A Look Inside the Life of a Surgeon and Singer Songwriter

Young N’ Loud Magazine Feature

The Dual Life and Rising Sound of Lindsay Boven

Some artists enter music through industry doors. Others enter through necessity. Lindsay Boven built her voice in the middle of uncertainty, discipline, and relentless forward motion. Her story does not follow the usual path of a rising singer songwriter. It moves between operating rooms and recording studios, between hearing restoration and emotionally charged pop ballads, between science and sound.

For Young N’ Loud, this artist spotlight explores more than a discography. It reveals the formation of a modern independent artist whose music carries resilience, emotional clarity, and technical precision. Lindsay Boven stands at a rare intersection where medicine sharpens her empathy and songwriting amplifies her purpose. Her growing presence in contemporary pop and cinematic singer songwriter circles continues to attract listeners who crave authenticity and vocal power. What makes her compelling is not contrast alone. It is integration. Every part of her life informs the music.

Chicago Beginnings and the Architecture of Grit

Lindsay grew up in Chicago, Illinois, raised by a single mother who modeled resilience through action. Financial instability, healthcare barriers, and repeated housing insecurity shaped her early environment. She remembers going to school unsure whether she would return to the same home that evening. That kind of uncertainty leaves marks and also builds internal structure.

Music and academics became her anchors. She treated both as lifelines. That focus earned her a full academic scholarship to Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where performance training met intellectual expansion. At Oberlin, she did not narrow her identity. She expanded it. Alongside music, she pursued medical studies and discovered a calling to serve disadvantaged communities through healthcare access.

Chicago gave her two enduring traits. Work ethic and emotional weight. Both remain audible in her music.

Chicago itself additionally influenced her artistic instincts. The city carries a deep musical bloodstream rooted in jazz, blues, and soul. That heritage surrounded her during formative years. She gravitated toward emotionally rich standards and powerhouse vocal performances, often singing classics such as At Last by Etta James. Those songs taught her phrasing, emotional pacing, and vocal storytelling. Today, listeners still hear that lineage inside her contemporary pop ballads and cinematic vocal builds.

From Disney Melodies to the First True Stage

Her music journey started early. At four years old, she sang along to animated film soundtracks with full theatrical commitment. Disney songs became her first repertoire. A tree stump in the backyard became her first stage. Lindsay reminisces on how during her first stage performance at 7 years old, the music track was briefly cut out during the song and she continued singing without hesitation. The stage, no matter how unpredictable, felt like home.

That early performance still functions as a reference point. It taught her that live music rewards commitment, not perfection. It also confirmed that her artistic identity would not remain private. She performs under her real name, Lindsay Boven. No constructed persona. No symbolic alias. The choice reflects artistic transparency and personal accountability. What you hear connects directly to who she is.

When Medicine and Music Share the Same Voice

While many emerging artists measure progress through streams and charts, Lindsay measures impact through restored hearing and preserved voices. She completed medical school and specializes in Otolaryngology, also known as Ear, Nose, and Throat surgery. She later pursued advanced pediatric fellowship training, with an emphasis on hearing restoration and vocal function.

This medical path influences her artistry in unexpected ways. She understands the anatomy of voice at a surgical level. She has witnessed how fragile and powerful human sound can be. That knowledge deepens her respect for vocal performance and long-term technique.

Her debut album, Waiting for Midnight, released in January 2025, reflects this duality. The record explores healing, emotional perseverance, and transformation through music. Every song carries her writing credit. She did not pursue outside lyrical authorship as she wanted personal truth embedded in every line. Her production collaborators helped refine structure and phrasing, yet the emotional architecture remains hers. In a music industry often driven by writing rooms and formulas, that authorship matters.

A Sound Built on Emotional Lift

When asked to describe her music without genre labels, Lindsay avoids technical categories. She focuses on emotional function. Her songs confront a range of topics ranging from endurance to overcoming all-time lows in life, finding new identities all the way to love and long-distance relationships. She builds melodic and harmonic lift into the structure.

The result feels emotionally honest but forward moving. Her optimism does not ignore pain. It transforms it. Years in high pressure surgical environments reinforced that mindset. Surgeons who cannot find light burn out. Songwriters who cannot find light can repeat themselves. Finding the light and positivity in life has helped Lindsay elevate her career both in and outside of the operating room.

Listeners often notice her vocal signature immediately. She uses expressive riffs and melodic runs as emotional punctuation. In her arrangements, the final chorus usually carries the greatest vocal expansion and dynamic force. She treats that last section as emotional release.

Hooks matter to her. So does narrative. She studies strong choruses across contemporary pop while drawing inspiration from places. Cities change her tonal palette. For example, time spent in Seattle influenced darker, mood driven writing in her song “In Too Deep.”

From Covers to Original Cinematic Pop

For years, Lindsay performed cover songs. That phase trained her interpretive skills and stage control. In 2019, she pivoted toward original songwriting. That shift marked a defining career turn. She began releasing original singles with production teams based in New York and Nashville, developing a modern pop sound with cinematic edges.

Major placement milestones followed. Her original song Risk It All appeared in a promotional trailer for The Summer I Turned Pretty on Amazon Prime. Music from Waiting for Midnight also appeared in a trailer for The Buccaneers on Apple TV. These placements expanded her audience and validated her songwriting reach beyond live venues.

She has performed at respected stages across the United States, including The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Skylark Cafe in Seattle, The Mint in Los Angeles, and The Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix. Her Bluebird performance remains especially meaningful as she talks about how she performed some of her first original material while accompanying herself on piano, playing entirely by ear. The audience response confirmed that her transition from interpreter to author was worth it.

Visual Identity and Creative Control

One of her early struggles involved visual storytelling. She recognized that modern music discovery depends on visual identity as much as audio quality. At first, she found the number of creative directions overwhelming. Over time, stronger songwriting clarity helped define visual direction track by track.

Now she approaches her releases with a visual moods and narrative concept. She sees music visuals not as marketing decoration but as emotional extension. This evolution signals artistic maturation and brand awareness, both critical for independent artists building long term careers.

In a lighter moment, we asked her to describe her music as a flavor — not an easy question. She chose “dark chocolate with espresso.” Deep, caffeinated, a little bold — and honestly, a spot‑on description of her music fitting her song catalog well.

The Human Life Behind the Vocal Booth

Behind the scenes, she describes herself as both a dreamer and a perfectionist. Surgical training reinforces precision and high standards. That mindset improves output but can intensify self-critique. To remain grounded, she often relies on trusted collaborators and family support.

Offstage, grounding comes from ordinary connections. Time with family and friends restores emotional equilibrium. Her husband — also a head and neck surgeon — understands this pull of both medicine and music as he’s been an active supporter of her art. In a true act of dedication, he built her a home recording studio which is one of the highlights she comments on. The first song she recorded in that studio was “Stargaze,” which she wrote as their wedding’s first dance song.

Message, Impact, and the Next Chapter

At the center of Lindsay’s artist message stands permission- permission to pursue more than one calling. “I want to show people that it’s possible to follow your dreams—even when those dreams may not fit into just one box. For a long time, I was told I had to choose between being a singer and being a surgeon, but I’ve learned that you don’t have to limit yourself. We all have many sides, and I believe in embracing every part of who you are. My journey has been about balancing two very different passions—music and medicine—and proving that with hard work and heart, you can do both. I hope to be a role model for anyone who’s ever been told their dreams are unrealistic or too big. If I can inspire someone to keep going, to believe they can be more than just one thing, then that’s a huge part of why I’m here.”

She is currently working on her second album. She describes the upcoming project as bolder, more openly empowering and a bit “louder” in every sense of the word. Confidence drives this new chapter. It is safe to say, we can expect stronger dynamics, larger hooks, and expanded energy. The themes of hope and perseverance will always be a part of what she does, but now she is stepping into a space where she’s not afraid to take up more room creatively.

She defines success through human connection rather than metrics. What keeps her Young N’ Loud is simple. Audience connection and creative fire. Knowing that her music is reaching people and touching people’s lives in real ways — that’s what keeps her creating. It reminds her why she started doing this in the first place.

Her one-line invitation to new listeners says everything necessary.

Her voice blends soul, strength, and honesty in a way that feels so much like hope with a heartbeat.