Songwriter uses new single "Protect You" to help gun violence prevention groups

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Feb. 10, 2025 - PRLog -- 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."
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