Lauren Watkins' 'The Heartbroken Record' showcases her honest and emotional songwriting

Lauren Watkins is your favorite songwriter's favorite songwriter.

Her debut album, "The Heartbroken Record," arrived on June 21 and has her well on the road to achieving long-standing mainstream country music industry success.

The 24-year-old, Songs & Daughters/Big Loud-signed performer is a Nashville native, born and raised in the Oak Hill neighborhood. As well, she's a graduate of the University of Mississippi with a degree in integrated marketing communications. She also just got married (to fellow songwriter Will Bundy) a month prior to her conversation with The Tennessean at Puckett's Restaurant in the shadow of the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville.

Why Puckett's?

A decade ago, she was a teenager in a country duo with her sister Caroline, and Puckett's performance stage was one of many — including the Bluebird Cafe, Rippy's and Tootsies on Lower Broadway — where she performed sets of original songs mixed with covers of classic and modern country hits by Eric Church, George Jones, Miranda Lambert and Dolly Parton.

Establishing a new Nashville tradition

Working with Songs & Daughters has her receiving the direct cosign of imprint chief Nicolle Galyon.

Galyon, like Watkins, is a mega-talented and dynamic songwriter who in less than a decade has achieved nine No. 1 singles, credits on Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association songs and singles of the year and, via Songs & Daughters, helped develop the next generation of female creatives in Music City.

Similar to Watkins' heroes and heroines, "The Heartbreak Record" is a collection of collaborations that establish her ability to navigate a through line between the best of Nashville's most diverse creative community in a half-century.

A who's who of songwriting favorites contribute to Watkins' debut, including her sister Caroline Watkins, husband Bundy, Galyon, ACM Songwriter of the Year Jessie Jo Dillon, ERNEST, Rodney Clawson (Jason Aldean's "Amarillo Sky"), Luke Laird (20 No. 1s, including Little Big Town's "Pontoon"), the Warren Brothers (Toby Keith's "Red Solo Cup") and Pistol Annies member Ashley Monroe.

"Writing by myself was valuable, but by writing with the other people I've had the opportunity (to collaborate), I recognize the value of how a good idea can become a great one when many (writers) are helping it develop," Watkins says.

Powerful collaborations

Album track "Cowboys on Music Row" is a lovelorn ode to the romantic allure of masculine outlaw country stereotypes ("They sang what they knew and they knew what they sang / I wish I could find one to whisk me away / Where, oh, where, oh, where did they go? / There ain't no cowboys on Music Row"). It features both Watkins sisters, Dillon, Monroe, Lauren Hungate and singer-songwriter Carter Faith as collaborators.

Watkins recalls being on a trip with the quintet and watching documentaries on YouTube about George Jones and Waylon Jennings. Suddenly inspired, the song took shape on the living room floor. Faith adds her vocals to the track largely because of the passion she showed toward the subject during the song's writing session.

Sink deeper into where Watkins' interest in country's traditions meets with her performance and songwriting prowess and find her Jake Worthington collaboration "Fly on the Wall."

"Heartbreak songs have always been my favorite,” Watkins says. “As a songwriter I feel a responsibility to put my experiences on paper. Whether it's the loss of love, or a town, or a friendship, we all experience heartbreak. I think it's really special that we can be brought together by things like that."

To wit, upon playing a set of touring dates with ERNEST and Worthington in Mississippi in late 2022, Watkins was struck by the authenticity of the "State You Left Me In" vocalist's almost mournful way of approaching certain styles of country ballads.

The heartbreak ballad about wanting to experience your ex through their new partner's life with them resonates with a perfect blend of what allowed Texas and Tennessee to blend so well on country radio five decades ago.

The value of being present in her feelings

Watkins' Nashville album debut feels like it should've arrived three years prior. She's now married and past the heartbreak about which she sings so well. Moreover, she's a young veteran of sorts as a songwriter, with 13 songs emerging in the marketplace of the roughly two dozen, in full, that she's completed to the point of being ready for release in the past half-decade.

However, though she may write anthem after anthem in private, her hyper-intentional and raspy-voiced story songs work better in small doses as wholly realized tracks.

The value of such heavy curation allows for Rock & Roll Hall of Famer (and fellow Nashville resident) Sheryl Crow's presence on "Set My Heart on Fire," another heartbreak song, to resonate more powerfully. As well, the album's honky-tonk two-stepping-ready title track and the antagonized “Gatlinburg" — sample lyric: "He took my best two years / So I took his Chevrolet / I never even liked it here" — both are allowed the space to root themselves deeply as a listener's favorites.

2024 into 2025 will find Watkins growing from "playing in any bar or restaurant that would let her bring in her guitar" to doing a similar thing at 10,000 seat arenas and amphitheaters throughout America willing to allow her presence.

This will be accomplished with a recording that highlights how earnest she is in her intentions to be a career artist defining and redefining the art of songwriting and performance in the genre.

"This is a concept-driven collection of songs that all mean so much to me and I hope that (translates to the listener). Instead of trying to tell them how to feel, I'm offering a detailed narration of a situation where feelings are present. ('The Heartbreak Record') is my most dramatic outlet yet for emotions that I've had on my mind for years. Like my mother says, 'I think everyone feels the way I feel, it's just that not so many people say it the way you do, out loud.'"

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville native Lauren Watkins debuts with 'The Heartbroken Record'