DIGITAL COVER DROP: RENFORSHORT GETS REAL WITH 'PRETEND TO LIKE ME'

WORDS + CREATIVE DIRECTION MAISIE JANE DANIELS - PHOTOGRAPHY JASMINE ENGEL-MALONE - STYLING BIANCA NICOLE - MAKEUP MATILDE RIBAU - HAIR ASHLEIGH HODGES - PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT SOPHIE PHILLIPS - PRODUCTION F WORD HUB - STUDIO MASH CREATIVE

When it comes to channeling raw emotion into music, renforshort never misses! Yesteday, the Canadian singer-songwriter invites us into her world once again with the release of her new single, "pretend to like me," marking the start of an exciting new chapter for this alt-pop powerhouse. "pretend to like me" is a cathartic anthem for anyone who’s ever wrestled with feelings of insecurity and self-doubt. With her signature blend of angst-fueled lyricism and infectious melodies, renforshort captures the all-too-relatable plea to be seen, wanted, and—most of all—liked.

In our exclusive Digital Cover feature, renforshort reflects on the journey behind this track, sharing how it took seven rewrites before she finally landed on the right verses to match the chorus she adored. As she tells us, this track might never have seen the light of day if not for the overwhelming love it received on TikTok—proof that trusting your instincts (and your fans) is always the right move.

Beyond the new single, renforshort opens up about her creative evolution, the emotional depth behind her upcoming EP, and the connection she feels with her devoted UK fan base—who, by the way, always manage to bring her to tears (in the best way possible) after every show.

As she continues to build her sonic world, renforshort’s ability to tap into universal feelings of love, longing, and heartbreak keeps her firmly on our radar. With "pretend to like me" paving the way, 2025 is shaping up to be a standout year for this rising star—and we can’t wait to watch it unfold.

See our exclusive F Word Magazine photoshoot from a fun afternoon spent in the studio, and read on for our full conversation with renforshort as she talks music, emotions, and much, much more..

LISTEN TO PRETEND TO LIKE ME

Maisie Daniels: Hey Lauren! Thank you for talking with me today and for being our Digital Cover Star! I believe you’re residing in your hometown of Toronto, having had to leave your home in LA. I’m so sorry to think about what you must have gone through with the Californian fires.

renforshort: It’s fine. It’s one of those things where, in a way, we brought this on ourselves. We have to take better care of our world while we have it. I think a lot of people are starting to understand that now that it’s right in front of their faces. Honestly, I don’t even want to be in the States right now.

MD: I can understand that. The world feels like a very dark, dystopian place… but let’s try to bring a bit of light with this interview. I love that you’re called renforshort. I’m not gonna lie—it took me a hot minute to make the connection to LauREN, but as soon as the penny dropped, I was like, "Ahh, clever!" There must be a backstory to this?

R: To be honest, a lot of people don’t ever get it [laughs], and they say the same thing if they do! Honestly, I was on Twitter (when it was still Twitter). This was before I started my artist project, and I saw someone named Ren, and in brackets, it said (Lauren). And… this is just a weird thing, but I grew up thinking, Why don’t I have a short version of my name? All of my brothers and friends had short versions of their names, and for some reason, it was something I wanted sooo bad. When I was deciding on my name, I didn’t want to use my actual name because it’s not the most appealing, so I just went with that There’s another artist from the UK called Ren, so I didn’t go with just Ren and chose renforshort. I thought I might as well be blunt about it since this isn’t my real name!

MD: Let’s throw it back to the beginning—did music surround you when you were growing up?

R: It did. I grew up in a very musical household. Nobody in my family is a musician, per se, but they’re all very proficient with their instruments. They can all play really well, but they do other boring things. I grew up watching a lot of concert tapes and videos—my favourites were Amy Winehouse, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan. The Bob Dylan movie [A Complete Unknown] just came out, and I’ve seen the Newport video (the real one!) a million times, so I was like, I get it [laughs]. I’d wake up on weekend mornings to my parents playing records from their room, and we’d all cuddle in bed. Music was just always everywhere.

MD: Do you think that without the influence from your parents, you would still have become the singer-songwriter you are today?

R: That’s a really good question. So, my mum is a writer. Naturally, I think a lot of my family participates in the arts in some capacity—not like my great-grandfather, who made sculptures—but everyone has always been very interested in art.

There was a lot of art in my life (not necessarily just music), so I think I definitely would have gravitated towards the arts in some way because it feels like it’s part of who I am. I can’t imagine doing anything else—and I’ve said that forever—so I don’t know if it would have been music or something else… I really don’t know!

MD: It’s a big question I’ve thrown out there for a Thursday morning [laughs]. It’s like the nature vs. nurture debate! Was there a moment when you realised you wanted to make this into a career?

R: [Laughs] Yeah! I think it was pretty organic. I wanted to make music, so I made music. I put it out, it was received, and that was great. It gave me a foundation to stand on and say, This is what I want to do. Everyone in my life understood and supported me taking that path. It just made sense to them—they knew I wouldn’t be able to sit at a desk on a computer all day. There’s no universe where I could do that. So, I think it was all pretty natural.

LEFT Lauren wears dress; AMY LYNN; tights PRETTY POLLY; boots LAMODA

MD: “pretend to like me” is out today (March 13th). I LOVE it! I’ve had it on repeat all morning. Talk us through the ethos of the song.

R: I actually wrote that song a long time ago. It never came out because I couldn’t get a verse that I liked. I knew I loved the chorus, and I knew I loved the bridge, but I rewrote the verses seven times—for better or for worse, I don’t know! I just couldn’t get them right, and it bothered me because I loved the chorus so much. That happens sometimes, but I think the song would never have come out if I hadn’t posted it on my TikTok and had people really love it. I really liked it too, but at the time, a lot of people on my team were like, “Ahh, take it or leave it.” So, that didn’t give me much confidence to put it out. But I think I just want to release songs that I truly love and that I believe people who listen to my music would really love.

To me, it’s a song about wanting to feel wanted, loved, and… liked. I spent a lot of time not feeling like that—not for any specific reason, just because that’s how my brain worked. And it wasn’t true—people liked me, people loved me—but I think it’s a feeling a lot of people can resonate with. Especially when you start having a crush on someone, and you’re like, Oh my god, can they pleaseee like me back and make this easier for me? But it’s not necessarily a happy thing because there’s no resolution. So yeah, that’s kind of it!

MD: I’m glad you stayed true to you and put this song out, and I’m sure it will resonate with a lot of your fans. The lyric “I can’t tell is this is toxic, teardrops falling in my pocket” really stuck out and resonated with me - I think the lines of knowing what is good and bad can become so blurred in your mind when in an unhealthy relationship.

R: Yeah!

MD: Was this song healing for you to write and get out?

R: It was. I think the whole process of making that song - the register that I sing it into isn’t my typical one. It’s a little bit higher that I normally would do in my other music and I think that alone is cathartic to sing and it helps to get the emotion to transfer to the song a little bit easier. To be like why does it hurt like that? You know? Why do you treat me bad? And just scream that! That’s what to me feels so special to me about the song. When you sing that song you’re given a free pass to really scream it because that’s how it’s written. I think that whole process was cathartic and healing for me.

Lauren wears socks + rings URBAN OUTFITTERS; shoes NASTY GAL; earrings JUICY COUTURE; necklace FREYA DOUGLAS-FERGUSON

MD: Why do you think there’s such a correlation between mental health and music?

R: Literally any medium of art—whether it’s painting, poetry, or acting—you can’t create good product without emotion. You can’t even think of a concept without thinking about emotion. You could look out the window and see trees and snow and think, I’m going to paint that. But you have to think about how that makes you feel to decide what colours you’re going to use. What makes this special? How are people going to resonate with this? How am I going to resonate with this and feel some sort of attachment to it? You can’t just go in objectively.

Art is supposed to evoke emotion from other people, and it has to come from the creator. So, to make the best thing you can, you have to feel. I think people really tap into their feelings when they go inside their head and fish for concepts and ideas—What am I feeling right now? What feels true, like something I could write or paint? How am I going to play this scene?

I don’t know. I need to think of something that makes me sad if I want to cry, or something that makes me happy if I want to be happy. It’s all naturally wound up, and I think that’s the beautiful thing because the reality of life is that we all feel mostly the same things. We all have unique experiences, but we feel the same—angry, sad, happy—we just have different ways of interpreting it and presenting it. It’s cool.

MD: Great answer! "pretend to like me” is gearing up for an EP you have coming out! We’ve already had “on my way!” which feels super uplifting and hopeful, and “pretend to like me” feels angry and empowering… What else can we expect?

R: There are definitely songs that feel lighter, and there are songs that feel deeper. Some of them are quite melancholic, and some of them are a little happier than stuff I’d normally put out. I think it has everything I would want in a project. A lot of the music feels very relatable, and it touches on things that surface, like wanting to please somebody in a relationship, but also feeling so disconnected from yourself and wanting to get back to a time when you were connected to yourself (if there even was such a time). There’s a little bit of satire, and I think there’s a lot of honesty. I don’t know—it really touches on everything I’d want it to (well, not everything! [smiles]). I think it just works together, and every song is different. They’re from different points in my life, but they can live together, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been thrown together the way some EPs can. It feels very purposeful to me.

MD: How long has this been in the making?

R: I didn’t go in with the intention of writing these songs for a specific project. They existed, but they were all written around the same time. I wouldn’t feel weird about it, but I think it would’ve been a little harder to make it all make sense if they were written at scattered times in my life.

I was feeling maybe a little bit of everything when I wrote this project, but I didn’t write it with the intention of putting it all on one project. I just made it make more sense in the end because sometimes you can get too locked into a concept or an idea, which works for some people, but it’s also good to just see what comes naturally, without all that pressure to make everything deep, meta, or overdone.

MD: Do you think both you as a person and your sound have evolved since your 2022 album dear amelia?

R: I think I have evolved. I think I will always apply more pressure on myself, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the right thing to do. I’m not sure whether it’s right or wrong, but there will always be a bit of pressure to make one thing better than the other. But that doesn’t really mean anything!

I’ve been a bit more hands-on after dear amelia. I’ve always been hands-on, I love making music, but I’ve spent a lot more time with this music, really trying to be there through every step of the process and make sure it’s the best it can be. I’ve always done that to an extent, but now I feel like I’m really focusing on making this solid and more than just music. I want there to be a world.

As someone who loves music, I’ve always focused on the music, but now I’m really focused on building a world around it. It has to live in a world. All of my favourite music has great imagery, and when I listen to a full project, I get transported into that world, whether it was intentional or not—it just happens.

I guess it’s about wanting to make it feel like everything’s in the same world, rather than being a bit scattered. And that doesn’t necessarily mean a conceptual project; it just means there’s a world that people are invited into, something they can understand. It’s a comfortable place that makes sense.

MD: This brings me to your fan base! I know you’re very grateful for them. You had some headline shows in the UK last year, and us Brits can’t get enough!

R: [Smiles] I love that!

MD: Do you enjoy playing over here?

R: It’s my favourite! I’ve never gotten off a show in the UK and not been brought to tears. I don’t know why, it’s just always been the best experience for me. Everyone’s so loyal, and they still enjoy music and listen to it the way they always have. You can feel that in other places around the world, too, and people want to be there—of course they want to be there—but maybe they’ve been made to feel like they can’t really let it all out at a show, which I totally understand.

But every time I’m in the UK, I feel like people are just so present, and it feels so connected. It’s so warm, inviting, and special. I feel that in other places, of course, but my first live shows were in the UK, and I feel like everyone has really been there for me and stuck with me through a lot. They’re still there. I see the same faces every time, and I see new faces and old faces—it’s very comforting to me.

It feels like my second home, a place where I can give all of myself, and that’s really special.

MD: Did it come as a surprise to have such a fanbase in the UK?

R: I don’t think it was unexpected because I didn’t know—I had no idea! So it was such a pleasant surprise. Some of my greatest inspirations, and most of the music I listen to, is British music, so I feel like I have a soul connection to it. I’ve also always loved British people!

MD: Whey ! You’re always welcome here! So that was what happened at the end of 2024, but is there anything we should know about for 2025?

R: I have this EP! I know so many people say this, but stay tuned—I’m going to have a lot of fun stuff around it!

MD: We end every F Word interview by asking: What’s your favourite F - word?

R: [Laughs] I mean, the obvious answer, because it’s probably one of my most used words… Fuck.