Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante Talks Potential History-Making Grammy Nomination: ‘I Really Want To Win’

Spiritbox continues its rapid ascent within the metal scene and greater music community as, in the span of barely a week, the band released a new EP, dropped a collaboration with hip-hop superstar Megan Thee Stallion and received its first Grammy nomination.

The band’s “Jaded” is nominated for Best Metal Performance and, if they win, Spiritbox would be the first female-fronted winner in the category, which was established in the early ’90s.

“Well, I really want to win,” laughs Spiritbox lead singer Courtney LaPlante, whose versatile vocal chops set the band apart in a field largely dominated by men. “Obviously, selfishly, I want us to win. It’s selfish to submit yourself to an award category but, even aside from that, I just want a woman to win. It really bothers me that not many of us have been nominated and it bothers me that none of us have won because there’s been some fantastic music made by women metal musicians over the years.”

The band, based in British Columbia and led by LaPlante and husband Mike Stringer, blew up during the pandemic with breakout single “Holy Roller,” which brought a fresh new energy to the popular metal scene.

The band’s debut LP Eternal Blue dropped Sept. 17, 2021, landing on the mainstream Billboard Top 200 at No. 13 with 23,000 units moved in its first week, alongside the likes of new releases from Billie Eilish, Kacey Musgraves, Luke Combs and Dua Lipa as well as some of the hottest hitmakers in music. 

See Also: Spiritbox Breaks Free With Breakout Debut LP (Cover Story)

While the band and album seemingly came out of nowhere, the build has been methodical and deliberate.

“I told them, ‘Let’s do things differently. Let’s not tour, let’s say no to a lot of stuff, let’s build online,’” says Roc Nation’s Jason Mageau, who worked with LaPlante and Stringer while they were in a previous band called iwrestledabearonce. 

That build has led to the band’s first major headline tour, in spring of 2023, which sold out large clubs including House of Blues in Boston, Roseland Theater in Portland and overseas with dates in Europe and Australia to go along with major festival plays well into the summer. The band joined Shinedown for a major North American arena tour as well, taking the band into the fall with more big-league experience under its belt.

Spiritbox is represented by Independent Artist Group. 

LaPlante took some time with Pollstar to talk about the Grammy nom, Megan Thee Stallion “Cobra” official rock remix collab and life on the road post-pandemic.

Pollstar: So, how was the ramp-up from pandemic streaming success to full-blown world tours?
I feel like we’re finally at a place where, we’re always going to have adrenaline and be a little excited and nervous, especially as we play bigger and bigger places, but I don’t feel insecure in my own ability now. We were discovering who we are as artists and what we need to work on in a very public setting. Normally, like in my old band, how we evolved is first you kind of play to 15 people and then you play to 50 people, and then you play like to 200 people. And then by the time you were getting up to a room and playing to like 1,000 people, you probably figured it out.

But we were having to kind of do that like in front of 20,000 people (laughs). And when you’re given such an amazing opportunity and you don’t show up and do a good job, it’s so disappointing to people because  anyone would kill to be there instead of you.

So we want to prove to ourselves and prove to everyone that likes us and doesn’t like us that we’re a good band. So we worked really hard this year, and now I don’t feel scared or that, like, insecurity while I’m singing. I’m just able to finally enjoy the moment. 

This is all very new and it happened very quickly and it could be taken away very quickly, so I don’t want to take for it granted or not look back and realize that I enjoyed all these little milestones. So I’m feel like I’m more comfortable and relaxed now, which is good.

Just the fact that people show up is still something I’m wrapping my head around. Eventually I’ll get used to it. I’ll never take it for granted, The only thing that’s keeping me from not being so in awe on stage every time I go out is that I have in-ear monitors and we don’t have crowd mics, and I can’t really hear people singing along (laughs). When I look back at videos and I hear people singing along I can’t believe it. If I heard that in real life, I think I would freak out.

How did the Megan Thee Stallion collaboration come about? This is more than your typical “remix,” with Spiritbox and yourself as full backing band. 

I don’t know how this happened (laughs). All I am saying is I’m grateful that one day Megan the Stallion woke up and said “I’d like to do a heavy remix of my song”  and I’m happy we were there to facilitate that. I’m happy that she knows that she now knows who we are (laughs).

But specifically, aside from just loving her, her songs and loving how she performs and how great of a rapper she’s one of the few people that I ever kind of got to watch from a fan, watch them just rise, this crazy epic meteoric rise to stardom. So it was so inspiring to me that there was someone so cool and I felt like deserved it so much, so it’s funny that that’s the person that then after all that time, we got to interpret one of her songs and then not only do her song, but like collaborate with her on the song.

It was very inspiring just how secure she was in her choices and stuff, she just had such ownership in being a producer as well. It was really cool for me, too, to see someone have so much agency and not be afraid to say what they want.  Especially as a woman, that’s something I always try to figure out, how to say stuff in a way that’s not going to make anyone uncomfortable when I want something or make or make people feel like I’m being too pushy.  So I’m going to take that for myself, and that’s how I’m going to talk about my art as well.

How has the response been to the collab? It’s decidedly a very metal-meets-hip-hop project.

It really reminds me a lot of the time that most people my age were discovering heavier music. It reminds me of the collaboration that you couldn’t really escape from in like, like the nu-metal era where there was this really cool crossover between the hip-hop acts and the metal acts. Those guys were just as big of stars as the hip-hop guys were. And a couple of years later, like with the beautiful Linkin Park and Jay-Z crossover. Those things just always felt so good together.

The thing I’m not surprised about Megan wanting to do a heavy song is, honestly, live versions of rappers’ shows I’ve seen for a couple years now, I’ve seen so much heavy guitar put into their songs for backtracks, the music direction for their live performances. And it fits so well together. You hear it in a lot of live performances like Cardi B, Doja Cat, Billie Eilish even has a lot of  heavy guitar stuff in her live performances. I think it’s because of the energy of it —  heavy, crunchy guitars are so aggressive. So when you’re singing an aggressive song, it can complement it, it can complement the song so well, and live, it just gives such a great feeling. So it feels natural to me just because of that. There’s all these little signs that that would be a great pairing, and  each of us being so different is what makes that song so cool, you know?

What does the Grammy nomination mean to you?

Honestly, it’s one of those things where no matter who wins, we are not expecting this at all. This is crazy. I keep thinking that someone’s going to call us up and go, “Hey, there was a mistake, someone sabotaged, there is a mess-up.” You know? If you’re not invited to a party over and over and over again, you don’t resent the people that aren’t inviting you. If you were mad and frustrated about that and obsessed with it, then you couldn’t really  move on and live your life. But it’s rather, just feel like you’re going to a different party. You’re making your own party. That’s kind of how I feel. 

So then when you get an invite to that party, if they’re like, “Hey, you wanna come?” I’m kind of like, “Well, hell yeah. I want to come. I wanna see what this is all about. What’s the big deal?” So I’m really looking forward to it. It did something to me to see my band’s name with all those other bands. Like, it did make me feel like, “Yeah, I deserve to be here.”  I realized that if I work hard, I could achieve even more than I think I can. 

Something switched in my head when I saw that. If I could win, that would be my dream, I  would love that. And  it would motivate me if another woman won. So I hope that if I won that, that would motivate some other people too.

But look, the worst-case scenario that night,  we’re going home drinking a bottle of champagne no matter what and it’s going to be really fun. We’re going to go, because you never know if that will ever happen again. Best-case scenario, we can make a little bit of history and go home and celebrate winning. Worst-case scenario, maybe we’ll get to like, you know, take a picture with Metallica (laughs).

Are there more women in metal now than before? 

I think there’s probably a similar amount of women interested in playing metal music that there always has been. But  let’s just say it’s a lot easier as an artist to do a good job when you’re on stage and there’s not someone spitting on you or throwing a beer at you or trying to sexually assault you because you’re a girl. If I go out right now, I know I’m going to be protected by security and the way that nicer venues are set up, but when you’re starting out, you don’t have that. You’re playing in a bar. So like, there’s no one between you and the people in the audience who maybe are offended just by you being there. So it’s like, I think that there’s less of us getting beers thrown at us, that’s all.

We’re trying to raise the bar —  if the bar is not even on the floor, it’s sub-basement level. And we’re just trying to like, raise it up to the floor level so we can hop over it. I think that it will become more and more common once the people in charge that are making money off of this music can capitalize off it and realize that they can, you know, also exploit women , not just guys to make them money (laughs).

When there’s more women in charge of those things, as we get older and can make those moves, that’s a big deal. I come from a time where, let’s say there’s a 500-cap room tour, and there were four opening bands. If one of those bands had a girl in it, I would immediately know that my band was not getting on that. Because then it becomes a girl tour or a novelty. It’s never a spoken thing, but it’s unspoken. It’s the same thing with LA record labels. I’ve been told in print, back when we were shopping around for labels, someone felt comfortable in print to say, “Well we’re not interested. We signed a band with a girl in it already.”

I’ve been kicked off the stage when I was about to walk on to perform because they assumed that I was just some girl hanging out.

Guys aren’t having to face those types of setbacks  in their music careers that we would have to.  I think that’s getting better and better because there’s more people in charge that are going, “That’s unacceptable.” 

Being a woman in the music industry is just the same bad feeling as it is being a woman in any do male dominated industry, whether you were a fireman or a singer. Every layer that you add to that makes it even harder. Whether you’re not white or you’re not straight, or you’re not commercially viably attractive, or you’re plus size or whatever. You’re disabled. All those things make it a lot harder to make it in this world.

I want it to become easier for everybody. Making music, making art is hard. You don’t need your gender to make it even harder for you.