Check this out. Ari Staprans Leff is an American musician, singer-songwriter and producer, who has many hits under his name. You still don’t know who he is, right? That’s okay, because Ari is popularly known by his stage name Lauv. Now, did that ring a bell?

If not, then this article is just for you, to get to know one of the youngest new artists around. And did you know, Lauv was to perform in June last year in Mumbai, but like most music events, it got cancelled due to the COVID 19 pandemic. But Mumbai has seen Lauv perform in the past. Till the time he can come back, let’s take a look at how great this handsome dude is.

Best known for his single I Like Me Better, the musician is well-known among Indie music society. In these past few years, the simple Lauv has changed his whole appearance and even collaborated with many renowned artists.

Leff was born in San Francisco, California, and spent his early childhood in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, before his family relocated to a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Leff’s parents enrolled him in Radnor High School.

From an early age, Lauv was interested in music. Because of this, by the age of 11, Leff was able to play guitar, piano, drums, and viola. He started writing songs in middle school, at around 14 years old. Many of his songs during this period focused on heartbreak and breakups, despite at the time, never having had a girlfriend. During his time in high school, he played in several bands and studied jazz before moving on to electronic music. He was so immersed in his and playing shows that he had no interest to do anything that would divert his mind from it, which meant drink, drugs was a strict no. Leff formed his first band Somersault Sunday and released his first single Say Hello to The Ground. He was known for his basement concerts in his early middle and high school years.

After high school, Leff graduated from New York University majoring in Music Technology Steinhardt School. While at university, he studied abroad in Prague and was a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. During his days at NYU, he interned for two of his four years at Jungle City Studios. After the internship at Jungle City Studios, Leff pursued his music career professionally.

It was during his last year of university days that Leff moved away from his earlier style of songwriting and explored contemporary options and paid attention to production techniques as well. He was particularly inspired by an interview of Paul Simon, in which he mentioned his songwriting process.

The young musician is of mixed ethnicity as his mother is of Latvian descent and his father is of Russian and Polish Jewish descent. But the singer holds American citizenship. So it worked for him by choosing ‘Lauva’ which translates to ‘Lion’ in Latvian. Also interestingly his first name, Ari, means "lion" in Hebrew and his Zodiac sign is Leo. With his popularity gaining up, he decided to adopt the stage name ‘Lauv’ in 2014. This take off on his name gave birth to the song The Other’ a mix of rhythmic and indie pop beats. On why he chose the name Lauv, it seems everything just fit for himself as can be seen. 

The song The Other was co-written by Michael Matosic and released under Lauv’s new stage name. The song came at a time when Lauv was getting over a breakup and needed consolation. Despite not having any big producer to back it up, the song went viral, and entered the Top 100 list on Spotify. The song also gained blog attention and, after he uploaded it to SoundCloud in 2015.

After graduating, Lauv signed up with Prescription Songs, an American music publishing company. In September 2015, he released his debut play record ‘Lost in the Light’, which contained five songs, including his first hit The Other.

On 25^th September, 2015, Lauv released his debut EP, ‘Lost in the Light’, which featured the song The Other. The song was also featured in the 2018 movie “To All The Boys I Loved Before”. Apart from releasing the single Question featuring Travis Mills in 2016, Lauv worked on writing and producing songs for other artists. Many fans would notice the songs he co-wrote and co-produced namely No Promises for Cheat Codes and Demi Lovato which reached number 7 on the Billboard Pop Songs Chart.

On 19^th May, 2017, Leff released the single I Like Me Better an up-tempo track inspired by his relationship that began shortly after he moved to New York City. The song peaked at number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned him platinum certification in seven countries (including the US), and gold certification in three.

Around the same time, he headlined his own Late Nights, Deep Talks tour, in which he performed in eight cities across the United States. The tour began on 23^rd May in Los Angeles and concluded on 7^th June in New York City.

In September of that year, Lauv joined Brit act Ed Sheeran as the supporting act on his Divide Tour in Asia. But due to an injury, Sheeran Asia tour dates were cancelled or rescheduled as a result of injuries he sustained from a bicycle accident, but Lauv proceeded with promotional tours in cities such as Manila, Philippines, officially kicking off the Divide Tour with Sheeran in Singapore in November.

Lauv now saddled with enough of confidence and experience of the tour travels, embarked on his first world tour titled, ‘I Met You When I Was 18’, in the first half of 2018. The tour began on January in Seattle, Washington and concluded on April in Oslo, Norway.

It has been reported that during the tour, he had a box named "My Blue Thoughts", in which he told fans to write down anything they wanted to and put it inside. He commemorated the notes on his blog mybluethoughts.world. The notes are still on the blog. Later that year sometime in August, he released the single Superhero, a song inspired by a note from the box.

In May 2018, Lauv released ‘I Met You When I Was 18 (The Playlist)’ a 17-track collection of new and previously released tracks, including the singles I Like Me Better and The Other that he had been working on over the course of a few years. If one had to look at the playlist it chronicles his move to New York City and the first time he fell in love.

In June 2018, Leff ranked number one on Billboard's Emerging Artists chart, dated June 9. As of September 29, he had been at the top spot of the chart for a total of 13 weeks. He also released a single There’s No Way collaboration with pop singer and then girlfriend Julia Michaels in September.

Fans would surely remember the dashing youngster performing for his fans when he visited Mumbai and performed on 13^th May 2019. Later he also visited Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia ending with Japan.

Come 2019 and Lauv opened the New Year with a single I’m Tired with Troye Sivan, followed by a string of songs like Drugs & The Internet, which he says he wrote when he was struggling with feelings of emptiness and depression. It was around this time that he announced he would release single tracks from his forthcoming album which was due very soon. The tracks he released Sad Forever, Chasing Fires, Feelings and Mean It, were well received by his growing fans who by now wanted to not only hear him, but also see him. Lauv had now become a star who was followed all over the world. His music made him what he is and he knew he had the world in the palm of his hand.

Famous for his collaborations, he worked on Boys with Charli XCX and also did a track with Canadian songbird Celine Dion with Imperfections. Fans of BTS erupted with joy when Lauv made his debut in K-pop through his collaboration with BTS for the song Make It Right which is an ode to ARMY (BTS fans). He also made another song with BTS called Who.

With his frequent visits to the country, Lauv made contact with the Bollywood industry and soon enough his debut in Bollywood came through a collaboration with composer Rochak Kohli for the song Dil Na Jaaneya from the film ‘Good Newwz’ (2019).

Talk about the lockdown and Lauv just managed to get his debut album ‘How I’m Feeling’ off the ground in March this year.

The 26 year old singer, who birthday falls on 8^th August, is today a massive star and there’s no stopping him. For someone who started making music for himself more compared to his initial days doing it for others, he is someone to watch out for the future.

By Verus Ferreira