Some songs arrive, absolutely decimate the charts and disappear almost as quickly as they came. One hit wonders in other words.
Some, the outliers, take a rather more interesting route. Let's call it the leisurely, more sedate scenic route. Studying the mechanics of the metaphorical fan but the lobbing the sh*t at it.
They travel, find audiences in unexpected places and, occasionally, become enormous hits long after the people who originally backed them have given up.
LP's Lost on You belongs firmly in the second category.
It's difficult now to imagine the song as anything other than a defining moment in LP's career. That unmistakable voice, the whistled melody and the emotional force of the chorus helped turn it into an almost drip-fed international phenomenon.
But its success was far from inevitable.
Speaking to RTL Today Radio ahead of their latest Luxembourg performance at den Atelier, LP revealed just how close things came to taking an entirely different direction.
“I was dropped from my label for that,” the musician explains. “And then I jumped to an indie label, and then a little label in Greece was like, ‘Hey, can we license the album?’”
What followed was an unlikely chain reaction. The song caught on in Greece during the summer holidays, before gradually spreading into other territories and finding the audience that would transform LP's career.
There was even talk, they reveal, of Lost on You being recorded by Rihanna.
The remarkable thing is that LP doesn't appear particularly interested in dwelling on what might have been.
Instead, they're fascinated by the unpredictability of it all.
“The journey of a song can be fascinating,” LP says, pointing to the way older recordings can suddenly find enormous new audiences, as Kate Bush famously did through Stranger Things, “we don't know where things land.”
An Italian A&R executive once suggested to her that Lost on You might not become a hit if it were released today. LP's response is refreshingly uncomplicated: who knows?
After all, they're now discussing the song from a hotel room in Utrecht, following an arena performance, a decade after its original release.
It's really not that bad a result for a record that initially struggled to find its place.
LP has experienced the music industry from two very different perspectives: as a songwriter creating material for other artists and as a performer whose own name appears above the door.
Neither, they say, offers much certainty.
For songwriters, there are the endless unanswered messages, the excitement of hearing a song might become somebody's next single and the disappointment when plans change.
A recording can be promised, delayed, repositioned or abandoned altogether.
LP has learned not to celebrate too early.
“I don't believe it until it's out on Spotify, Apple Music, whatever it's on,” they maintain, a touch of that trademark bite and cynicism cutting through.
Then there's the continuing struggle over how songwriters are paid, particularly in an industry where streaming has transformed both consumption and the economics of music.
For performers, meanwhile, the challenges are different but no less demanding: selling tickets, building an audience and persuading people to keep turning up.
“It's work, and nothing's guaranteed” LP argues, perhaps that explains why they place so much importance on resilience.
When asked how she learned to trust her own instincts rather than become distracted by success or industry expectations, LP touched on something they'd recently encountered online: the suggestion that making it in music isn't always
simply about talent, but about how much rejection, uncertainty and disappointment a person can endure.
While they don't buy in to the sentiment entirely, they recognise something in it.
You have to "believe that what you're creating matters", LP argues, even when there's little immediate evidence that anybody else agrees.
Then you put it into the world and accept whatever happens next.
“Life is hard, get a helmet,” LP laughs, with that philosophy extending beyond music and then acknowledging that there's also an enormous amount of joy to be found along the way.
And when the conversation turned to the industry's habit of focusing on what artists haven't achieved, LP was particularly animated.
Why, they wondered, are musicians so frequently asked to justify continuing to create "simply because success hasn't arrived in the form or at the moment somebody expected?"
Their answer was simple.
“Keep writing songs, keep creating, and find your people.”
It's perhaps the clearest expression of what has kept LP moving through an industry that has repeatedly demonstrated how little control artists have over the eventual fate of their work.
MORE: LP's Song 2 Podcast Episode - the lost art of track listing
LP takes performing extremely seriously, and has done for their entire career.
That extraordinary voice is one thing. Delivering it consistently, night after night, is quite another.
For LP, the audience deserves more than a collection of familiar songs performed competently.
People have paid good money for their tickets, and they feel a responsibility to give them something genuinely worth seeing.
“I wanna be technically top of my game,” LP explains. “I don't take it lightly.”
It is particularly amusing to LP on the matter around when people hear her singing and wonder whether they're listening to a recording.
It's a compliment, of course, but also evidence of the work that goes into maintaining that standard.
And those expectations don't stop with her own performance.
LP speaks warmly about the musicians and crew accompanying her on the current tour, praising the contribution of everyone from the lighting and sound teams to the players onstage.
But this is no accident, LP leads by example, they say, and expects people to take pride in doing their jobs properly.
It's not about elaborate production or unnecessary spectacle.
It is very much about getting the fundamentals right and creating something memorable together.
The current tour has also given LP an opportunity to revisit material from Lost on You, including songs that haven't regularly appeared in their live performances for years.
And revisiting an album after a decade can reveal some surprises.
Two songs in particular have caught their attention: You Want It All and Long Way to Go to Die.
The former is an enormous vocal challenge, especially towards the end of a show that can last more than two hours.
And that's before accounting for the additional singing involved in soundchecks and VIP sessions.
Interestingly, LP believes they're handling the song better now than they did when it was new.
“I'm loving singing the shit out of it now,” is how LP succinctly puts it.
Long Way to Go to Die has provided a different kind of revelation.
With its country and Americana influences, the song reflects LP's longstanding reluctance to remain within one musical genre.
That versatility hasn't always made their career easier. In fact, LP believes their ability and desire to move between styles may have contributed to some of the false starts they experienced earlier on.
But returning to the song has given it a new emotional weight.
It feels, LP says, as though they've lived a little more of it.
That's one of the pleasures of revisiting older material. The recording remains the same, but the person singing it has changed.
And with eight records now forming part of LP's catalogue, deciding what to perform has become an increasingly complicated balancing act.
There's an obvious challenge for any artist whose career includes a record as beloved as Lost on You.
How do you persuade an audience to embrace new material when they've spent years developing such a strong attachment to the old?
LP understands the dilemma perfectly.
She compares it to attending a Radiohead concert and hearing material from a newer album before the band launches into something from The Bends, at which point they will "freak out".
Of course the familiar songs provoke an immediate emotional reaction.
But LP has been encouraged by the response to their latest album, Room 12, particularly the way audiences are already singing the new material back to them.
For LP, that reaction matters enormously.
It demonstrates that the relationship between artist and audience is continuing to develop and not drifting lazily into the tropes and trappings found in an exercise in nostalgia.
And it isn't only Lost on You or Room 12 that connects.
Songs from Heart to Mouth and Churches are also receiving enthusiastic responses, giving LP the freedom to build a show that reflects the breadth of their career.
It's an important distinction.
While the tour allows the bridging of the anniversary of that breakout record, it is also an acceptance of time and space, with tracks from Room 12 sitting comfortable alongside material from all the previous albums.
LP has performed in Luxembourg several times, and memories of those visits are particularly warm.
They remember the affection of the audiences and the atmosphere created by people who clearly know and love the music.
This time, they will be arriving with a slightly different band and a combination of familiar favourites and newer songs.
But anyone expecting an enormous theatrical production may be looking in the wrong place.
There won't be pyrotechnics or extravagant lighting tricks.
LP has something rather more straightforward in mind.
Great musicians, a powerful voice and an audience willing to become part of the performance.
“I don't do big light shows. There's no pyrotechnics… but I will be singing the crap out of new and old. Bring your voices.”
It's an invitation that neatly sums up our time spent with this most remarkable of musicians, a confusing, contrary, caring and dedicated soul who is bouncing from one thing to the next.
For all the uncertainty of the music business, the rejection, the unpredictable success and the years spent wondering where a song might eventually land, LP still seems happiest doing the thing that started it all.
Singing.
And if the audience sings back, all the better.
Listen to the full interview with LP on RTL Today Radio.
