Feature: Lauren Ash Decodes “Cool Story, Bro”
What was the creative process like for this particular song?
I worked with my producers Aaron Verdonk and Jesse Colburn on this song in the immediate time following a break up I went through last year. I brought them the idea of letters and we wrote the song together pretty quickly. I said “what are the pettiest, meanest things that I would NEVER say to someone after a breakup? Let’s put them in a song.” lol
Could you discuss the lyrical themes or messages conveyed in "Cool Story, Bro?"
“Cool Story, Bro” is basically the letters that you draft to an ex after a breakup but you never actually send to them. The first verse is written from the perspective of being 2 weeks out of the breakup and finding yourself desperate to prove to the person that they should take you back. It’s kind of that sad, pathetic space we can find ourselves in where you would do almost anything to take away the pain of the breakup and reconciling with your ex feels like the easiest way to do that. Verse 2 is written 2 months out of the breakup. Those initial, desperate feelings have now faded and it’s more the phase of realizing that the person didn’t actually treat you that well. The feelings of resentment and anger are starting to come through. The choruses and the bridge are definitely just embracing the most unhinged, petty version of yourself and unleashing the ugliest, most terrible things possible. Personally, these are things I would never actually say to someone but I think any of us would be lying if we said we have never thought these kinds of things about an ex. I always want to try to be the bigger person in real life but this song allows me to embrace being the exact opposite through music.
What was your favorite moment in making the music video?
I really enjoyed spraypainting the bedroom! We only had one shot at it and it was very therapeutic to just go nuts. I also loved filming the reactions to my fellow Superstore castmates videos in the beginning. There’s nothing better than being roasted by your friends and I had a lot of fun just reacting to all the funny things they said.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started in music?
While most people know me as an actor, primarily for playing Dina on Superstore, I’ve wanted to pursue making music since I was a kid. I wrote songs all through high school and my dream was to be in a rock band. In 2023, I decided to try and make that teenage dream a reality. I started releasing original music and my first single “Now I Know” charted on Billboard! Since then I have performed at the Viper Room, Whisky a Go Go, The Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto and I even performed my original Christmas song “Sad this Christmas” on the Kelly Clarkson Show! I have an album set to drop in fall 2025.
Where do you find inspiration for your songs or musical ideas?
All of my songs are insanely personal. I find it really hard to write about things that I’m not actually experiencing at that moment in time. There’s a sort of therapeutic immediacy in my songwriting. I find that I have to get something out and once I do, then I can move on from it. But if I try to write about something fictional, it just feels false and empty to me. Even if I try to write about something that happened to me in the past, it never has the same charge as writing about what I’m feeling on a specific day, in a specific moment. I feel like I have to be able to connect to the raw emotions of the story I want to tell in order to properly tell it. It’s like when something wild or crazy happens to you in life, telling the story is always going to be way more passionate and electric in the immediate few days after it first happened. A few months later, your retelling is never going to have the same fervor that it did before. That said, once a song is written, it’s easy for me to connect to the emotions when performing it live. It’s just the writing that, for me, has to be right away.
