New York–based artist Lauren Minear returns with Boxing Day (Deluxe), an expanded and deeply personal continuation of her acclaimed 2025 album Boxing Day. Documenting two years of artistic and emotional self-discovery, the deluxe edition captures Minear coming to terms with how her past continues to shape her present. In many ways, it feels like a beginning. “It was so transformative,” Minear explains, “that in some ways, it feels like my first album.”

Written across New York and London throughout 2023, Boxing Day (Deluxe) began to fully take shape during a February 2024 creative retreat in Woodstock, NY. From there, the project was tracked between producer Dan Weeks’ London studio and Minear’s home studio in Westchester, NY. The result is a cinematic, introspective body of work rooted in confidence, clarity, and creative freedom.

“This album has taught me how to speak up for myself,” Minear says. “The main theme is anger, but the story I’m conveying is that self-expression facilitates emotional freedom. The opposite of depression is creativity.”

At the heart of the deluxe release is “Anxiety,” a sharp, clever, and deeply resonant lead single about recognizing that anxiety is sometimes instinct, not weakness. Minear wrote the song shortly after removing herself from a toxic professional relationship with a creative agency that had been stealing from her. “While I was in it, I felt crazy,” she reflects. “But once it ended, I realized that the anxiety I felt was just my instinct kicking in and trying to protect me.” 

The hook for “Anxiety” was written in an unexpected place (the bathroom of her sister-in-law’s house in Leeds, England) before being brought into a London writing session with Weeks, where the track fully came to life. A subtle but intentional production choice defines the song: a piano line tucked between sections, reintroduced after initially being replaced by electric guitar. “I really missed it, so I asked Dan to bring it back into the final track,” Minear explains. “I think it sounds the way anxiety feels.”