Lauren Alaina is 'Getting Over Him' with a collection of new songs: Interview

Lauren Alaina kick-started 2020 with a musical proclamation that she's "Getting Good." 

On the title track of her six-song March EP, this heart-on-her-sleeve singer and social media pun sorceress sings, "I'm thinking, once I learn to grow right where I'm planted/  Maybe that's when life starts getting good." 

Now, the 25-year-old "Road Less Traveled" singer and "Dancing With the Stars" alum looks to another brand of self-prescribed artistic "getting" for her next release: "Getting Over Him." 

Alaina releases her six-song "Getting Over Him" on Friday via Mercury Nashville. 

"I went through a pretty public breakup last year, and I went through the breakup right before I went on 'Dancing With the Stars' and I never addressed it," Alaina said in reference to her 2019 relationship with now-exiled Christian comedian John Crist.

On rebounding from a "brutal" split, she continued, "This EP is kind of my response, because everyone did have a lot of questions and I never really answered it. ... Until I had my mind wrapped around what's happening, it (was) OK to take a beat and just take some time for myself. And the way I do that is I write songs." 

In a new Tennessean interview, Alaina discusses healing through her music, standout song "What Do You Think Of" and working with country icon Trisha Yearwood. 

Alaina didn't immediately turn to earworm therapy (she was dancing eight hours a day for 'Stars,' after all) after her breakup. She "bottled up" emotions while on the show, eventually releasing them in a sprawling musical effort that sends listeners to a watering hole that she better not catch an ex at ("Bar Back"), on a polished country-pop race to her next stop ("Run") and into her well-aged future ("If I Was a Beer"). 

She co-wrote each song on the album, describing it as "my way of processing everything I'm going through." She recalled first writing for catharsis at age 9 after her aunt was in a car accident. 

"As long as I can remember, music — outside of even my own — has helped me," she said. "I don't know why (at) 9 years old I decided that was what I needed to do, but that laid the foundation for, 'OK, when I'm upset or I'm feeling things, this is what I do.' I either listen to music or I write it." 

She enlisted nontraditional country favorite Jon Pardi for a duet on title track "Getting Over Him." Alaina said hanging out in bars isn't "really her style," but she had a few weeks under neon lights that inspired the anthem for moving on. 

She sings, "No strings, Saturday night/ Hot like a match that burned out fast/ Forever wasn't in our eyes/ You knew it, and I knew it ... Just my gettin' over him guy." 

"Honestly, I hate to say it, it's kinda a song about a rebound," Alaina said, adding a laugh. "I don't know any nicer way to say it. I'm so sorry, Mom." 

"What Do You Think Of" — a reflective piano ballad featuring Danish pop act Lukas Graham — anchors the release. A subtly powerful performance from the "American Idol" alum with a standout voice, the song aptly "felt like the summary of a breakup," Alaina said. It digs beyond some of the tongue-in-cheek nods to busted relationships heard earlier in the record, she noted. 

And Alaina's publisher and management team needed to push her to release "What Do You Think Of." 

"I'm not even angry anymore, I've moved past it," Alaina said. "That song is such an emotional song, and when I wrote it I was hurting so much. I get sad hearing the song. ... I was not gonna release it.

"The second verse is painful for me," she continued. "Something about Lukas singing it empowered me to put it on there. It's now the standout on the EP, (and) I fought that song so hard." 

And the release comes after a summer that saw Alaina unveil a duet with Trisha Yearwood on a re-released version of "Getting Good."

The two met backstage at an awards show — bonding over jokes about greasy grub that comes after a red carpet. That meeting turned into a fast-food appearance on Yearwood's Food Network program "Trisha's Southern Kitchen" and eventually a studio collaboration. 

"While we were in the kitchen cooking, she sang 'Getting Good' to me," Alaina said. "It was unbelievable. I was like, 'What is happening to me right now?' I'm cooking with her, now she's singing with me. Someone pinch me." 

Now that she's done "Getting Good" and "Getting Over Him," what's next? She asked her fans and "somebody put 'Getting Back to Me,' " Alaina said. 

"I thought that was pretty good."