rearview” to the rest of her discography. She wrote 100 songs in her first year of professional music, but now Lorelei is more selective about the stories she’s telling and what makes an album. The new EP is about maturity in some ways, and Lorelei sees it as a new stage in her standards for her music.
Music is Lorelei’s “free therapy.” She says many of her songs are things she moved past because of music. “I think you write songs in a blip of time and you wake up the next day and you don’t feel that way anymore, or there’s still truth there, but you’ve moved on from the situation,” she said. Now, she can bring that catharsis to audiences who make the songs their own. “This moment is for them. It’s not for me,” she said of that relationship.
Figuring out where the music ends and Lorelei begins is difficult. She loves her family. She loves travel, photography, and running, but her passion and love for music sneak into a lot of her interests. She shared that she knows who she is at her core, and that her love of music is her now, but it isn’t her whole life. “I honestly think I can slip in and out of [those roles] pretty easily. Growing up, none of my friends were in music or wanted to be in music, so I’ve always been used to bonding really heavily with people who do things that are completely opposite of me.”
The end of the year is a lot of planning. Lorelei is gearing up to release her EP—she teased that “Rearview” will likely be the lead single on that project. She’s also preparing for a series of headline shows in early 2025. She will be heading to Hollywood, Nashville, and New York City for shows that are all Lorelei. “I’m so excited for those and just to be able to see people again that came to these shows on [the All’s Well Tour] and get to play a show together in a different way. That would be such a dream.”
