Lauren Monroe’s new single “Brave” was written in the wake of the gun violence in early 2022. A message of hope and resilience, the song asks what it means to view radical kindness as an act of bravery in a world where it’s been shunted to the side. Monroe, the wife of Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen, has worked as a practitioner in the healing arts for 25 years, and her music is an expression of that recovery. For Monroe, healing and music are two sides of the same coin. Both practices are exercises in self-awareness, a face-off with an ever-more alienating world through acts of conscious reckoning. “We have an influence on what we choose to believe is important,” Monroe explains. “We have to have an inner awareness of where we’re blocked, to help people see themselves and have more empathy.”
