One of the hottest new names in music is Lauv, and after his performance at the Teen Choice Awards on Aug. 12, it’s easy to see why. The man born Ari Staprans Leff hit the stage at The Forum out in Los Angeles, and left the ladies in the audience screaming. Rocking an oversized yellow jacket, Lauv grooved through the crowd of his adoring fans, practically serenading every single fan who made eye contact with him. Though the song is pretty low-key, the energy was pretty high, with screams and cheers echoing throughout the arena. What a wild way to kick off the 2018 TCAs!
So, for a kid born in San Francisco in 1994, where does the “Lauv” name come from? “Lauv is the Latvian word for lion. Ari means lion, I’m a Leo. My mom said the family’s from Latvia and I used to go a lot growing up. I was trying to figure out one other name that meant something, but I didn’t want to use Ari, so it kinda just clicked,” he told iHeart, before spilling the tea on the inspiration behind his hit, “I Like Me Better.”
“That’s a really interesting song for me because I wrote it about when I first moved to New York five years ago,” he told iHeart. “I moved away a year ago to LA, and I wrote this song just after moving to LA. My writing process is sometimes I’m writing about something I’m apparently experiencing. In this case, pulling something from four years ago. The way the song came about was I had the track going and I started to produce it, and then everything kinda hit me. It was supernatural.”
We like @lauvsongs better when he's at #TeenChoice. 😉 pic.twitter.com/opzkUb3PXK
— Teen Choice Awards (@TeenChoiceFOX) August 13, 2018
https://twitter.com/kpntrack/status/1028799948631015424
“To be totally honest, when I moved [to New York City] and I fell in love for the first time two months after moving there, and it just that feeling of [when] I was a freshman in college and didn’t really know who I was or who I wanted to be. But I knew that with this person, I just liked myself better.” Well, after that performance, a lot more people like Lauv.