Starting back in April 2019, Lauv released his first song off his newly released album, ~how i’m feeling~ called “Drugs & The Internet.” Since then, he has been slowly releasing more music one by one until he announced a whole album was being released on March 6. Now that his second debut album came out, showing his true colors makes him stand out even more.

I was only used to Lauv making singles and having a previous playlist called “i met you when i was 18.” His songs back then were all about finding love in New York City, only wanting to be with that person, trying to get over them and trying to forget them. This is the Lauv I began to know and love, but his new music makes me want to listen to him more. Not only that, but I’ve started noticing some of his tracks from the debut have actually made it to the charts, like “Modern Loneliness.” 

When he released the latest song “Sims,” based off of The Sims franchise and meeting the right person at the wrong time, on Oct 3, he also announced his album coming out in March.

“~how i’m feeling~” is about embracing personality and all its different aspects — the idea that we are not *one thing* and in fact we can be many different things on many different days.” 

In an Instagram post about the album concept, Lauv said, “Born out of a crisis of ‘Who am I?’, I created [six] different characters.” Behind these characters, are the different personalities of Lauv that he experiences. 

I think that this is Lauv’s way of connecting to his audience. We all have been there and can relate to having many different personalities. For instance, his six characters are Purple – Existential Lauv; Blue – Hopeless Romantic Lauv – which is the old Lauv who wrote his latest playlist; Green – Goofy Lauv; Yellow – Positive Lauv; Orange – F-boy Lauv; and Red – Spicy Lauv. In total, there are actually seven characters with Lauv himself being the seventh. It’s where he comes together as one, calling himself “The one-man boyband.” 

I stayed up late on March 5 to listen to his release at midnight from the beginning of the album to the end — 21 songs to be exact. I fell in love with this album from the second I started listening to it. And that’s kind of expected coming from me. But I was in complete shock when I first started listening to the rest of his music. I was jumping from wall to wall the second it was out. Not only that, I ordered his album on record vinyl and recieved it on March 17. When I got it in the mail, I was basically crying when I opened it up and saw the album. The only thing I’m afraid of now is listening to the album too much until it wears out the grooves.

If I were to pick a few of my favorite songs from the album, I could sit here for an hour or two thinking about that. But instead of wasting time, I’d say there’s not a single track inside this debut album that I don’t like.

His song “For Now” is about long distance relationships, which some of us actually can relate to. His song “Billy” is about his dog, which blew me away that it was actually decently amazing and one of the cutest little songs I’ve heard from him. Then there’s “Julia,” the song about his ex. For this song, it definitely took me back to 2018 when he released “i met you when i was 18.” 

Overall, I have not stopped listening to this album for two weeks now, ever since it was released. I am beyond impressed with how he related to his audience this album, which brought in so many more fans of his. I think the concept of the album definitely spoke out to everyone and was such a surprise to not only myself, but to everyone else as well.