Lauv is a rising singer-songwriter who first caught attention for his 2015 love-sick single “The Other.” Born as Ari Staprans Leff in San Francisco, he started writing songs in his early teens and harnessed his skills in a music technology program at New York University. After gaining a fanbase with a slew of viral songs, Lauv co-wrote Cheat Codes and Demi Lovato’s “No Promises” and opened for Ed Sheeran’s Asia Tour in late 2017.
Lauv also released his biggest hit “I Like Me Better” last year, which received a sentimental official video that raked in over 18 million YouTube views. The upbeat song was inspired by his real-life experience of falling in love for the first time while attending NYU. A self-described hopeless romantic, Lauv reflects on the four-year relationship and how he hopes to find that experience again.
“It’s kind of just like that feeling of everything else is crazy in my life and I don’t really know what the fuck I’m doing, but whatever we have going on is dope,” he tells Genius. “I find now, I wake up every day and I’m on my phone, or I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’m on my phone. It’s sad. The first thing I do is do that. It’s so nice when you’re with somebody and you can just lay there and watch them wake up, or whatever it is.”
Lauv recently sat down with Genius for the latest episode of Verified and broke down the track. Watch him go line-for-line with “I Like Me Better” in the video above, and check out past episodes, too.
