If 2021 belonged to Olivia Rodrigo, 2022 is already looking for the next Olivia Rodrigo. To that end, the pop machine is currently obsessed with 18-year-old Canadian singer Lauren Spencer-Smith, who american idol Fans may remember Season 18, when Spencer-Smith, then just 16, hit the Top 20 singing P!nk’s “What About Us” and Lady’s “Always Remember Us This Way.” Gaga.
What’s nice about the TikTok era, however, is that you don’t even have to crack a talent show’s top 10 anymore to build a fanbase or even get a song to chart. TV talent shows aren’t even launching pads anymore, and it’s easy to see why: reality shows, especially those that air on major networks like NBC and ABC, are so heavily edited, the narratives already so predetermined, they lack the organic word-of-mouth buzz that forges so many of today’s young pop stars.
Since his time on american idol, the Vancouver Island native received a Juno nomination and released music as an independent artist, releasing an EP in 2020 (Mixed emotions) and a handful of singles, such as “Back To Friends”, “For Granted”, and a “Driver’s License” break-up anthem called “Fingers Crossed”.
Although “Fingers Crossed” officially dropped in early January, Spencer-Smith started dropping breadcrumbs around it in November when she posted a super laid-back 47-second clip of herself stuck in the studio. That clip now has over 23 million views, building hype for the eventual release of a fleshed-out “Fingers Crossed” studio version.
In a way, Spencer-Smith is a hybrid model. Due to its user-friendly resemblance to “Drivers License” algorithms, “Fingers Crossed” is catnip for industry executives hungry for another Rodrigo success story. And yet, “Fingers Crossed” also has organic fan support; Spencer-Smith currently has nearly 3 million followers on TikTok, and the creators are using “Fingers Crossed” to set everything from their romantic breakups to ghosting and even parting ways with former best friends. “Everyone has that person – whether it’s a family member, friend, ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend – who they feel like to hang out for no reason,” Spencer-Smith said when the track debuted. (Ironically, she said she wrote “Fingers Crossed” after starting a new, healthier relationship that caused her to reflect on a previous one.)
Switch to Spotify and you’ll see how “Fingers Crossed” has over 32 million streams, putting Spencer-Smith at number one on Spotify’s Pop Rising playlist. It is currently in Spotify’s top 20 songs worldwide and briefly topped the streaming service’s US top 10. On YouTube, the song has nearly 2 million views. In the UK, “Fingers Crossed” hits the top 5, right up there with Adele. While introducing it to her followers, Spencer-Smith said, “It’s for anyone [getting] from a toxic relationship, okay? Given that TikTok is where people under 25 go to air mental health issues, “story time” about their breakups, self-diagnose, and call parents and narcissistic exes, it’s all right. makes sense that “Fingers Crossed” would take off on this particular platform. (His team maintains that they “didn’t put a single penny behind the marketing of this song.”)
Then there are the innumerable similarities with the “driver’s license”. Musically, “Fingers Crossed” is also a slow burn but relies more on Spencer-Smith’s vocals, which are layered over puffy harmonies. Thematically, the two songs also have a lot in common: both are about betrayal – pretty words spoken in the heat of the moment before fading away and finally being worth nothing (“Everything you’ve done was to prove me wrong / When you said you loved me / Well, you had to cross your fingers”). These are gripping coming-of-age stories about someone’s first real contact with dishonesty in the romantic context. As Sheryl Crow once said, “The first cut is the deepest.” God, it’s brutal here.
Adding to its rise, a “Fingers Crossed” remix from buzzy TikTok singer Elijah Woods (not to be confused with The Lord of the Rings actor Elijah Wood), who gives the Spencer-Smith track a slight boost with a touch of rhythm and his own voice in the second verse. She doesn’t have any other collaborations (yet), but Spencer-Smith has been known to sing covers in TikTok-friendly places, like in the front seat of her car. Her rendition of Adele’s “Easy On Me” currently has over a million likes. The (rising) stars: they are like us! They blast Adele in the car! They have songs with friends – sorry, best friends! Fans undoubtedly feel a kinship with Spencer-Smith, and it’s more than her confessional lyrics adjacent to Taylor Swift. Its entire presentation is comfortable and totally accessible; a typical video will see Spencer-Smith lounging around in a sweat, transforming an otherwise average setting — like a car or a living room — into a concert hall.
Clearly, Spencer-Smith is on the brink. “There’s so much going on!” she recently said Billboard. “Just today Ryan Tedder messaged me and said he liked my song. I was freaked out about it. Dan from Dan + Shay also messaged me today. I said, ‘I tried to get tickets to your concert when I was 16 and cried when I couldn’t! I love you!'” No matter what you think from names like Ryan Tedder and Dan + Shay, they are important co-signs. And as 2022 unfolds, don’t be surprised if you spot Spencer-Smith’s name dotting more of the pop music landscape.
