Artist Spotlight: LANY Reveals Heartbreak in Malibu

With over 5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, sold out arenas in Asia and landing the main stage at the summer festival circuit, pop group LANY has gained the world’s attention. LANY, a a shortened form of Los Angeles, New York is emblematic of their desires to be heard coast to coast. The band’s lead singer Paul Klein, met Jake Gross and Leslie Priest while in Nashville in 2014 before the group relocated to their current home in Los Angeles.

The band immediately started recording and put out a few early tracks like “Hot Lights” and “Walk Away” that later culminated in the “Make Out” EP. In the EP, a single off the track “ILYSB,” short for “I Love You So Bad” went viral, accruing 14 million streams online and landing them a full record deal. They released an eponymous album in 2017 which gained significant traction.

“Malibu Nights,” LANY’s second album, was released in 2018. If you listen to it end to end, it’s easy to see that this album was created not only for LANY fans, but it also appears to be a deeply cathartic release for Paul Klein following his supernova relationship with pop starlet Dua Lipa. They started dating in late 2017, only for Dua Lipa to get back together with her ex-boyfriend, model turned celebrity chef, Isaac Carew.

If you look at the lyrics in the track “Run,” you can viscerally feel the pain that Paul Klein was experiencing.

It was like something switched

We were fine, then overnight you flipped

It was made worse with the knowledge that Dua got back together with Isaac Carew closely after splitting ties with Paul. Paul doesn’t react well to this.

Got a handful of sleeping pills

A phone full of no one real

This is all too much to deal, ah

While hearing this verse, you can almost see the steel and glass mansion in Malibu. Paul is tossing and turning in his king bed while the memories from his relationship flashing like a film reel back in his head. An ambien bottle is his only recourse to get through the night.

LANY passionately belt out the lyrics at All Things Go this weekend and it felt as raw as it was when he first wrote it. The tinge of heartbreak is still as pressing and painful as ever, but in the performance it was almost a celebration of sadness, rather than a pure manifestation of it.

A crowd of dedicated fans, sharing in song shared this experience with him. With the clearly enunciated lyrics and catchy hooks, the album’s lyrics are easy to learn. In the show, LANY wants fans to be able to sing along. At one point during the show, LANY even put the lyrics on the screen in karaoke fashion to have everyone join him for “Taking Me Back.”

Not only are the lyrics instagram caption-worthy, but they also have an impact. The core themes of what LANY is discussing, breakups, loss and change, are rooted in an emotional vulnerability. LANY has excelled at harnessing that emotion in the form of song, and in the process brought a whole group of fans to the realization that:

I’m gonna be okay, right?

I’m gonna be okay, right?

I wish I could tell myself that at night

I’m gonna be okay, right?

“okay” (LANY, Julia Michaels”

 

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