Lauren Jauregui ‘Growing Up’: How Her Grandma Encouraged Her Life-Changing ‘X Factor’ Audition

In the latest episode of Billboard’s “Growing Up” series, Lauren Jauregui praises her grandmother for pushing her to pursue her musical dreams since the artist was little.

The Miami-raised singer-songwriter, who is Cuban with Spanish descent, says she grew up in a “loud” yet musical house with a drum kit and piano causing a “raucous.” “Whenever we would have any parties or anything at the house, it was just loud music always playing and everybody was always dancing,” she tells Billboard. “I feel like that was really a huge reason why I gravitated towards that. … When I was younger, I used to dance a lot. I would do these choreographies and then I would do a performance for my family.”

But it was her late grandma Grace whom the 25-year-old singer considered to be her “No. 1 fan” growing up. According to Jauregui, it was Grace who encouraged her to take her talents to The X Factor stage, where Fifth Harmony was born.

“We used to always watch American Idol together, and she would always tell me, ‘You’re gonna sing for Simon Cowell and he’s gonna know — he’s gonna see what I see,'” she recalls as her eyes well up with tears. “And so when she passed, I was like, ‘I gotta do it.’ And so I did it.”

Jauregui went on the singing competition series in 2012, performing Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You” for her audition, which pleasantly surprised Cowell as he called said it “one of my favorite auditions.” She remembered walking out of the audition with her father when two girls who had heard her sing told her that they’d follow her journey as an artist and asked her for her autograph. But Cowell had made it clear during season three of The X Factor that he wanted to discover a girl group, or, essentially, the female version of One Direction. Joining Camila Cabello, Normani, Ally Brooke and Dinah Jane wasn’t part of Jauregui’s original plan, but the growing pains she experienced were vital to her journey.

“At first, I was like, ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’ I’m just gonna be straight up. It was just about intentionality of what I had envisioned for myself,” she admits about joining 5H, clarifying that she didn’t want to come off in an “arrogant” way. “Being in that group taught me a lot. And at the time, I didn’t understand what it was teaching me because I had to go through it. I had like a huge ego death in that group. A lot of lessons on hard work, a lot of lessons about burnout, how to navigate from a place of heart and stay true to myself through noise and through challenges … And I don’t think I had the strength at 16 to have done it on my own.”

She previously told Billboard in an exclusive interview about her upcoming debut solo album Prelude, which she will be presenting for the very first time during a special global livestream performance via Moment House on Oct. 14 and 15. Jauregui said she learned about her own resilience, inner strength and power through the process of writing songs on the album, something she was never given the opportunity to explore until 5H went on an indefinite hiatus in 2018.

“That conversation was the unlock moment for me where I felt myself free up. I felt the energy of a new beginning, and then that allowed me to write again, ’cause I had not written any music while I was at Fifth Harmony at all,” she says in her latest interview. “I really had disconnected from Lauren as an artist, like Lauren as a songwriter. I had just become Lauren the pop star that would show up and do her job. I got to move into a new reality and space of self-exploration that I started sonically and then had to dive into mentally.”

Watch Jauregui’s “Growing Up” episode above.

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