LANY Want to Stay ‘Soft’ in a World That Doesn’t 

Somewhere in the gentle tailspin of drum kicks and guitar strums that set off LANY’s track “When Did You Stop Loving Me?”, the effervescent hum of heartbreak slowly bubbles over. So when the synth-pop act’s lead vocalist and guitarist Paul Klein sings, “She makes me tip-toe, stuck where the ice is thin / One step from falling in, please start talking,” to the swell of Jake Goss’s drums, the album’s meditations on staying true to the tender core against the weight of the shell the world thrusts upon you hit with startling clarity.

One of five tracks off their newly released album Soft 2, the confessional-style lyricism and glossy synth-soaked melodies fit right into the emotional architecture LANY have built around their sound. They’ve been teasing this particular track at many recent stops, including the GRAMMY Museum last month and at Lollapalooza India earlier this year. And while the world around us hasn’t gotten easier or softer by any measure, their poetic vulnerability still hits with the wisdom of seasoned heartbreak survivors. 

“I prefer to sing about stuff that, like, makes sense,” Klein tells Rolling Stone India when we meet during their India stop a few months ago. “It’s really easy to string together words that sound cool together and one-line sentences that don’t mean anything. But if we’re going to work so hard on songs, I prefer to fill in the gap and the melody with stuff that is honest.”

LANY’s sound has always been brutally honest and largely unconcerned with how it’s perceived. Even back in 2014, when Klein and Goss began releasing music together with then-bandmate Les Priest, they did so anonymously, wanting their sound to speak louder than their backstory. “We really wanted the music to just have an opportunity to connect without being perceived in any sort of way or judged before listening to it,” points out Klein. “We want the songs to be what people connect with the most, whether they’re in L.A. or Mumbai.”

Since then, the Midwestern boys with big-city aspirations (the name LANY is an acronym for Los Angeles New York) have dropped five albums (now alongside the extended version of their previous outing Soft), racked up billions of streams through singles like “ILYSB,” “Malibu Nights,” and “Thru These Tears,” while continuing to build momentum with tracks like “Know You Naked” and “Last Forever.” Along the way, they’ve snagged themselves multi-platinum success and built a community that turns to them in times of heartache. 

“I don’t really care about people thinking about me or us when they listen to our songs,” says Klein with a shrug. “I never grew up listening to an artist and being like, ‘Wow. I didn’t know they thought that, or I didn’t know they felt that way.’ I always found myself and my story in their songs, so when people listen to us, I hope they just find themselves.” 

In an era increasingly swarmed with performative male archetypes, LANY have kept things disarmingly direct. Long before emotional openness became a kind of online currency, their songs were already cracking open the messier core of masculinity. That has, as Goss chimes in to point out, been “the blueprint from day one.”

While LANY started touring as the opening act for megawatt artists like John Mayer, Ellie Goulding, and Troye Sivan, they recently wrapped the first leg of their most expansive standalone world tour yet, hitting places like India and Dubai for the very first time. Now, they’re gearing up for a fresh run across Southeast Asia and Australia starting in September. When asked what it’s like to stand on stage in a country they haven’t visited before, they answer with their signature nonchalance: “I don’t know if there’ll be five people or 5000, and we’re happy with either one.”

After seeing what it’s like on the road with some of the greats, they’re determined to offer that same level of support to the artists who tour with them now. “Anytime we’ve brought people on tour with us, we make sure that they feel super welcome and that we know them, and that they feel seen and taken care of,” says Klein. “John Mayer was so, so amazing about that — he came in, like, the second show that we ever played, and knew all of our names, knew our inside jokes, and that meant a lot to us. That’s something that we take.”