Lauren Alaina Breaks Down 5 Essential Tracks From Her New Album ‘Stages’: ‘I Am in the Best Stage of My Life, Ever

Lauren Alaina has gone through many chapters in her life, and she relives many of them on her new album Stages , out Friday (Aug. 28). But happily, for Alaina, she is in a great stage right now, to say the least.

“I am in the best stage of my life ever,” she tells Billboard during a recent visit to Los Angeles.  “I’ve still lived some heartache in this stage, losing my dad [in July 2024], but I genuinely feel like I am living the life that I’ve always dreamed of.”

The former 2011 American Idol runner up (she came in second behind Scotty McCreery ) says she’s finally found the balance between career and family she dreamed of for years. “I remember for so long thinking I would never have a husband and a family, because I worked so much, and I was like, “Where am I going to meet a husband?’ Now I look at my daughter, and she is everything to me,” she says. “I can’t believe it’s my life. I think a lot of women fear that if you have a family and a marriage, your career will take a back seat, and I think that is probably true for some people. But I’m so grateful that I found a way to navigate both.”

Alaina, 31, married Cam Arnold in February 2024, and their daughter, Beni Doll Arnold, was born in June 2025. This stage has also brought Alaina to a new label, Big Loud — after more than 10 years on Mercury Nashville — and to the release of her first full-length album in five years.

“I’m so thankful for everything I did [on the previous label]. But it was time to move on and do something new,” she says. “That was really scary for me to make that step, because I was like, ‘What if I’m wrong?’ It took some time at my new label to get things established and make the new music.”

Fans clearly missed Alaina, given the reaction to “All My Exes,” a lighthearted duet with Chase Matthew that is bulleted at No. 14 on Billboard ’s Country Airplay chart dated Aug. 29.

Alaina worked with producers Joey Moi and Ben Johnson on the 16-track set, and co-wrote most of the songs. She also reunited with her childhood friend, Kane Brown , on “Never Been in Love,” their first duet together since “What Ifs,” their 2017 hit that topped both the Country Airplay and Country Songs chart.

Alaina, who acted in the Hallmark movie Roadhouse Romance in 2021, still wants to pursue more acting roles. “I just had an audition sent to me two weeks ago, and I couldn’t read for it because my tour dates,” she says. Her dream costars are Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon. “It’s probably not going to happen, but you never know,” she says. “I mean, everything that I’ve had so far in my career, people would have said probably was not going to happen, and it has.”

Below, Alaina breaks down five essential tracks from Stages for Billboard .