Copyright evoke
It's the music trivia show that has famous musicians queuing up to be on, but a woman from Athlone who took part on a whim blew them all out of the water. Millions of people have watched Lauren Kennedy's interview on viral TikTok show Track Star, which saw her win $20,500 (the highest ever amount won on the show) and donate it all to charity. With celebs like Ed Sheeran, Charli XCX, and Olivia Dean appearing on the show, it was a total shake-up to have an unknown 'music nerd' like Lauren outperform professional musicians and win the new top score. EVOKE caught up with Lauren after her decisive victory, which was actually filmed in July but only released in October, and she described the response as ' crazy'. The show follows a simple format: host Jack Coyne plays songs to usually celeb contestants on a New York City street and contestants have to correctly name the artist to win the prize money. With each correct answer, the prize money doubles, but if you get an answer wrong, you lose it all. The theme for Lauren's interview was Irish bands, which was a walk in the park for her, as she easily rattled off Irish artists from big names like CMAT and Hozier to the more obscure names like Hothouse Flowers and Soda Blonde. She is still receiving messages from people after the show aired, one of them being CMAT, who hilariously commented on the Instagram video, saying: 'Thank you for your kind words Lauren and congrats on being a big fat f***in nerd'. Lauren was full of praise for the Irish singer-songwriter, accurately describing her as if 'Dolly Parton was raised in Dunboyne and was chronically online', and told us: 'She's probably one of the funniest people in the world. And her comment was exactly what I expected from her as well.' Amazingly, despite her expertise in the artistic world, Lauren's professional career has been completely science-based. Originally from Athlone, she came to New York on a graduate visa six years ago and has lived in Brooklyn while working in biomedical research at NYU. View this post on Instagram However, she has recently quit her job to pursue her passion for the arts, restarting acting classes and starting a Master's Degree in Arts Management. Lauren said: ' It took me a long time but I'm finally coming around back around to what I actually want to do. I think living in New York kind of brought all that back out in me. Just being surrounded by so many cool things all the time. It's such an inspiring place that I was kinda like, "What am I doing?"' She continued: 'Starting my career again at this point in my life is not something I expected to do, but I think it's just time to bite the bullet and do it. If I'm not gonna do it now, I'll never do it.' However, as many people pointed out on the show, her radio voice combined with her knowledge of music would make her the perfect fit as a radio DJ - and it's a career route Lauren almost went down. Before she moved to New York, she was working in iRadio as a side gig to save up money, but her talent was spotted and she was given an offer to train at the station. She turned down the offer to move to New York but described it as 'probably one of the biggest regrets that I have'. Lauren said: 'Obviously, I don't regret moving to New York but at that time [in order] to move to New York, I had to be doing something in my degree and my degree was biomedical science. So I had to move over without having been trained in [on radio] and I always kinda looked back and thought and regretted it. ' I knew I was so much more suited to that. So I would 100 per cent be open to doing something like that in the future. It's definitely a passion of mine. Sure, I love yapping, I love music. It's a great combination for radio!' Lauren's impressive music knowledge comes from her love of going to tiny gigs of unknown artists in NYC before they blow up, as well as constantly listening to her headphones while working in a lab, and music sessions into the wee hours with her cousins. She said: 'My cousins were always great musicians and I always loved every year at Christmas, it was always a Christmas night... I come from quite a big family, there are five kids, so all of the friends of the five children and my parents. Would all come to our house and play music and these sessions could go on till five o'clock in the morning on Christmas day. 'I loved how music made me feel and whenever I had a spare minute, I was just always listening to music. I think I kind of did lean towards more seventies, eighties [music], not anything that my friends would ever want to listen to at the time. I was never allowed to have the AUX chord, let's just say that! 'Since I moved to New York, I found myself just going to probably two or three gigs a week just because it's so easy and it's cheap here. Someone that you could probably save up for months to see back home, you can see in this tiny venue before they've really made it here.' It seems like Lauren has a good ear for up-and-coming Irish artists, and some of the ones she is listening to at the moment include Florence Road, Ye Vagabonds, Niamh Regan, Eva Coyle, Lemoncello, and roe - so keep your eyes and ears peeled for the next CMAT among those! Lauren won $20,500 on Track Star and chose to donate all the money to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, telling us: ' I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I kept that kind of money'. The donation won her the praise and admiration of fans of the show, but left her Irish dad with his head in his hands! Having recently quit her job and with an upcoming Master's Degree to pay for, Lauren admitted: 'Dad flipped the lid. None of my actual family were very happy with me [for donating the money]. 'I think they're happy for me, but they're also like, "You are an idiot", because they're like, you also have a Master's to pay for coming up. And I was like, "Yeah, that'll be fine. Money comes back," all this kind of stuff. It was only when [my Dad] actually saw other people's reactions in the comments three months later, he was like, "Oh, maybe she did do a good thing". 'It was funny. His friends were like, "You raised your well", and like it's the exact opposite of what he would've told me to do!' However, Lauren felt the money was never hers to keep, saying: ' It's a sum of money that like, it wasn't mine. I made it in 10 minutes by playing a fun game. 'And I just think for what's going on right now, it just means more to me to be able to actually donate the kind of money that I would probably never be able to donate myself.
