Biography
Ari Staprans Leff (born August 8, 1994), known professionally as Lauv, is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer, best known for his compilation album I Met You When I Was 18 (The Playlist), which was released in 2018. His debut album, How I'm Feeling, was released on March 6, 2020, and debuted at number 16 on the US Billboard 200. Lauv has also written songs for other artists including the singles "Boys" by Charli XCX, "No Promises" by Cheat Codes and Demi Lovato and "Imperfections" by Celine Dion.
Leff was born in San Francisco, California. He spent his early childhood in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, before his family relocated to a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He went to Radnor High School. As a child, he was interested in music and took piano and viola lessons before learning how to play the guitar at the age of 11. Leff studied guitar, recording, sound design, production, voice, and songwriting with Jason Brook Zimmerman, co-owner and founder of the music lesson organization, Traveling Musician. He started writing songs in middle school, at around 14 years old. During his time in high school, he played in several bands and studied jazz before moving on to electronic music. His early musical influences were Owl City and Never Shout Never. He would listen to Owl City's "Maybe I'm Dreaming" and study the production style and the abstract lyrical themes that use "dreamy" and "whimsical" images to describe love. He also adopted the artist name, Somersault Sunday, and published some songs and extended plays on his Myspace account.
After graduating high school, Leff decided to pursue a behind-the-scenes role in music seeing that his career was not taking off. He chose to study music technology at New York University's Steinhardt School. While at university, he studied abroad in Prague and was a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. He spent two of his four years at NYU as a studio intern for Jungle City Studios, where artists such as Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, and Alicia Keys recorded. During his junior year, he signed a publishing deal after the success of his song "The Other" but he decided to finish university and "enjoy it" having only a year left and because he was also feeling "fortunate enough to be able to go there".
Lauv resides in Los Angeles, California. Leff dated pop musician Julia Michaels for several months in 2018, before they broke up at the end of the year. On January 2, 2021, Leff hinted through an Instagram post about dating singer-songwriter Sophie Cates, professionally known as Silver Sphere.
Leff has opened up about his mental health several times throughout his career. As a result, Leff is known for donating proceeds from songs to mental health organizations in an effort to erase stigma surrounding mental health. Microsoft and Leff teamed up to release "My Blue Thoughts", a place for people struggling to share what they were going through and to let go of something weighing them down.
His mother and his maternal grandparents are Latvian and Leff has frequently visited Latvia to visit relatives and spend summers in his grandfather's cottage in the seaside city of Jūrmala.