Stories Behind Songs: Elayna LaPeer on “Bittersweet”, “White Truck”, “Sixteen”, “Feels Like” and “Relapse”

“You could call it that”, Elayna LaPeer told me when I exclaimed “that’s so iconic” in response to her descriptions of all the ways she approached her song rollouts when releasing music in high school.

Elayna LaPeer performing at Al's Basement in Franklin, TN.

Elayna is a pop singer/songwriter who draws inspiration from Noah Kahan, Lizzy McAlpine, and Jake Minch. I also observe similarities to Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and Olivia Rodrigo. She knows how to make a song build and have a captivating rollout.

Since the day she called herself a “personality hire” when I met her as my TT-leader (a Belmont University Welcome Week tradition), I’ve understood that Elayna’s an entertainer at heart. And I’ll let you in on something: as a journalist in Nashville who is getting a sense of what characteristics foreshadow success in an artist, Elayna has something great going on. Entertainment is less about your ability to control a crowd, and more about your ability to surprise them, or in the worst cases, make something good out of something bad.

The "Bittersweet" single cover.

In the best case, when she started at Belmont in 2024, she surprised her friends with her first college release, “Bittersweet”. “I didn't tell anyone that they were in the music video,” she laughs. “The clips that were from Belmont, I took during Welcome Week… and I was like, let's sit down and watch my music video. And they were like, ‘We're in it!’”

The "White Truck" single cover

Such an “Is this play about us?” reaction hasn’t exactly been an uncommon experience for Elayna. She tells of skipping several periods the day “White Truck”, a love song, came out when she was in high school. “[The guy the song was about was] the only guy at the school that has a white truck… and I released it on Valentine's Day,” she gives me a look. “One of my friends comes in my class, and she goes, ‘You'll never believe what just happened in my last class’… He was watching the music video during class and showing it to his friend and going, ‘These are all the lyrics that are about me. This is how I know it's about me.’ And I was like, ‘I'm so glad you're so flattered that I wrote that.’ [He’d] texted me at midnight when it came out, and he was like, ‘Fire song.’ And I was like, ‘I'm not responding to that.’” 

These promotional tactics remind me of Taylor Swift – this is like Taylor name-dropping Drew in “Teardrops on my Guitar” (2006), but more bold, seeing as Elayna released the song while still going to school with its subject.

The single cover for "Sixteen".

On the flip side, some stories have been equally horrifying and endearing. She tells of the subject of “Sixteen”, “She's the girl I've been friends with for the longest in my entire life. We grew apart in high school, and after high school, we became friends again… I saw a post that she got baptized. I reached out to her. I was like, ‘How are you doing? This is incredible. I didn't know that you were journeying down a faith path, and I didn't know you found Jesus!’ and… I just went on vacation with her, and we're friends again.” They listened to the song over spring break and rejoiced when Elayna sang, “Deep down, I hope that we can be friends again someday”. 

In retrospect, Elayna says, “I remember feeling so bad. She texted me, and she was like, ‘I know the song is about me.’ I was like, ‘Oh, it's just a song. Like, it doesn't mean [anything]’, because at the end of the day, you want people to interpret the song the way that they feel it and apply it to their own life... But [the situation] was so awful.”

The single cover for "Feels Like".

In the worst case, “Feels Like” was about a similarly awful situation that Elayna turned into something beautiful. “When I wrote that song, I was in a relationship… and I remember that I never felt like I was enough… I wanted to be happy, but I also remember just never feeling like I was meeting anybody's expectations… I wanted to be, like, the perfect girlfriend… the perfect college student… the perfect everything, and you just can't… You can't be the perfect anything.” 

Elayna then launches into the discussion of performing as a singer and how it’s similar. Prior to our conversation, she’d “literally bombed [a] performance” and said it was “probably the most embarrassed I've ever been in my life”. Nonetheless, “You get through it”. And at the very least, you might get a great song!

The single cover for "Relapse".

My favorite song, “Relapse”, was about a guy Elayna had a sort of “right person, wrong time” trope with. The song was written while Elayna was actively watching Victorious, “I had been thinking about this guy, and it's this guy that I, like, could never get over… I liked him, and then he liked me, but it alternated. So, we didn't like each other at the same time. So, when we did like each other at the same time, neither of us told each other. And it was awful. It was a horror… It was the most high school, like, stupid experience ever… I was talking with [my friend], and her brother's old guitar was in her room, and I was like, ‘Can I play this?’ She was like, ‘Sure.’ And we were watching Victorious. And I, like, looked at her, and I was like… ‘Every time I see him again, I relapse.’ And she [said], ‘There you go. There's your song.’ And I wrote it in her bed while watching Victorious.”

What’s the most valuable type of relapse for Elayna? Songwriting. “I’m working on an album… maybe I'll just hard launch that.” The album has been in the works since last school year (Elayna’s freshman year). Stay tuned for more information about the upcoming release, and stream “Relapse” on all platforms now.