Just months after a jampacked show at the MOA Arena, Ari Leff, a.k.a. pop star Lauv came back for a quick stop in Manila. In this exclusive interview and photo shoot, the twentysomething hitmaker opens up about the trappings of fame, how his emotional state informed his songwriting, and coming to terms with his sexuality.
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00:00Hi, I'm Lau from the Sister Esquire Philippines.
00:18I realized that I had been running away from a big part of myself,
00:23which is my identity and my sexuality,
00:25and just who I'm attracted to and who I fall in love with.
00:30There was just kind of a series of things that finally opened me up to
00:38being okay with talking about it and thinking about it,
00:41and not just shutting it down.
00:42For me, that was kind of the beginning of the writing process for the album.
00:56I feel like basically what happened for me was I was in college,
00:59then I was releasing some early songs as Lauv.
01:02Doing that still felt like already making music.
01:04My music started to blow up as Lauv.
01:06And especially it's like, I like me better.
01:08I definitely didn't realize it at the time,
01:09but my life changed so rapidly and so intensely.