Not What You Thought, Am I?: A Conversation with Luka Lohr

Listen to Luka Lohr everywhere!

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Kx7KjmbvnieBBvrIpTWcs?si=910ec00caacd4c3b

How do you decide when a personal experience is ready to become a song?

I really don’t decide it. I have a rule in my songwriting that whatever hurts the most is what has to be put out. As soon as it is coherent, I am reopening that wound and writing about it.

I do think songwriting is healing, but for me, it is also the most frustrating thing in my life. Thinking about it being shared with everyone else really makes me want to crawl into a hole, which is why I put it out.

Because there has to be someone who feels the same way and is scared to talk about it, or doesn’t even know what they feel. My goal and dream is to have someone in their bedroom go, “Oh my god, THAT is how I feel,” because there are so many artists and songs that have done that for me.

Your song “AM I” explores the disconnect between who you are and who someone expects you to be. What originally inspired that idea?

I find a lot of my inspiration in other songs that I love. I remember driving from my brother’s house to mine and listening to “Marble Arch” by Erin LeCount. I heard her sing, “I am hard to love, not what you thought, am I?” and went, “Holy shit, bar.”

Then I started singing the intro to “AM I” over some music I wrote in July of 2025, which ended up being pretty much all of what’s in the song now.

The first section’s lyrics are from a poem I wrote in 2024. At the time, I was watching Disney Channel shows because anything else would remind me that I wasn’t doing enough or that I wasn’t as good as other people, and then I would get irrevocably depressed.

The last part of the song was originally just me ad-libbing until about two weeks before I uploaded it, when I wrote the Americana verse. I had gotten into a Halsey phase and was obsessed with “New Americana” and that idea of being rebellious and careless.

So, I took that thought and applied it to the idea of being someone other than who people expected you to be, or who they had preconceived notions of you being.

Was there a specific lyric in “AM I” that helped unlock the rest of the song for you?

Not really. It took a year to make.

I’m honestly really bad at vocal melodies, and I just never knew what to do, so I couldn’t write any lyrics over it. But there is always a time when I realize what the song is about.

For this one, I really only dissected it after I had submitted it and went, “What the hell am I talking about?”

I knew all the feelings were circling the same drain, but since all the sections are so different and were written months apart from each other, it was really hard to make it feel cohesive.

But I think that’s kind of the charm.

How would you describe the perspective you bring to your music?

I think I would describe it as being self-assured and the identity that comes with that.

I have a very strong moral compass and am very in tune with my own emotions, for better or for worse, so I think I can express emotions that other people can’t.

I’m also just a very sad teenage girl at heart, even though I’m 20.

How do you know when a song is finished, especially when you have complete control over every creative decision?

It’s what everyone doesn’t want to hear, which is: you just feel it.

But honestly, if I could, it would never be done because there’s always something that’s off the morning after and doesn’t sound right anymore.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the only way for me to think my own work is good is for someone else to take over and do it for me, because me trying to make it “good” is actually me trying to make it sound like someone else made it.

That’s never going to happen when you have your hands in every corner of a song’s process.

Basically, I know when it’s done when I’m tired of it and I’m starting to hate it.