Lauv Offers His Younger Self Reassurance From the Future in ‘Kids Are Born Stars’ Video
For Lauv, working on healing his inner child through therapy and meditation wasn’t enough – he needed to hop in a time machine and head back to 2005 for some on-the-ground remedying. In the music video for his latest single “Kids Are Born Stars,” a plucky pop track about the type of untarnished confidence that often doesn’t last past childhood, the singer and songwriter pays his younger self a wholesome, reassuring visit from the future.
“When I started this album, I was going through a big existential crisis, questioning everything I had and why I had it,” Lauv shared in a lengthy statement on Instagram. “I was also struggling a lot with self confidence and wondering if I ever truly had that, where I lost it, etc. I heard somewhere that as kids, we’re all born with this innate confidence and ability to be *stars* in whatever right that might be, but along the way it’s easy to lose that as the world beats it out of us, and a lot of us forget.”
In the Hannah Lux Davis-directed video, young Lauv gifts his eighth-grade crush Samantha with a Somersault Sunday CD – calling back to one of his earliest musical projects – that holds a song promising the wealth of stardom that’s to come in his future. Some pushback from the school bullies leaves the young musician, born Ari Leff, alone and disheveled before his older self offers to walk him home. When they arrive, they realize that they share the same home, favorite food, and favorite movie — They’re the same.
The whole of the visual, from the time the pair spends jamming out in their room to soaring through the air on a trampoline, was born from conversations Lauv had been having internally with himself. “I set out on a journey to find my confidence and where my ‘starpower’ came from,” he explained. “That included things like therapy, meditation (lots of it), and at worse times, shortcuts in things like substances and drinking. That being said, one of the most powerful things I found was this thing called inner child meditation.”
Inner child meditation, he said, is an exercise “where you literally visualize yourself at a younger age and see what lessons, messages, or journeys this younger you may have for you. I literally had conversations with younger kid Ari, at different ages, on multiple occasions. One of those turned into the song ‘Kids Are Born Stars,’ and a lot of the rest of it, helped me find my north star throughout the rest of the album writing process and life.”
Lauv’s sophomore studio album All 4 Nothing is set for release on Aug. 5 featuring “Kids Are Born Stars” and the previously released “26” and “All 4 Nothing (I’m So in Love),” all just the beginning of a more wide-spanning, internal journey through healing.
Wrapping up the post, Lauv added: “Sitting here today, I would say I’m not fully healed (I don’t think one ever can be, and that’s not the point), but I’ve found a deeper connection with the true me and learned the confidence is all about accepting yourself exactly as you are, playing that to your strengths, and moving through life intimately with yourself.”
