Lauv's 'I Like Me Better' Began As An Accidental iPhone Voice Memo

Believe it or not, Lauv once had to "beg" his companions to come to his shows. That was years ago; back once he'd play tiny rooms for tinier audiences that didn't know his name, and maybe didn't care. Joke's on them — the 24-year-old singer-songwriter, who is MTV's Push: Artist to Watch for the month of October, has been enjoying a banner breakout year on the back of his platinum hit, "I Like Me Better." The nostalgic, moody electro-pop bop is a streaming smash (over a billion streams and counting) and, to hear Lauv tell it, its genesis was practically destiny.


"I came in that day and... I had no concept, no lyrics, no idea I was going to write that song," he told MTV News. "I had just gotten some new synth sounds, and then I threw in this drum loop, and then I got the complete melody."


The melody he's talking about is one you're likely already familiar with: it's the one that, once modified to the high heavens, sounds group kind of like a humming dolphin and immediately gets etched into your brain. Lauv sang it into his phone with the hope of eventually scrapping it, however it was just also good to resist.


"I didn't wish to forget it, so I just voice memo'd it in my iPhone," Lauv continued. "I thought I was going to replace it with a different sound later yet I ended up just sending that to my computer and chopping up that voice memo with all of the noise and everything and just using that. It was probably the fastest song I've written. It sort of feels like it wrote itself, honestly."


"I Like Me Better" is like a crush in musical form, and that sweetness, that emotion, translates beautifully to the stage. While performing in New York to celebrate his new Push: Artist to Watch tenure, he sang the hook ("I like me better once I'm with you") with a honest smile on his face, before dropping some playful spins and dance moves because the crowd cheered in approval. It was far from an empty room this time — no begging was involved in the making of this efficiency! — Plus it signals even more sweet success as Lauv continues making hits and defining his sound.


"I think the perfect artists, at least the artists I look up to the most, sort of redefine themselves during time and aren't afraid to do that," he mentioned. "So I'm just attempting to be as open to the future as possible."


Check out Lauv's full, exclusive efficiency of "I Like Me Better" below, and visualize more from his Push series here.