On an early spring day at the end of March, Lily Lothrop ‘21 returned to Smith to perform her newly released EP “This is What I Can Do” in Josten Library. Armed with her sparkly Fender guitar, Lothrop delivered more than a beautiful performance as she told the story of her post-grad years, both in and out of her songs.
In Josten’s purple-carpeted Mezzanine, flooded with sunlight, Lothrop opened her performance by noting that her five year reunion will take place this spring, leading her to consider everything she’s done since graduating. Reflecting on the final days of her time at Smith, where she studied music, Lothrop remembered recording her senior recital with her iPhone propped up on a stack of books, wondering what she’d do next. For a graduation present, Lothrop asked for her Fender guitar, which perhaps symbolized the fortuitous start to an unlikely song-writing career.
Lothrop, having sung from an early age, was trained in opera and spent her time at Smith studying classical music and singing arias. It wasn’t until graduating during the depths of the pandemic that she began to question her ideas of pursuing opera after graduating.
“I think I sat with (the fact) that I had never really wanted to do opera that much. I always wanted to sing different music, but always felt like I couldn’t,” she said in an interview with The Sophian. “And so then I was like, okay, well, I have literally nothing to lose at this point so I’m gonna start taking contemporary voice lessons, and I did.”
While working to develop her songwriting, Lothrop began teaching voice and picking up performing gigs whenever possible.
After performing the first two songs off of her EP, “Go Down Swinging” and “Good When You Want it,” Lothrop spoke about the perfectionism she felt classical music required, leaving her little room to figure out how her own feelings fit into her music. In contrast, her own songs are emotional outlets.
So it’s no surprise that most of Lothrop’s songs are about her relationships and her musings on her life. Lothrop’s third song, “Vitamins,” which she calls her most angry and angsty, is a particularly stunning and catchy track in which Lothrop’s voice stands out against a backdrop of guitar melodies and a solid drum beat. Hearing the song live is a testament to the power of Lothrop’s vocals, which do most of the work for her.
Lothrop was able to put together “This is What I Can Do” with the help of a Boston recording studio that guides upcoming artists through crowd funding to record their music. Through outreach on social media and help from family and friends, Lothrop raised $11,000, allowing her to record six songs.
Since the EP’s release in November, Lothrop has been pleased with its reception. “It only hit me, last month, ‘Oh, I just achieved a lifelong dream.’… It’s been cool, because now I feel like I have some momentum, not a lot, but enough. And so I’m booking more shows and my band is really a legitimate thing now,” she said.
Although her EP was a solo project, Lothrop is also the lead singer in her band, Almost Francis, which formed last summer. Almost Francis has joined Lothrop in performing her EP, and they’re now working on recording their own songs as a band. Lothrop is still figuring out how to balance her solo performances with her band ones, but in the meantime she’s grateful for any opportunities that get her work out there.
At Josten, Lothrop performed the sixth song off of her EP “The Dream” after a beautiful explanation of its meaning. Lothrop didn’t plan to write the song, but it came to her shortly after college, as her grandmother, her namesake, was dying. At the time, Lothrop was wondering what it would be like to reach a similar age as her grandmother and was grappling with whether to commit to pursuing her dream of becoming a singer-songwriter.
When writing her songs, Lothrop allows the music and lyrics to come to her rather than working hard to find them. “It’s just been me sitting down and either, strumming around, or I have one phrase and I start with that, and then I just sort of follow where it goes, and then in an hour, I have a song … there is some divine inspiration that you have to grasp,” she said.
At the end of Lothrop’s performance, Josten’s access services coordinator Janet Sponberg commended Lothrop’s singing by complimenting her vocal signature and telling her that she “sounded like herself.”
Despite Lothrop’s uncertainty around the serious pursuit of a singer songwriter career, it’s clear that she’s maintained an insistent authenticity in both her lyrics and her vocals. It’s also clear that she’s incredibly passionate about her music.
“At the end of the day, the thing that I am wanting to do is perform and sing and write my songs. And every time I’m doing that, no matter how big or small the audience is, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m still doing the thing I want to do.’ So that is validating in itself,” Lothrop said.
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