Multi Platinum artist LAUV Reveals Culmination Of I Met You When I Was 18. Playlist With Final 4 Songs

Set To Open For Ed Sheeran On US Stadium Tour This Fall In Conjunction With Headlining Dates Kicking Off In September

(Toronto - May 31, 2018) Twenty-three-year-old, multi platinum independent singer, songwriter and producer Lauv announces the culmination of his I met you when I was 18. playlist with the final 4 songs titled “Bracelet,” “Paranoid,” “Never Not,” and “Enemies.” The collection of tracks were all written by Lauv about a significant period in his life as a student at New York University, and follow a theme of young love and self-actualization. The tracks have accumulated over 1 billion streams thus far. Click HERE to listen.

Lauv says of the playlist, “I met you when I was 18. is a collection of songs, a story. About moving to New York City when I was 18 and falling in love for the first time. A story about trying to figure out your own identity whilst being deeply intertwined with someone else’s. It’s a story that, since I released my first song “The Other” in 2015, has been told a bit out of order. In pieces, in fragments & in moments reminisced, but now here it is, in it’s entirety: I met you when I was 18. not an album, but a body of work nonetheless. I hope you enjoy.”

Recently, it was announced that Lauv will open for Ed Sheeran on his US stadium dates this fall, in conjunction with his headlining Fall 2018 world tour kicking off in September with indie-pop songstress Charlotte Lawrence set to open. The headlining run is set to kick off in Hamburg, Germany on September 15th and will see him performing in cities across North America, England, and Europe. Please see full routing information below!

Lauv recently performed on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live and is returning to North America this summer for a series of high profile festival performances including three Canadian dates (Cavendish Beach Music Festival, Ottawa Bluesfest and Osheaga) in addition to performances at Lollapalooza, Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Hangout Music Festival, Firefly Music Festival and Osheaga Festival. Lauv will be opening for Demi Lovato at her only east coast concert of the summer on the beach in Atlantic City, NJ on July 26th and he is also set to perform on TODAY (8am, 10am) on June 14th.

Lauv’s single, “Chasing Fire,” out now, serves as the follow up single to his global smash hit song “I Like Me Better” which has surpassed 500 million streams, garnered platinum certifications in 7 countries, gold certifications in 3, and scanned platinum in the U.S. and is currently #12 on the Top 40 radio chart. He has also released an acoustic version of “Chasing Fire,” along with a video filmed at legendary Abbey Road Studios. Click HERE to view.

2018 North American Tour Dates:

June 9              Cleveland, OH                         LaureLive Festival ^

June 16            Dover, DE                                Firefly Music Festival ^          

July 7              Ottawa, ON                             Ottawa Bluesfest ^

July 9              Cavendish, PEI                        Cavendish Beach Music Festival ^ 

July 26             Atlantic City, NJ                      Atlantic City Beach***

Aug 3               Chicago, IL                               Lollapalooza ^

Aug 5              Montreal, QC                            Osheaga ^ 

Aug 10             San Francisco, CA                    Outside Lands ^

Aug 11             San Francisco, CA                    Outside Lands ^

Aug 12             San Francisco, CA                    Outside Lands ^

Sep 23             Las Vegas, NV                         Life is Beautiful ^

Oct 4                Chicago, IL                               Soldier Field**

Oct 6                Nashville, TN                           Nissan Stadium**

Oct 7                Louisville, KY                           Mercury Ballroom*

Oct 9                Cincinnati, OH                         Bogart’s*

Oct 10              Grand Rapids, MI                    The Intersection *

Oct 12              Indianapolis, IN                       Egyptian Room at Old National Centre *

Oct 13              Kansas City, MO                      Arrowhead Stadium**

Oct 14              Columbia, MO                         The Blue Note *

Oct 16              Omaha, NE                              Sokol Auditorium *

Oct 17              Fargo, ND                                Fargodome**

Oct 20              Minneapolis, MN                    US Bank Stadium**

Oct 21              Des Moines, IA                        Wooly’s *

Oct 23              Milwaukee, WI                        Miller Park**

Oct 24              Urbana, IL                               Canopy Club *

Oct 27              Dallas, TX                                AT&T Stadium**

Oct 28              Tulsa, OK                                 Cain’s Ballroom *

Oct 30              Mobile, AL                               Soul Kitchen *

Oct 31              New Orleans, LA                     Superdome**

Nov 1               Birmingham, AL                      Iron City *

Nov 3               Houston, TX                            Minute Maid Park**

Nov 5               Columbia, SC                           The Senate (formerly Music Farm) *

Nov 7                Tampa, FL                               Raymond James Stadium **

Nov 8                Orlando, FL                             House of Blues *

Nov 10              Atlanta, GA                             Mercedes Benz Stadium**

*Headlining Date

**Opening for Ed Sheeran

***Opening for Demi Lovato

^Festival Date

For interview requests please contact:

Samantha Pickard
President
Strut Entertainment
samantha@strutentertainment.com

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About Lauv

For more than five years, Lauv has quietly and steadily become one of pop’s brightest rising stars. He has released his music completely independently with billions of streams to his name. He has written for some of the biggest stars in the world, performed on late night talk shows, played stadiums opening for Ed Sheeran, and sold out shows in 21 countries as a headliner. And he has done all of this without releasing an album.

That’s about to change, though, when Lauv’s official debut, ~how i'm feeling~, comes out in March 2020. A 21-song tour de force, the project marks a breakthrough, a real moment of arrival, from a young singer/songwriter/producer who Rolling Stone called “Pop’s Up-and-Coming Heartbreak King.” 

“This is the first time I’m showing the world different aspects of myself as an artist,” says Lauv. “At first I was a hopeless romantic—my songs were all about one relationship, one girl. This is so much bigger. The whole concept is born out of an existential, quarter-life crisis. I’m dealing with who I was supposed to be, what people expect from me—I’m learning to embrace all the aspects of my identity.”

Before Ari Leff became Lauv, he was just another Gen Z teenager trying to get his music noticed on Myspace. From his earliest efforts, his songs addressed his own experiences navigating the sometimes positive, often negatively distorted lens of social media. His music has come to serve as anthems for the millions of teenagers and twenty-somethings who share the same fears and insecurities. 

Accepting and celebrating the multiple facets of ourselves, the different personalities we carry with us, is a theme throughout ~how i'm feeling~ —even extending to the cover art, which displays six different “Little Lauvs” (each with its own color, representing one aspect of himself). It’s like a one-man boy band: there’s the class clown, the hopeless romantic, the existentialist, the fuckboy, positive and spicy Lauv.

Lauv has been open about his own struggles with anxiety and depression, and has taken action on the issue with his Blue Boy Foundation, which supports programs that help young people feel more comfortable reaching out for help with their mental health. He launched the “My Blue Thoughts” initiative, a community building mechanism for fans to anonymously write down or record whatever is on their mind, as a way to engage with people around the world who may be having similar experiences. Lauv is also donating 100% of the proceeds from his single “Sad Forever” to mental health charities, raising over $150,000 to date, as well as contributing $1 from each ticket sold from his world tour.  

Lauv first gained attention in 2015 when his Soundcloud single “The Other” went viral, peaking at number three on blog aggregator Hype Machine and hitting Spotify’s Global Top 100 before eventually being certified Gold. After concentrating on working with other artists, Lauv hit again with 2017’s “I Like Me Better,” which reached #7 at Top 40 and #2 at Hot AC and was certified 3X Multi-Platinum in the US and platinum in 12 other countries. “i’’m so tired...” Lauv’s duet with Troye Sivan, has also been certified Gold, with over 500 million streams worldwide.

After his songs were gathered up into the I met you when I was 18 playlist in 2018, Lauv was ranked as number one on Billboard's Emerging Artists chart for more than three months. And all of this was achieved without the support of a major label: He garnered the most spins by an independent artist on Top 40 and Hot AC radio in 2018, and held down the #1 and #2 most streamed pop songs by an independent artist in 2019.

Along the way, Lauv—who majored in music technology at New York University, and interned at the famed Jungle City Studios—developed a signature sound, a spare, percolating, keyboard-based electro-pop that mirrored his honest and vulnerable lyrics. But he doesn’t think of himself as having an identifiable style.

“I get surprised when people say that a song ‘sounds so Lauv’,” he says. “I don’t know what that means. I never thought about having a specific sound. What I do is usually more minimal, not a huge wall of sound, but then I add whatever interesting rhythmic or sonic elements.”

He points to “Drugs & the Internet,” a song written during a struggle with depression which became the opening track on ~how i'm feeling~, as a turning point in his writing. “That song was so different for me,” he says, “and it’s when I realized there’s so much more I want to say besides talking about love. 

“I used to look at everything really romantically,” he continues. “Like ‘all my songs have to literally be about my own life!” But as I keep writing more, I’ve really opened up to the idea that a song can be about capturing a feeling.”

A key part of Lauv’s triumphant rise has been his collaborations with other artists, both as a writer and a performing partner. He co-wrote hits including Cheat Codes and Demi Lovato’s Platinum-certified smash “No Promises” and “Boys” for Charli XCX. In addition to the duet with Troye Sivan, he released “There’s No Way” with Julia Michaels and, most recently, “fuck, i’m lonely,” with British singer Anne-Marie, which was featured on the soundtrack for the third season of 13 Reasons Why and quickly shot to more than 200 million streams. Also in 2019, he co-wrote “Imperfections,” a single for pop icon Celine Dion. (“It was crazy that she wanted something with my sound,” he says, “it goes to show that a lot of things in music can be so unexpected, and you can’t necessarily pin people down.”)

These creative partnerships have continued to shape Lauv’s perspective on making music. “With everybody I’ve worked with,” he says, “whether or not a song ultimately comes out of it or not, each situation shows me something new about the process of creation and how different artists work. With Ed Sheeran, I saw that it’s very much still about the song, where others get more involved in the visual world and the aesthetics.”

In today’s stream-driven, single-focused music world, you might wonder why a young pop artist needs to bother making an album. But even with platinum plaques already on his walls, Lauv believes that it’s still important to make a larger musical statement and reveal more of himself. “A lot of internet culture is pushing people to have a brand and stick to it,” he says. “But people are so much more complex than that. I was definitely intimidated making this album, though—fans are used to a certain side of me, so will people vibe with it and accept something different?

“But even just for my own mental health,” he continues, “I needed to do what I want to do, to grow as an artist without being cornered into any one sound or style. And if they’re along for the ride, then that’s great, too.” With millions of fans already on board for his music and his message, and a sound that’s built for a stadium-size audience, it’s sure shaping up to be a wild ride.

Contact

www.lauvsongs.com