From Dad's Sacrifice to Daughter's Breakthrough: How Lakelin Lemmings Turned a Breakup Into a Radio Hit

There’s a particular kind of poetic symmetry in Lakelin Lemmings’debut radio single that goes way beyond the song itself. Her father, Phillip Lemmings, was a guitarist and mandolin player in the five-piece country band Forty5south when she was born in May 2006. He walked away from touring and recording to be present for his growing family—a sacrifice that meant shelving his own musical ambitions. Now, two decades later, his daughter is using the exact roads he once traveled to promote“Get Around Boy,”her first single to country radio, shipped on April 13.

The irony isn’t lost on Lakelin.“I crushed his dreams,”she says matter-of-factly.“Now we’re chasing mine together.”

“Get Around Boy”itself is a carefully crafted audio travelogue born from a real moment of vulnerability. When Lakelin was 17, she began writing sessions with Ash Bowers—the former lead vocalist of Forty5south and now a successful songwriter-producer—and collaborator Mike Mobley. During one session, she mentioned breaking up with a guy back home to focus on her music career. Mobley noticed something:“You see a little tear in her eye, just enough there to go,‘Yeah, she’s still caught up on the boy.'”

That observation didn’t become a song that day, but it planted a seed. Before their next appointment on June 6, 2024, at Bowers’Wide Open Music in Nashville, Mobley spent time connecting the dots between her travels and the emotional weight of sacrifice. He arrived with a vivid concept: a young woman driving across the country chasing her dreams, while the memory of her first love rode alongside her the entire way. The title“Get Around Boy”emerged from that metaphor—he was still“getting around”by staying with her emotionally, even as the miles piled up between them.

What makes the song click isn’t just the concept. The writing team leaned hard into specificity. Lakelin had traveled to 30 states by that point, so dropping real locations into the lyrics felt authentic. They wove in a beach in California, references to Beale Street and Memphis, and even threw in“plowboy”—a subtle nod to Eddy Arnold, the late“Tennessee Plowboy”who was born in Henderson, where Lakelin still lives. The only location they included that she hadn’t actually visited was Sedona, chosen purely because it rhymed with California. That’s the kind of deliberate craft that separates a good song from one that lands.

The production reinforced that sense of movement without drawing attention to itself. When they recorded at Nashville’s Sound Stage—the studio owned by Black River, which represents Kelsea Ballerini—the band understood the vibe from the work tape immediately. Sol Philcox-Littlefield’s guitar solo crafted a journey in just a few bars. The rhythm didn’t announce itself; it carried you. Even Lakelin’s biggest challenge in the booth—nailing that ambitious chorus with its melodic ups and downs—ultimately served the song’s architecture rather than derailing it.

Several radio programmers made comparisons to Tim McGraw’s“Everywhere,”and they all agreed: this was her best shot at a single. Quartz Hill founder Benny Brown signed off, and the song has been working radio since mid-April. For a 20-year-old making her professional debut, Lakelin isn’t just following in her father’s footsteps—she’s reframing what it means to chase this life at all.