Lauren Bennett, the Woman Who Sang the Hook on LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem,” Has Died at 37

If you were anywhere near a speaker in 2011, you heard her voice. She’s the one who counted off “one, two, three” before the whole world lost its mind to “Party Rock Anthem.” Now the bandmates she made music with for years are the ones who had to say goodbye.

“Party Rock Anthem” spent 6 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went Diamond in the US, and Bennett’s featured vocals are stitched into every second of it.

Her surviving G.R.L. bandmates, Natasha Slayton, Emmalyn Estrada, and Paula van Oppen, announced her death on Instagram. “It is with great sadness that we share the passing of our beloved Lauren,” they wrote. “Our hearts are broken, and we cannot begin to express how much she meant to us.” No cause has been made public, and the family is keeping the exact date private.

Born in Meopham, Kent, she made the final 12 on “X Factor” before getting sent home, and that appearance led to a call to audition for a new girl group in front of Interscope’s Jimmy Iovine and Pussycat Dolls founder Robin Antin. She made the cut and moved to Los Angeles at 17. That group became Paradiso Girls, whose 2009 debut “Patron Tequila” with Eve and Lil Jon hit No. 3 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart before Interscope dropped them.

Antin then folded her into G.R.L., who landed on Pitbull’s 2014 “Wild Wild Love” and released “Ugly Heart” the same year, a top-20 hit in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The group paused after Simone Battle’s death in 2014, reformed in 2016 with Bennett among the returning members, and confirmed new music in 2021.

She was open about mental health, writing her song “Hurricane” out of personal loss and putting its proceeds toward mental health causes.

She was 37.

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