Interview with lolitslea

The last time lolitslea sat down with WMSC, in January 2025, she came alone with an acoustic guitar. This time she brought her full live band, drummer Zander, bassist Dave and guitarist Hera, along with a finished sophomore album.

RollerCoaster Tycoon, the follow-up to her 2024 debut Nothing Lasts Forever!, came out September 15. The Point Pleasant native built it across sessions in Nashville, LA and back home in New Jersey, working with collaborators including Cassadee Pope, Jack the Underdog and producer Chase, and it plays like exactly what its title promises: a neon pop-punk record that treats her own chaos as the whole point.

The title isn’t a joke, either. “This is me, so if you can’t deal with it, then that’s that, we’re not gonna work out,” she said of the song that gave the album its name. That tension, between embracing her own extroversion and worrying it’s too much, runs through the whole record, right down to the video-game interlude tracks stitched between songs.

She talked through the three-year road to releasing her Jack the Underdog collaboration “Tragedy,” the writing room with Cassadee Pope and Dan Swank, and what it’s like handing songs she wrote alone over to a full band for the first time.

ASH: If Roller Coaster Tycoon wasn’t an album title, what would be the soundtrack to your life?

LEA: That’s hard, because before I wrote the song “Roller Coaster Tycoon,” I didn’t really have one that I’d point to as the soundtrack to my life. I wrote it with some friends in Nashville, and once I built the whole album around it, I realized it was the most encompassing song I’d ever written, especially for where I’m at right now. So yeah, I didn’t have one. I guess I just made my own.

ASH: You’ve said people can become part of your own chaos, but if they can’t handle it, they should leave. What’s behind that?

LEA: I wrote that with my friends Lizzy and Dakota. At the time I was feeling like I was overwhelming people, walking into rooms too loud, too extroverted, too much. I think it started as a song to myself: this is me, so if you can’t deal with it, then that’s that, we’re not gonna work out. My life felt really chaotic when I walked into that session, and we didn’t have a plan, so we just got silly with it and built a chanty part I love. It went from me feeling ashamed of my own kind of insanity to this anthem that’s carefree and fun to shout. Now it almost makes me feel better about just being me.

ASH: What was it like getting input from your live band on songs they weren’t around for when you originally wrote and demoed them?

LEA: It’s really cool individually, what everyone brought. Onstage, Hera will play these random guitar solos that absolutely blow me away, and I’m like, why wasn’t that on the record? Dave wrote in on one of the songs too. He played acoustic guitar and piano on “Whenever You’ll Be” and even did some vocals. I had a demo, but he got to play with the chord progression and change it up into what it ended up being. It’s a stripped back, emotional moment on the record. We all started out just learning the songs to play live, and now it’s cool to bring that back into the studio on some of the tracks.

ASH: You wrote “Wish I’d Known” with Cassadee Pope and Dan Swank. What was that room like?

LEA: Honestly, kind of scary. I’ve been writing full songs since I was six or seven, mostly by myself, so getting into rooms with other people and collaborating is still pretty new for me. Walking into that session, I was like, these are two people who are so respected in the scene, so talented, what if I make a stupid suggestion? But there’s no stupid suggestion, it’s about getting the confidence to speak up. Cassadee’s like a big sister to me, a mentor. It was only one song, but I’m so glad it happened.

ASH: You’ve got transition tracks on the record, Main Menu, Loading Screen One, Loading Screen Two, Credits. Are those connected to the video game concept?

LEA: Yeah, I wanted the record to feel like a video game soundtrack. I release music in the order I write it, so once I had the interlude tracks from Glitch Gum, I was like, let’s put in a main menu, a loading screen, something for the credits. Luke, who is Glitch Gum, hid pieces of five of my songs inside one of the loading screen tracks, and I didn’t even catch it until he pointed it out. It’s an Easter egg, and I hope it makes the album flow and gives people a little break.

ASH: How did “Tragedy” with Jack the Underdog come together?

LEA: Jack and I wrote it back in 2023, right after I moved to Nashville from LA. I brought him a chorus I’d written at 3 a.m., and we fleshed it out into “Tragedy.” I told him I wanted him to feature on the album and didn’t really give him any kind of timeline, so it ended up being about three years from that write to release. We tracked it with Chase, who produced most of my first record, and I actually drove to Nashville a couple weeks before it came out to film the video and edited it the same week. It’s been my most streamed song right out of the gate, and it’s picking up really well on Spotify, so I’m thrilled with how it’s landed.

ASH: How does the Asbury Park scene inspire you now, and how does growing up in Point Pleasant factor in?

LEA: I’m still learning who’s out there, and I don’t play Asbury as often as some of the local bands do, so I try to get out and see shows whenever I’m not on the road. We played a backyard show with a ton of local Jersey bands, and even having to run to another gig right after, it was a real chance to connect with people in that scene. In Point Pleasant, honestly, we’ve got the Jersey Shore and some tiki bars, nothing really on the map, so I hope I’m making my hometown proud. New Jersey Mike’s is from Point Pleasant, though, so that’s a pretty big deal.

ASH: It’s wild that a state as small as New Jersey has such a genre split from north to south. How does that show up for you in the pop-punk space specifically?

LEA: There’s been so much underrated talent in Jersey lately that just isn’t blowing up yet, hidden gems that are gonna get there. But it is different depending on where you are. Closer to the city there’s more going on, and it hasn’t been easy to tap into the pop-punk scene specifically in central Jersey. So if there’s cool stuff happening in that space, I want to know about it immediately. We’ve gotta support each other out there.

ASH: “lolitslea” is a pretty distinct name. Is there an origin story?

LEA: I love talking about this one because it’s random and kind of goofy. When social media came out, I was trying to think of a good username, and I started as just my first name, then Lia with spaces once I realized other people existed with that name. But every time you Googled that, either Leaf came up or nothing did, so it wasn’t great for SEO. I wanted something unique that still had my first name in it, and I was thinking about all those one-word scene usernames, like Never Shout Never, so “lol its lia” felt natural. People in LA would see me out and just call me that instead of my name, and it stuck.

ASH: You’re freshly 31 now. How do you feel about the name at this point in your life?

LEA: The comment that stuck with me was a friend who asked how I was gonna feel about it when I was 40, if it would feel weird. It hurt a little at the time, but he probably never realized that. Now I think about it a lot. I am early 30s, and yeah, it’s a little childish, but my music is a little campy too, so I think it fits the vibe. Honestly, I should just say, F the haters. When I’m 60, Lolzia. Whatever.

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