WANDERLAND, MARCH 2017
We hit the shuffle play button on our favorite Spotify playlist. A few seconds into an unheard song and we’ve got ourselves a new track to play over and over. While this is a familiar routine of discovery for most listeners who stream music, it is also one untiring narrative for fans of the three-piece band LANY.
And that’s how it goes for this band: most listeners are converted into fans when they hear “ILYSB” online.
The track is a pipe song. Its melody and energy are magnetic, with notes and lyrics that are sweet and idyllic. The song starts out slow and dreamy, with that familiar pop synth charm that makes it easy to fall in love with.
It’s a track that transports you to a Californian road trip, with the skies painted in sunset colors and the occasional blinding streaks of light. The car windows are rolled down as one aches to feel the West Coast’s refreshing breeze on their skin, while the locks of their hair are blown by the wind in a perfect disarrangement. Each passing moment feels warm and has the makings of the perfect Hollywood scene.
The song places its listeners right in the heart of a romantic setting, with the next scenes filled with blissful infatuation—lovers driving past the iconic palm trees that line the unruffled roads, stealing glimpses of their beloved on the opposite seat, and—like the song insists—holding hands driving around town.
Here’s how the story begins: It is during their first car ride together when he hears her say “I love you so bad.” She utters those words of affection to her sister at the other end of the line, saying she would soon be home from their Santa Monica trip.
He must have smiled when he heard her say it. And even when she spoke to another, she must have looked straight at his captivating green eyes, which are partly covered by his unruly curls, because she meant it for him, too.
He told himself that it’s the most amazing thing he has ever heard, and months later he would write a song called I love you so bad, depicting that car ride, and the rest of his unsaid feelings that have sprung from late nights.
This isn’t just the picture “ILYSB” creates in our heads, this is exactly how the song was conceived.
“For a while, we would just keep talking in the car and we would say how our hearts beat for each other,” LANY’s vocalist Paul Klein reveals.
“She wrote ‘I love you so bad’ on a notepad and put it in my car. It’s still in my car, actually.”
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At every show, LANY plays “ILYSB” to a growing crowd eager to sing along. But he looks past the spotlight and the sea of people, and sings the notes that are still tied to that afternoon of revelation, a song performed for an unnamed girl thousands of miles away.
Interview for Inquirer Super courtesy of MCA Music Philippines.
Photographs captured by Karpos Multimedia.
Photographs captured by Karpos Multimedia.
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