Lauv is calling from a tour bus in Philly, looking far too comfortable for someone spilling their guts night after night. His album, All For Nothing, is, in his own words, “joyous” — which is a funny way to describe a record that sounds like dancing alone at 3 a.m. while questioning your entire existence.
“This is the first time I really just… let go,” he says. “I wrote it in a very freestyled way. I didn’t want to think.” That’s because thinking had become part of the problem. The album came out of what he politely calls an “existential crisis,” where success arrived quickly, stuck around, and left him feeling emptier than before. “I had all this beautiful stuff going on in my life, but I still felt empty. I had to face that feeling.”
He faces it head-on in the opener, “26,” a song about realizing the dream wasn’t enough. Fans have been quick to connect it to earlier tracks like “Billy,” which Lauv admits is “a different version” of the same conversation. This time, though, he was talking directly to himself—sometimes literally. Inner child therapy became part of the process. “I’d visualize myself younger, go back to certain memories, and tell that kid what he needed to hear but never did,” he says. That’s how a song like “Hey Ari” ended up as a letter to his past self, and how the album lands on “First Grade,” a return to innocence after all the ups and downs.
Not everything in All For Nothing is about healing in the Hallmark sense. Tracks like “Bad Trip in Mali” and “Time After Time” document a period of heavy substance experimentation. “I wasn’t proud of it, but it was reality,” he says. There’s no glamorizing—just snapshots from a life in flux, often set to beats you can still dance to. “Is it possible to make a dark dance record? Yeah,” Lauv grins. “That was the mood.”
Part of the shift came from handing over more of the production. Working with John Cunningham, Digi, Simon, and even a beat from Disclosure’s Guy Lawrence, Lauv leaned into a more upbeat, driving sound. “I was a little bored of producing everything myself,” he says. “This opened it up.”
Outside the album, Lauv’s been channeling his mental health focus into “Lauv’s Meditation Club,” a call-in line where he uploads guided meditations from the road. “Meditation’s been my number one thing lately,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll do one right before stage, with music blasting outside.”
For an album born of crisis, All For Nothing lands in a surprisingly hopeful place—more first grade than final exam. “It’s about getting back to that belief in yourself,” Lauv says. And maybe about finding a beat you can hold on to while you do it.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
