Lorelei Marcell on “RAPIDO!,” “SAFETY” and Finding the Version of Her Music That Feels Right

There is a push and pull running through Lorelei Marcell’s newest music.

Something classic beside something current. Live piano, bass and drums against flashes of electronic pop. Anxiety sitting next to relief. Songs that feel deeply personal without explaining every detail.

It makes sense when Lorelei describes “RAPIDO!”, her latest single, in two words: “an anxious heartbeat.”

For an artist who has been releasing music since she was a teenager and spent the last several years experimenting with what her sound could be, “RAPIDO!” and the single before it, “SAFETY,” feel especially settled. Not necessarily calmer, but more certain.

“I’ve really been trying to figure out what it is I want to say and what I want to give as an artist,” she tells Everyday Jams. “I’ve had a lot of twists and turns, but I’m grateful that the writing I’m doing now is taking the shape that it is.”

an anxious heartbeat

“RAPIDO!” came out of a reunion with producer John Samuel, who Lorelei had previously worked with before the pair spent roughly two years apart creatively.

When they came back together, something had shifted. Both had lived more life. Lorelei had entered a relationship that prompted her to look more closely at her own patterns, particularly the anxiety she carried into relationships.

The result was a love song less interested in the chaos of falling for someone than what happens when the chaos finally disappears.

“It’s an anxiety driven love song about letting yourself kind of relax and fall into something that for the first time feels safe and not chaotic,” she says.

That tension lives inside the production too. “SAFETY” deliberately leaves things feeling slightly unresolved, while “RAPIDO!” eventually finds its release. There is movement beneath the nerves, including the four on the floor rhythm that arrives almost like the song finally letting its shoulders drop.

The two tracks were written during the same winter, and together they make more sense than either one does alone.

Funny enough, Lorelei partly has an audience member to thank for that.

After performing “SAFETY” at a local LA show, a woman approached her and said the song felt unfinished, as if another piece of the story still needed to exist. Lorelei agreed. The following week, she wrote “RAPIDO!”

“She fucking inspired me,” Lorelei laughs. “She just gets songwriting.”

keeping the room alive

Part of what separates Lorelei’s recent work from some of her earlier releases is how human it sounds.

Almost everything on “SAFETY” and “RAPIDO!” was played live in the room: piano, drums, guitar and bass, with only the occasional synth entering the picture. It is an intentional shift after years of experiencing different corners of pop production in LA.

“I feel like this was the right time to really bring in the organic element,” she says, while still keeping pieces of the alternative and electronic pop she has made before. “I want music you can dance to, but also be in your feels too.”

More than anything, though, the songs sound like two people who trust one another.

Lorelei talks about songwriting sessions less as appointments to manufacture a song and more as spaces where people need enough time to actually understand each other. Sometimes the first hour spent talking over coffee is the work. Sometimes listening matters more than immediately finding a hook.

That comfort with Samuel has given her room to let go of some of the control she carries elsewhere. Their history means there is already context in the room before the first note gets played.

And for Lorelei, that connection matters. The best songs rarely come from forcing something into existence.

saying less, feeling more

There is another kind of restraint Lorelei has been learning lately.

Earlier in her career, she says she sometimes felt pressure to do more vocally simply because she could: another run, another harmony, another ad lib. Now, she is increasingly interested in knowing when something is already enough.

The same idea follows her lyrics.

Lorelei remembers entering the LA songwriting world during an era when intensely specific, almost diary-entry writing had become especially popular. She experimented with it too, but eventually realized she was more drawn to songs that leave a little room for whoever is listening.

“There’s so much value in letting someone feel that the song’s about them,” she says. “When I listen to songs, I’m like, this happened to me. They’re talking about me.”

Her solution is pretty simple: “How can you say it in the shortest way possible?”

It helps explain why even her most personal songs can feel open-ended. Lorelei is writing from her own life, but she is not closing the door behind her.

old and new at the same time

Lorelei still has love for the different versions of herself scattered across her catalog.

Her Gas Money EP, in particular, gave her confidence in the visual world around her music and helped her understand herself more clearly as a songwriter. Some of those songs were started when she first arrived in LA around 18. She has different perspectives now.

“I feel like that record gave me the permission to and the confidence to do what I’m doing now,” she says.

What she is doing now feels increasingly specific.

Earth tones. Reds and maroons. Live instrumentation. Pop that does not abandon musicianship. Writing that feels timeless without trying to recreate another decade.

When Brian described Lorelei’s music during their conversation as sounding “old and new at the same time,” her response was immediate.

“That’s like the best compliment to give me, honestly.”

It may be the easiest way to understand the world she is building.

the reason to keep doing it

For all the thought Lorelei puts into records, production and visuals, the final destination is much less complicated.

She wants to play these songs for people.

“I love, love, love, love, love being on stage,” she says. “The live aspect, that is like my why.”

She has started considering that live element before songs are even finished now: what the band might play, how something will translate in a room and, ultimately, whether she actually wants to sing it night after night.

It also brings her back to the reason songs matter beyond releases and numbers. Lorelei has received messages about “i will always love your ghost,” her song about grief, from listeners who found it while processing losses of their own.

For her, those messages are the point.

“Ultimately, that’s the why,” she says. “Can you help people feel seen and process things?”

“SAFETY” and “RAPIDO!” appear to be leading somewhere bigger. Lorelei says both belong to a project she sees becoming an EP, likely sometime in the new year, even if she is still letting its final shape reveal itself.

What she wants listeners to carry into that next chapter is just as clear.

“I hope they feel more understood,” she says. “I hope it makes people have more empathy in their interpersonal relationships.”

Stream RAPIDO! & SAFETY by Lorelei MarcellOut Now.

Photography: Aubree Estrella