A new chapter begins for Lauren Daigle: 'What's the thing that's truest to me?'

You won't catch Lauren Daigle on Google before a recording session.

Instead of researching her collaborators by jumping down online rabbit holes or stalking social media feeds, this 31-year-old Louisiana native builds her creative partnerships in the moment.

So, when she walked into a two-story Gallatin, Tennessee, studio to start work on a new project with album-maker Mike Elizondo, Daigle quickly realized that her would-be producer helped craft some of the best-known music of her lifetime. A Southern California transplant now operating in the Nashville borough, Elizondo's credits include Eminem, Carrie Underwood, Mary J. Blidge, Jonas Brothers, 50 Cent and Keith Urban, among others.

"The second I walk into the entrance ... the amount of people (on the wall), it was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm an idiot. Why have I not known this?" Daigle, a two-time Grammy Award-winning singer, told The Tennessean, part of the Paste BN Network. "It was that thing of, 'OK. Well, let's just see where this goes.'"

Spoiler: Tunnel-vision works for Daigle. She entered the studio with Elizondo to cut a follow-up to 2018's "Look Up Child," a breakthrough album in Christian music anchored by arguably the format's biggest hit this century, "You Say." For a new album, Daigle could've played it safe, delivering a carbon copy of "Look Up Child" – but where's the fun in that?

Instead, her forthcoming self-titled album digs into a world where kalaidacospic folk tunes, jazz grooves and R&B influence – anchored by Daigle's rich voice and tales of faith – take center stage. As she eyes an arena tour and major label debut, the next chapter for Daigle may prove that "You Say" was only the first stop on a creative climb fueled by freewheeling artistry.

But for the new album, she simply focused on making good songs, period. Part one of the self-titled release is out May 12 via Atlantic Records/Centricy Music.

"I needed to have a little distance between all the noise," Daigle said. "Ironically, I didn't know we would all experience a pandemic at the same time. That isolation was actually really good for me. I got to sit and learn what are the things I actually want to communicate on this record.

"Who am I? And how do I write from that place? ... What's the thing that's the truest to me? What's the purest? What's the most authentic? Instead of coming off the inflammation and the excitement of the previous season, it's giving the most recent revelation, versus riding the buzz of what was before."

The 'heart' of self-titled

"This might be the wrong thing to say," Daigle said behind a bright smile on a warm weekday afternoon in April. Sitting in a music management office on the edge of Nashville's Hillsboro Village neighborhood, wearing an outfit doused in a rainbow of colors and matching accessories to-boot, she continued: "But people always say, with the success of ("You Say"), with the success of "Look Up Child," did you feel pressure going into this? And it is so funny, I'm so one-track minded. ... I was genuinely hyper-focused on what we were working on."

Alongside Elizondo, she enlisted a cohort of co-writers and collaborators who make hitmaking look pretty easy. The album includes co-writes with Natalie Hemby – a tenured Nashville hitmaker and Highwaywomen member who's worked with Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves and Lady Gaga – and Jon Green, a London and Nashville-based writer who's penned tunes for Little Big Town and Linkin Park.

After writing sessions, Daigle and her band cut most of the album live on the floor in Elizondo's studio, she said.

"All these other people have worked on records that've gone way bigger than 'You Say,'" Daigle said. "For them, seeing their ease and their approach to this, like, 'Come on, let's just make more music.' It was the epicenter – the heart – behind how we tracked everything."

And after a decade in Nashville, Daigle returns to her Louisiana upbringing by channeling touches of the soulful Cajun music and brass-y sounds that helped raise her. For example, standout album track "St. Ferdinand" – an ode to New Orleans – features fellow Louisiana musician Jon Batiste on melodica, as well as Hemby on backing vocals.

To inspire her collaborators, Daigle invited Hemby, Elizondo and co-writer Jason Ingram to New Orleans for a creative retreat. The trajectory of the album changed after they experienced "the vibrant nature of that city and how we approach music and the essence of music dripping in every crevice of that city," Daigle said.

"It was really beautiful and it really made a mark, specifically with the horn section," she said.

Self-titled songwriting

Songs on part one of Daigle's self-titled project take listeners on a sonic hopscotch, from the soft-touch 1960s pop on "Waiting" to feel-good jam "These Are The Days," introspective ballad "To Know Me," R&B-infused "New" and the roots-inspired standout "St. Ferdinand."

She sings nuanced stories – sometimes pulling from a longtime fascination with creating fictional backstories from passersby. On "New," Daigle teams a real-life story of addition recovery with ubiquitous scene-setting and storybuilding.

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She sings: "You say you used to hang around Diablo's every night/ Tryin' to fit with the crowd/ Makin' bets and pickin' fights/ But that was your story before me ... 'Cause old habits die, when you wanna live/ I don't see the old you, I just see thed new."

These storytelling elements feel "new and different compared to some of the other records I've been part of," she said.

And on "St. Ferdinand," Daigle co-wrote a blissful folk nod to New Orleans born out of a newfound appreciation of Nashville's country-folk scene. After years in Music City, she found herself brought to tears one night after hearing Holly Williams – granddaughter of Hank Williams – sing "Waiting On June," a seven-minute song about her maternal grandparents that left Daigle in tears.

After that experience, a folk influence began piquing her interest. In turn, she created a love letter to Louisiana

Backed by an acoustic guitar, cello, Clavient keyboard and upright bass, she sings: "Oh, St. Ferdinand, my wonderland/ Wild and strange, where vagabonds played ... St. Ferdinand, my dear friend/ Times may change, you can't keep me away."

Like Williams before her, the song brought Daigle's friends and fellow Louisianans to tears when she shared it with a circle of confidants.

"The way those acoustic instruments blended for me, I was undone," Daigle said. She added, "It's the expression of these two places that have made me."

'I just love these songs'

As the album title suggests, Daigle's self-titled project isn't done. She cut 10 songs for part one and plans to release a second 10-song installment at a to-be-announced date this fall.

As a fan of an old-school album-listening experience – "I want to sit down, I want to listen to a record from top-to-bottom," she said – Daigle hopes her listeners can fully digest the new music if it comes in two parts. Julie Greenwald, COO of Atlantic Records, initially proposed the idea to Daigle after a 20-song listen-back session clocked in at nearly two hours, the singer said.

"I don't want there to be this thing where you sit and listen to 20 tracks and (by) tracks 15 through 19 are barely even recognizable, you're zoned out," Daigle said. "We just finished masters (on part two). I'm like, 'OK, I might like part one more than part two now that it's broke into two.' Then we started working on part two and I'm like, 'I might like part two better than part one.' I just love these songs so much."

As for what listeners can expect from the forthcoming songs? "There's a lot of emotion on part two, in a different way," Daigle said.