Multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and vocalist Lola Bates is an artist in the purest sense. Using complex vocal arrangements and mysterious musical compositions to craft songs that are sensual, poignant, and cinematic, Bates is a songwriter known for her unique sonic identity. Soon to release her debut full-length album Love & Power this spring, Bates uses a vast array of musical influences, ranging from rock to pop to folk, to explore themes of intimacy, identity, and strength.
Bates has previewed the upcoming record with her debut single “Girl’s Girl,” which arrived in March, as well as her latest single “Madonna Gold,” out today. On the former, she explores the complexity of a love triangle, as well as what it means to look within yourself to be better for those around you, through a pulsing, hypnotic composition. Through her latest release, Bates continues to travel down this path of honing in on power and self-confidence.
“Madonna Gold,” through its soulful and passionate delivery, explores the dichotomy of staying true to oneself in a world that both encourages and distorts ideas of intimacy. This balance of love and lust, power and control, is delivered flawlessly through the track’s magnetic blend of electric guitars and feather-soft vocals.
While Bates is preparing for the release of her debut record, her long career in music establishes her as an industry veteran. Growing up in Laurel Canyon, Bates found inspiration in music and songwriting as a kid. With Tyler Bates — the renowned composer known for his work in the John Wick, X, and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises — as her father, she was a classically-trained pianist by age 12, working on film scores with her dad in Abbey Road Studios.
In 2022, Bates and her band opened for Jerry Cantrell on the U.S. leg of his Brighton tour, and later joined Cantrell’s band as a backing vocalist, guitarist, and keyboardist. Throughout 2024 and 2025, Bates joined up-and-coming pop outfit Sunday (1994) as a touring bassist.
With an extensive background in music, Bates enters this new artistic era with intention and power. Pulling inspiration from the mystical rock icons that came before her (think Joni Mitchell, PJ Harvey, Kate Bush), Bates interweaves vulnerable songwriting with atmospheric soundscapes to establish for herself a magnetic, yet deeply grounded, artistic identity.
In light of the release of her sophomore single “Madonna Gold,” Bates sat down with Melodic Magazine to discuss musical inspirations, working with Jerry Cantrell, and where she finds her inner power.
Super excited to chat with you, Lola! So many cool things coming up for you, but I wanted to ask first about your roots and how you first got into music. You grew up in the Laurel Canyon area, which obviously has such a historical musical legacy. I was wondering how growing up in this area might have impacted your artistry today.
Yeah, it’s no doubt that I feel blessed every day to have grown up in Laurel Canyon. As a kid, I was quite shy. I was always trained as a classical pianist growing up, and was always just writing and doing creative things as a kid. We actually lived on a street that has just three houses, and across the street is just mountainside. So every day after school, I’d take my journal, I’d go into the mountain, and I would just kind of sit up there, journal, write songs, and just take in the sounds and the nature and the scenes. It’s always inspired self-reflection, meditation, and mindfulness. And because L.A. is so bustling and busy, it just feels like this hidden gem within the midst of it all. So that’s where a lot of my creativity stems from, that special place of mindfulness that nature often brings out of me. Laurel Canyon was amazing for fostering that from a young age.
That sounds so relaxing, and like you said, we love the city, but sometimes you just need to get away to somewhere peaceful, somewhere to spark the creative flow. Journaling in nature, is that still something that fuels you today?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, on any open Sunday, I’ll just drive out into the mountains and take a day just for myself, just to feel like wind in my hair and the sun, and it just totally feeds my soul.
You’ve already done so many cool things in music, and I wanted to ask first about your work with Jerry Cantrell. He’s such a legendary musician, and I was wondering if, during your time with him, did he give you any advice? What were some of the things that you might have learned through working with him?
Oh, absolutely. I got the bulk of my knowledge of live performance and touring through Jerry. Funny enough, he’s our next-door neighbor. We met him really early on, and he’s basically family at this point. It was an amazing experience. They were looking for a band to open, and he asked me to open for him in 2022 for his Brighton U.S. tour. So I gathered a band together and went on the road, and it was awesome because basically everyone in his band was everyone my dad would invite over for football night, including my dad. So it was just a super supportive, familial vibe. And it came time in that summer of 2022 when they needed a keyboardist to fill in for the European run. He asked me to join the band, and I ended up playing over 100 shows or something like that with him over the course of a couple of years. Through that experience, I’ve played rooms of all sizes, spaces with 70,000-person crowds, and then spaces with 300-cap rooms. So I’ve just been under all different sorts of pressure to figure out how to solve problems in the moment when something goes wrong with a keyboard or gear or anything. Jerry really showed me the kind of vibe that I want to bring when I go on tour with my band again one day and assemble my own crew, and how it should feel like family. I am all for people feeling accepted and like family on the road together, because you’re giving up your whole life to be on the road. So why not make it a memorable, joyful experience? I love him, he’s amazing. And one piece of advice he always gave me from the start was own your masters. Which has come in very handy (laughs).
You mention your dad, Tyler Bates, and obviously he has done so much work for music and film, and you have as well, working with him. When it comes to writing music on your own compared to writing music for film and television, it’s all music, but I imagine those are two very different worlds. When it comes to the work you’ve done for movies and TV, what do you bring from that world that you now carry into your solo work?
Totally, yeah. My dad and I, music has always been a main point of connection for us. Starting pretty young, like at 12 years old, he got me recording on some of his scores. And throughout the years, I’ve developed just really cool vocal techniques and ambient spaces and recording with piano on scores. It’s been so much fun to get in a room and just on the fly improvise for a scene in television or a movie because there’s so much storytelling there. So when I bring it into my own music, I see how much it translates and just how cinematic some of the songs can feel sometimes. And a lot of ambient vocal work I bring into my own music. At 15 years old I started producing, and most of my knowledge I got from my dad, just from sitting in his studio and watching him work. And he’s constantly layering in his music, which I love, and I’ve kind of taken that for myself. There are so many fun musical earworms in my songs. I just love layering it to make it feel big and cinematic. And definitely at a young age, getting to record in legendary spaces like Abbey Road, Capitol Records, EastWest Studios, taught me most everything I know about recording music and how important communication is in the studio and how sound travels and utilizing music gear to achieve the best performance and letting the historical character of the actual studio space influence your performance.
If I could choose one word, cinematic is such a great word to describe your music. It is very atmospheric and there’s so much intention in it. Going off of that, your debut single, “Girl’s Girl” came out in March. Such an amazing single and such a cool debut track to release. What about that single made you decide it had to be the first one to share?
I’ve taken a million listens through the album, and my team and I thought it would be a great introduction to the full 10-song album, because sonically, it captures a lot of elements that the other songs have as well throughout the album, like really lush vocal harmonies and playing around with more rock ‘n’ roll elements. In the past, I’ve been more of a folk artist, and I’ve really wanted to bring that grit to my elegant sound, clashing the two together. Like I mentioned, there are so many little sonic earworms that, if you really listen close with headphones, you can hear in every other song as well. And I felt like lyrically, there was a lot of vulnerability there. I feel it just represents the dynamic of Love & Power.
For those who don’t know, what was the story or the message you were trying to get across through the song?
The lyrics poured from a really vulnerable spot, reflecting a romantic situation I found myself entangled in between two other people. There was a lot of guilt that I had felt from that experience that helped me look inward and question what it means to be a girl’s girl. There’s this just deep sense of needing to feel love and wanted. And I believe being a girl’s girl means first removing yourself from those harmful situations and to look out for yourself, your body, your mind, and your soul. I feel like from that place of your inner power, we can show up and make a real effort to show up for our fellow sisters and women around us with the emotional support and care that they might need, without risking your own well-being.
I love the single, and I also love the music video that came out as well. In terms of your aesthetics, your visuals, or treatments for music videos, where do you pull inspiration from?
The video was really fun to create. Most of the stuff was just super guerrilla, like off the fly. We created our own sets for it. I worked really closely with my friend Chandler Clamp, who directed and DP’d the video. As far as where the visuals come from, I’ll sit down with the song , or I’ll go on a drive and listen to the music and just kind of let visuals come into my brain, and I’ll get together with a creative that I love working with. I have so many fun creative friends around me, and I love when other people can take an initial vision that I have stirring in my brain and flesh it out into a full storyline. I hope that any visuals that I create really influence the music and enhance the storytelling of the song. Especially growing up with my dad in the film industry, he introduced me to a load of arty films in high school. I love David Lynch and Spike Lee and even Tom Tykwer, who directed Run Lola Run, which is obviously one of my favorite movies. I love how the music is such a central part of the storytelling for all those directors. So that’s kind of what I’m trying to achieve with my visuals as well.
Your new single, “Madonna Gold,” comes out April 10. I’m already picturing the visuals in my head for that single, and I love the message of the song as well. It explores how we look at our own sexuality or sexual expression in a society that encourages hypersexuality. What inspired you to write a single exploring this concept?
It’s a bit esoteric. It just kind of poured out of me from a vulnerable place. And I think, I’d been on tour for two plus years and coming back from that and just getting back to ground zero, there were so many things that came up for me in my mind. And the song is about a version of myself that I always want to keep close. And it’s like, everything that I’ve gone through in my life with romance, sexual experiences, I may not be innocent, we may not be innocent anymore, but there’s always that classy, elegant, strong, and powerful Madonna gold inside that keeps me true to myself. But yeah, it’s just exploring the tropes of sexuality and sensuality and that kind of thing.
Through writing that single, considering the modern world and how it encourages hypersexuality and instant access to intimacy, what did you learn about yourself while writing this song?
The song is like a love letter to temptation. Temptation within the song and the visuals make up a devil sort of character. And everything that the media and the world presents to us in the way we should be acting, feeling, and how we should portray ourselves sexually is like, it’s so easy to grab and so easy to take for ourselves, but to have that reflection in just discovering who you are sexually and sensually, vulnerably, in a safe way is really important. So it’s just expressing how that temptation is always there, but to stay true to yourself and that power inside is important.
Both of your recent singles arrive ahead of your debut album Love & Power, which is super exciting. We had spoken about how much you’ve done so far in the music industry, but what have you been able to do or express through this record that maybe you haven’t been able to previously?
Love & Power has really helped me express what it feels like to take agency of my life and my relationships lyrically. That’s what I’m trying to express with this song, and to hold myself accountable as a young woman in the world. It’s helped me uncover the inner power that I want to carry with me throughout the rest of life, and I find it to be a really lovely introduction to whatever iterations of my artistry and my career come next. And on top of that, I’ve also been signed to a new up-and-coming indie label called Gravel and Echo Recordings, which is owned by the engineer who mixed Love & Power, Robert Carranza, as well as my dad, Tyler Bates. And I’m very closely enveloped in the whole thing. The three of us, along with a couple of other folks, are helping it come alive and starting the business from scratch. So it’s been an amazing opportunity to understand how to find a route for this album in the industry as it is now, ever-changing and super volatile, and how, with every artist, including myself, that we signed to the label, we can further help them find their niche audience. I’ve learned a lot about marketing in the past few months, and it’s been really influential. So I love that this album is a gateway for that for me.
I’m glad you mentioned the new label too, I feel like this is just a really cool era of new beginnings for you. But with the album and both singles that have come out, there’s this through line of confidence and empowerment, and it’s just a very inspiring album already from what we’ve seen. What advice would you give to people on how to find their own inner confidence or how to find that power in themselves?
Definitely tuning into what makes you feel passionate, because I feel that this album has really tested my skills as a songwriter, producer, and engineer. And it all stemmed from being in this sort of sacred space and setting the intention to dig deeper into my skills, hone into my passion for songwriting and music. I just love that it’s gotten me to the next point. And I feel like that’s why I feel so confident now as an artist, because of how much work I put into it. And I just hope that when people listen to it, they can hear how much of the minutiae I really got into, from the conception of the songs to the arrangements, the string arrangements, horn arrangements. All the mixing we did took months to perfect. It’s really the slow working process of refining your skills and your passion. I feel that’s what really fuels my inner sense of power.
I love that. Aside from the album, what else can people expect to see from you this year?
While the album is coming out in May, we want to do every song justice on that album. So people can expect a full unraveling of the entire story of the album through the continuous campaigning and marketing that we do per single. Because right now we have “Girl’s Girl,” and “Madonna Gold” is continuing to tell this story of Love & Power. We really want to visually continue to tell that story with the audio as well. So that’s going to be fleshing out for the next year, which I’m very excited to just continue working on.
Stream “Madonna Gold” here.
Keep up with Lola Bates: Instagram // TikTok // Facebook // Spotify // YouTube // Website
