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Songwriter's new single gives voice to a mother's fears; benefits gun violence prevention groups

Lauren Minear performs “Protect You” at The Basement in Nashville, TN Jan. 31, 2025.

Singer-songwriter Lauren Minear sat in her car after dropping off her two children at school. She felt overwhelmed by a fear that she couldn’t protect her young children from the dangers that threaten them daily. Parked near their school, she let the first words of her new single, “Protect You,” flow out. The words and the feelings had been swirling around in her head since news broke about the deadly Covenant School shooting where three nine-year-olds and three adults were killed the day before. It was March 2023.

“I woke up heavy-hearted with the shooting on my mind,” Minear, whose own children are now five and seven years old, said of that morning. “As I was slicing grapes for school lunches, I had the idea that we do hundreds of tiny actions throughout a day to protect our kids, but don’t have any control over this enormous, real danger.”

“If you listen to my original voice memo of the song (the one she recorded in her car that morning in 2023), my first draft lyric for the bridge was actually, ‘I slice your grapes/try not to cry/strap you in/and, say goodbye,’ which became, ‘All the little things I do/They mean nothing/All the little things I say / They mean nothing, now,” in the final recorded version of the song,” she said.

Almost two years later, a week before she released the new single that aches with the “specific and universal” feelings that parents face, another school shooting rocked Nashville. This time two teenagers were dead: one the shooter and the second a 16-year-old girl.

“If I’m honest, I felt numb and angry,” Minear said of how she felt hearing the news of the Antioch High School shooting on the morning of Jan. 22, 2025. “Reading the news feels like getting punched in the face these days, and I feel terrified about the world my kids are growing up in.”

“Protect You” provides a way for Minear to release her own feelings through music, but the song also represents an act of solidarity with fearful parents and gun violence prevention advocates across the country trying to stop the cycle of school shootings and gun deaths.

“It was inspired by the (Covenant School) shooting, but it’s true for parents everywhere,” she said of “Protect You.” The song examines feelings many parents have about protecting their children from danger, whether falling off their bikes or getting sick, but it also reflects on parents’ fears when their children are just going to school. “I think the best songs are specific and universal at the same time.”

She said she hopes every parent can hear something of their own in the song.

“I think that songs are about communicating the truth in a digestible way,” she explained. “The truth is that there is no such thing as other people’s children.” And for Minear, communicating her feelings through song are a way to process the world around her.

“When possible, if I have an idea like (‘Protect You’), I try to write the song immediately, stream of consciousness,” she said. “That allows me to get to the root of the idea without overthinking it. In this situation, I couldn’t do that because I had to drive my kids to school. So, I zipped up (those feelings), took them to school, and then parked my car to get the song out.”

That is not an unusual scenario for the indie folk-pop singer-songwriter who is trained as a psychotherapist.

“I feel things very intensely, and writing a song is one of the best ways I’ve found to soften an uncomfortable emotion so that I can go on with my day,” she explained. “I think it has to do with organizing the feeling into sections over a melody that makes it feel less overwhelming. I don’t write every song this way, but I do keep a lot of notes in my phone from moments of deep feeling.”

She brings those notes to writing sessions or when she is ready to work them into a new song. She finished the final mix of “Protect You” this past summer and was not certain when she would release it.

“I’m working on an album, so I thought it might go on that. I originally planned to release a song called ‘Nice Guy’ in January 2025, but after the presidential election, that didn’t feel like an accurate representation of the anger and helplessness I was feeling,” she said. Then in November, she played a showcase in Nashville and was invited back for a headline show in January. That’s when she decided to release “Protect You” as a single and engage gun violence advocacy groups. She is donating a percentage of the song’s sales to Moms Demand Action and March Forth.

“It felt like it is a tiny act of resistance. I am a social worker by training, and I believe that small actions are the antidote to apathy,” Minear said.

The first time she played “Protect You” live was at a fundraiser for Moms Demand Action in Bedford, N.Y. She has followed Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts’ work for years and has made donations to Everytown for Gun Safety, but that night she met some of the activists doing the groundwork. “I was so inspired by them,” she said.

Minear returned to Nashville to release “Protect You” and perform at The Basement. She is selling signed limited-edition hand-numbered CDs of “Protect You” that include the studio version of the song, an unreleased acoustic version and her original phone voice memo from when she wrote the song, as well as digital downloads of all three. The CD liner features unreleased photography from her CD cover shoot. With each purchase of a $10 CD, just over $4 is donated to the gun violence prevention groups.

Minear performs next in New York, where she now lives, at The Bitter End on March 14 and Chelsea Table on April 25, followed by festivals over the summer.

“I hope to announce another Nashville show soon,” she said. “I’ll be releasing music this year every six weeks, culminating in a moody album project that I have been working on for the last few years.”

Follow Minear on Instagram and Bandsintown, and by subscribing to her newsletter. 

Barbara Esteves-Mooresongwriter, gun violence prevention, music