The Los Angeles singer-guitarist known simply as LP has never heard of Jacob Slichter, but one gets the feeling she’d find plenty to love in his book So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star. The former Semisonic drummer’s 2004 memoir is subtitled How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales From a Drummer’s Life, and it’s utterly horrific. Over the course of its 304 pages Slichter tells stories of clueless major-label executives, pigheaded producers, and radio programmers who are convinced that the only songs worth playing are ones that sound like everything else.

How does this affect LP? Well, a quick look at her history shows that she knows how to craft a pop hit; her writing credits include Rihanna’s “Cheers (Drink to That)”, as well as songs for such artists as the Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, and Heidi Montag. She’s also not exactly new at the music-business game, having released two albums in the early 2000s that found her collaborating with Cracker’s David Lowery and heavy-hitting hitmaker Linda Perry.

Considering all that, LP should have had no problem getting her new album Forever for Now green-lighted, and recorded to her exact specifications. But the process didn’t exactly go smoothly. When the Straight talked to the artist born Laura Pergolizzi a couple of years ago, she was working on the record that would become her long-awaited major-label debut. Since then, songs were radically overhauled and plenty of sonic tweaking took place. Major-label suits got involved, trying to make sure Forever for Now would be positioned for maximum commercial impact.

“The record took a little longer than expected,” LP offers carefully from L.A. “Sometimes things happen with the mastering and mixing stage and you miss a window. It’s come out a little later than I thought.”

After it’s suggested all that sounds like something from Slichter’s So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, with endless meddling behind the scenes, LP is quick to respond.

“It’s an endless fucking shitstorm of opinions,” she practically spits. “I’ll write a book—mine’s going to be called So You Wanna Turn Into a Bitter Douche?”

Quickly, she regroups: “Um, no, I’m just kidding. It’s the music business. It just is what it is. It sounds like that guy pulled back the curtain. And it definitely is a curtain. We only hear the inspiring stories, because that’s mostly what people want to hear.”

When it comes to Forever for Now, LP allows that the record sounds different from the way it was initially conceived. Produced by industry giant Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Alanis Morissette), the songs are expansive, full of lush string arrangements and punchy, radio-ready percussion. LP’s songwriting chops are indeed first-rate, with “One Last Mistake” sounding like something Stevie Nicks might have conjured up between coke rails during the Rumours recording sessions, and “Night Like This” counterbalancing the singer’s powerhouse-blues pipes with symphonic, Asian-flavoured flourishes.

“It evolved,” she says diplomatically of Forever for Now. “It definitely evolved, and that’s all I’m going to say. It’s not bad, but it’s a different kind of record than I thought we were starting out to make. So I kind of went with it.”

Mention that doesn’t sounds like a ringing endorsement, LP gives a response that suggests sometimes you need to play the game when the suits ask “So you wanna be a rock ’n’ roll star?”

“It’s a little more produced than I would have liked,” she says of Forever for Now, “but Rob is a world-class producer, and I think it sounds dope. I mean, as bad as anything can be, I’m one of the lucky few who makes a living at doing music. People give me money to make records, and I do it.”