Billie Eilish co-sign Lav shares “Wavvy” and its gory revenge fantasy video
Billie Eilish co-sign Lav shares follow-up bedroom anthem
“Wavvy” and its gory revenge fantasy video
Photo Credit: Marielle Bolland
Lav – ‘Wavvy’https://youtu.be/2zomsHKLUjk
“an instantly tender vibe for a gossamer-thin song, a favorite of Billie Eilish’s, that feels as if it could float away at any moment”The Fader“soft, looping melody plays in the background like a spell”Nylon~
At 3am in her bathroom one sleepless night, Lav wrote “From Me, The Moon” in a mere fifteen minutes on GarageBand. On a whim, she decided to share it the next day – it quickly gathered momentum but she was left disenchanted with the industry after an experience with pop songwriting team in LA. She thought about giving up. And then, just in the knick of time, Billie Eilish shouted out her track. “Now it has 2 million listens which is fucking crazy to me,” Lav notes. “Right when I was about to quit music, she showed up, and I thought, this must be a sign that I should keep going with this.” And so, she kept going; steadily writing, and shaping her own distinct musical dreamscape where classic sounds, and yearning love songs mingle with campy visual influences. Today she shares another single, “Wavvy”, which explores outdated rules around sexuality and the ways women express desire. “If I would have waited,” she sings, “could I have been your lady?” “That song’s a hoe-anthem I guess,”
Lav grins. For the video – a gory revenge fantasy with a kitschy twist – she linked up once again with collaborator Marielle Boland. As she tells Nylon: “If you listen closely the lyrics are actually quite sad. I wrote them after I feared I had compromised a relationship by not waiting long enough to have sex, as if my worth as “a girlfriend type” would die out if I had sex too early, which looking back on is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”. She continues over email with Nylon: “If you want to have sex, have sex. I gave that boy too much credit, if that’s all I was to him, a warm body….yikes. How embarrassing is it that he had my attention for a fleeting moment, and didn’t take the opportunity to keep it? VERY embarrassing. Which is where the video comes in. I think we all have a little bit of revenge fantasy in us, and we could all only wish it happened in a vintage pink boudoir scene.” Lav grew up in a crowded, one bedroom house riddled with addiction in Venice, CA.
Her mum ran with the local skate and surf scene in Dogtown, and her dad “disappeared out the picture real quick” – she was mostly raised by her “super hippy” grandparents. Grandpa was a Blues musician which opened her up to vintage, instrumental sounds and popular jazz singers like Peggy Lee and Julie London. Lav suffered debilitating panic attacks in 3rd Grade and by Middle School, “all hell broke loose.” – In her teens, she became extremely agoraphobic. Eventually, she moved to Utah where she finished up her education at a residential school specialising in rehabilitation and treatment and got engaged to someone who she found out to be “uber controlling”. After breaking up, she got a bunch of tattoos, quit college, chopped off her hair and dyed it black – “I was blonde, cos he wanted me to be blond”. Lav kept her writing to herself, and built up a huge following on social media instead – her off-the-cuff observations on TikTok and Twitter quickly gathered 150k followers, but even then didn’t think anything would come of her music before sharing “From Me, The Moon”. From sharing her experiences online, Lav realised she wasn’t alone. “I’ve felt voiceless my whole life, but I realised later that so many people relate to the way that I feel. Being open and honest is a really good value to have.”
“Wavvy” comes out tomorrow on Color Study.
