Lauren Alaina Artistfacts

November 8, 1994
Lauren Alaina started to sing at the age of 3. Her mom, Kristy, first noted her talent when was riding in the car singing along to a Dixie Chicks hit on the radio. When Kristy turned the radio off, the 3-year-old Lauren kept singing every word in pitch.
She was a classmate of fellow country artist Kane Brown at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School, in their native Georgia. As a shy student, Brown refused to sing in class until one day Alaina heard him humming and coaxed him into singing aloud in front of her and the other students.
Lauren successfully auditioned for the 10th season of American Idol, going all the way to the final before finishing as runner-up to Scotty McCreery. She later recalled:

"I said from the time I was 6 years old I was gonna be on American Idol. When that moment finally came and I was actually on that stage in front of those judges, I just remember thinking, 'You cannot mess this up. Be yourself. Be yourself.' When they gave me that ticket, girl, you would've thought I won the lottery, like a billion dollars. I mean, nothing in that moment could be more special to me, because that's all I wanted for 10 years, and it finally happened, and it started everything for me."
Her debut single was released immediately after American Idol's finale on May 25, 2011. An uplifting ode to maternal love and strength, "Like My Mother Does," was an apt choice for Alaina. "My mom's been beside me through this whole thing," she said. "Every time I've gotten upset, she's always been there to pick me up. So I feel like it's really great for me to sing this song just for her, because she deserves it."
The title track of Lauren Alaina's She's A Wildflower album describes her well. "I would consider myself a wildflower because wildflowers are sweet, but then they have a little bit of spunk to them," she said. "I like to have a lot of fun and I'm really sassy, so I feel like a wildflower would be a good description of who I am as a person."
Prior to Idol, Alaina worked at CiCi's Pizza. Her old boss, Mike Wild, remembers her singing, whistling, and humming around the restaurant. "Now I have thoughts like, 'I may have asked the next American Idol to sweep crumbs up off the floor," he told the The Times Free Press in 2011.
If Alaina hadn't made it as a singer, she'd have worked with children or disabled adults. She told The Boot she's coached teams and made the Special Olympics a priority since the sixth grade. "So I always said that if I never made it in the music business, I wanted to be a pediatrician or a special needs teacher."
Lauren Alaina published her first book, Getting Good At Being You, on November 7, 2021. The faith-based tome is about her path to loving herself again.
Lauren Alaina married her fiancé Cam Arnold at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in downtown Nashville on February 4, 2024. They tied the knot in front of 450 guests, including fellow country stars Jason Aldean, Hardy, Lindsay Ell, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay.
Lauren Alaina was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry on February 12, 2022 by her idol, Trisha Yearwood. The moment came as a complete shock – the American Idol alumna thought Yearwood was there to talk about the foreword she'd written for Alaina's book.

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