Love you so bad, Lany
LA-based band Lany bellows into Manila once more with two-sold out concerts at the Big Dome, with tickets running out in less than 24 hours. Their music has chameleonic qualities that resonate with disparate music styles, appealing to almost everyone.
MANILA, Philippines — Radio is no longer the dominant medium that dictates the success of a recording artist. That distinction now belongs to streaming — a post-piracy platform that allows users to freely access an entire music catalog without intervention. Streaming has become a vital force in the breakthrough of niche indie acts, broadening their reach with the help of algorithm-based playlists tailored to every music fan’s taste.
One of the biggest success stories of streaming is internet pop sensation, Lany. To date, the LA-based band has racked up more than 400 million streams on Spotify alone, with online hits ILYSB and Super Far occupying the top spot of the local Spotify charts for months. It’s easy to point out why they’re one of the most-streamed bands on the internet at the moment. Lany’s genre-bending appeal works as a perfect bait for several playlists with different formats. Like fellow streaming behemoths 1975 and Lauv, their music has chameleonic qualities that resonate with pop, indie, electronic, R&B and retro revival/’80s music listeners. In the age of “monogenre” where disparate music styles meet halfway to form singularity, Lany’s formula is every radio programmer’s dream. Combined with Paul Jason Klein’s sultry charm and carefully curated aesthetic branding, they’re the “it” millennial band to bet your money on.
Despite their accomplished online portfolio and several festival appearances, Lany hasn’t realized their commercial potential yet. Released in 2017, their eponymous debut record barely cracked the top 20 of the US Billboard 200 charts, and placed in the lower reaches of the UK and Australia’s Top 100 album charts in its first week. While their success on streaming hasn’t quite resulted in album sales, the band is becoming a formidable presence in several global markets, especially in the Philippines.
After headlining last year’s Wanderland Music and Arts Festival, the American pop trio instantly became one of the biggest international bands in the country, topping streaming, digital downloads, and radio music charts. This phenomenon — called “Philippine-only hits” — has a long history that dates back from The Carpenters’ You to Stephen Speaks’ Passenger Seat — two deep cuts that accidentally garnered ubiquity in our local shores and not everywhere else — thanks to radio DJs and programmers who prominently repeated the songs by the hour. While Lany doesn’t share the stripped-down acoustics of The Carpenters or Stephen Speaks, their songs, specifically ILYSB, are easy-listening earworms that capture the emotional core and sentimentality of a chart-topper. Their introspective ruminations on love, heartbreak and moving on are quite similar to any Michael Learns To Rock or Adele ballad, or even a Backstreet Boys jam. Stripped off the shimmering, electronic pulse and synth-pop lines, they’re the kind of songs that appeal to a generation of Filipino listeners, young and old.
This unprecedented feat led to two-sold out concerts at the Big Dome, with tickets on the first night running out in less than 24 hours. In an instant, they became A-listers ready to fill the stadium with relentless sing-alongs and piercing screams from music fans. In fact, as soon as drummer/sampler Jake Clifford Goss and synth player/keyboardist Les Priest positioned themselves behind their respective instruments and frontman Paul Klein casually joined his bandmates on stage, the collective roar went full blast, almost approaching the mayhem-like levels of a second coming of One Direction or The Spice Girls.
The band launched into Dumb Stuff, a catchy opener that drove the crowd insane, followed by a troika of retro-inspired, synth-pop anthems (4EVER, Yea Babe No Way, Flowers On The Floor). Against a backdrop of pastel-lit visuals and warm colors, Lany brought a summery Cali vibe to the coliseum. It set the visual tone for the rest of the concert, complementing Klein’s contagious energy and the band’s trippy sound. As soon as the crowd recognized the intro of Good Girls and screamed out every word of the lyrics, Klein slid around the edges and corners of the stage, seemingly amazed at how enthusiastic Pinoy fans were.
There were moments in the concert that hint at Paul Klein’s potential as a future pop star in the vein of Nick Jonas or Shawn Mendes, and to a degree, a guitar-toting charmer à la John Mayer. In the case of Made In Hollywood, Klein upped his theatricality by stepping on a grand piano while crooning his heart out. He knows how to move a crowd effortlessly. It Was Love, a brooding number straight from the Bruce Springsteen playbook, stood out for its unapologetic tenderness. It also featured some lovely instrumental breakdown from the band, as if there’s a whole world to explore outside of Lany’s pop excess. Hurts kicks up the pace with a sensual take on ’90s R&B. Klein displayed a more confident vocal style that fits the top 40 format, harnessing his gift with indelible results. As he sang, “The more you love, the more it hurts,” the audience seemed to take it as their gospel.
Lights dimmed after Purple Teeth, and next thing I knew, Lany made their way to a secretly mounted stage at the back of the SVIP section, causing quite a ruckus as fans dashed to the area to get a glimpse of the Cali trio’s stripped-down performance of 13. It was gimmick done right: Klein on electric guitar, serenading an old lover with romantic vicissitudes and subdued falsettos. Of course, everyone fell for the act. The band, still catching their breath, went back onstage to dish out fan favorites such as Tampa, Where The Hell Are My Friends, and The Breakup, where Klein gushed repeatedly that “it was the best night” of his life. With just a spotlight on Klein playing on the grand piano, Lany impressed the crowd with an acoustic rendition of Harry Styles’ Sign of the Times, ending it with the band’s very own Current Location. It was a refreshing highlight, an opportunity for the American pop group to showcase their more vulnerable side.
The night went on with bombastic ditties Pink Skies and Hericane, and concluded on a high note with their most successful songs in the repertoire, Super Far and ILYSB. Based on the reception of their Big Dome performance alone, Lany is ready to conquer a few more big venues and win new fans here. Their arena debut was more spark than fizzle, a testament of their overwhelming promise as a band on the brink of superstardom.
