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Stephanie Lambring spent the bulk of her music career as a songwriter at BMG and Carnival Records, writing four songs that appeared on Nashville <\/span><\/i>and others for artists like Andrew Combs, Hailey Whitters, and Mary Bragg. <\/span>But she soon got tired of the “machine-like approach to writing” and of muting her dreams of singing her own songs.<\/span><\/p>\n Hoping to write and perform her own music without worrying about whether her songs were “too jarring or too sad,” she left Carnival a year early. One song that came out of Lambring’s newfound solo career is “Mr. Wonderful,” an exploration of controlling and possessive relationship dynamics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lambring’s songwriting background is evident in her poetic and evocative lyrics. “So you met Mr. Wonderful \/ Isn\u2019t he wonderful? \/ You thought you had it all \/ ‘Til it all had you,” opens the haunting track off her second album, Autonomy<\/em>, to be released on October 23. “Every day gets harder to crawl out of the confusion \/ Red flag anger, good behavior \/ Which is the illusion?” You can hear country influences in the vocals, and the music’s pop structure makes the story Lambring tells seem almost eerie.<\/p>\n “A lot of this song comes from my personal experience in a controlling relationship several years ago. Other pieces were gleaned from friends\u2019 experiences in their verbally and\/or physically abusive relationships,” she says. “Before my experience, I had no idea about the complexity of the dynamic of an abusive relationship. I simply thought I would never be ‘that girl.’ Well, I was. We need to raise awareness about the red flags and have more candid conversations. It\u2019s more common than we think.”<\/span><\/p>\n