On her latest solo album, The Most Dangerous Woman In America, IZZ’s Laura Meade turns history into her story. The conceptual piece explores Hollywood’s love-hate relationship with female celebrities and takes the singer and keyboard player on a musical escapade. Prog catches up with her to find out more.

Words: Johnny Sharp Images: Madison Fender

When you can’t go anywhere in the real world, you go to new places in your head. That’s how it proved for Laura Meade when she and her partner, John Galgano, found touring and recording plans for their band IZZ shelved due to the pandemic. The New York-based prog septet’s reputation has steadily grown across seven studio albums, with the voices of Meade and Anmarie Byrnes providing alluring counterparts to Tom and John Galgano’s leads.

Meade released a debut solo album, Remedium, in 2018, but when she and Galgano found themselves confined to their Brooklyn base last year, her loose plans of following it up were suddenly accelerated as band schedules were put on ice. The result is The Most Dangerous Woman In America, a concept album the couple co-wrote, which, in contrast to Remedium’s personal focus (touching on Meade’s struggle with and recovery from MS), sees the singer adopt the persona of an unnamed Hollywood star who finds herself buckling under the weight of her own fame and, it is suggested, infamy.