LANY’s Paul Jason Klein Breaks Down the Worst Heartbreak of His Life

Paul Jason Klein used to dread and sleep through his birthdays, but that changed this year. The night before he turned 30 on April 30, he and seven of his best friends had dinner at Nobu in Malibu, where they drank, ate, laughed to excess (“We were slapping tables laughing”), and nearly brushed elbows with Leonardo DiCaprio. (“Leo was at the table over, which made it just that much more hilarious.”)

“Honestly, it was one of the best nights of my life,” Klein, frontman of alt-pop trio LANY (short for Los Angeles New York), tells me over the phone two days after the celebration. “Now, I love birthdays.” He goes on to list some of the texts and presents he received, like a child after Christmas.

Performing at Coachella 2018

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If we had spoken four months earlier, the whole tone of our conversation might’ve been different. At the start of the new year, Klein was reeling from what he calls his first real heartbreak, and he wasn’t himself. (Klein doesn’t name names, but he reportedly split from pop starlet Dua Lipa at the end of 2017 after a few months together.)

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“I never felt a pain like that. I’m not trying to be dramatic here. I think that was the first time I’ve ever been in love, and I never felt anything like that in my life,” he tells BAZAAR.com. The solution? Writing music as a release.

Klein says he wrote LANY’s entire sophomore album, Malibu Nights, within the first few weeks of 2018. He wasn’t on deadline. In fact, he wasn’t even aware he was making an album until he was done composing it. “I lifted my head up for the first time in 50 days and I was like, ‘Holy sh*t, we just wrote album two,’” Klein explains. “I think that morning I woke up and my heart for the first time didn’t hurt worse than it did the day before.”

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“Thru These Tears” is the first piece of work he has to show from his cathartic creative period. The track, co-written by Sasha Sloan, has the band’s signature alternative-meets-synth-pop sound, coupled with Klein’s ambient vocals and tweet-worthy lyrics. It’s more upbeat, earworm-y, and at times borderline rock, but it’s still LANY. The hook evokes the same broken-but-optimistic perspective Klein carries through our conversation: “In the end I’m gonna be alright / but it might take a hundred sleepless nights / to make the memories of you disappear / but right now I can’t see nothing through these tears.”

LANY “made everything in a kitchen on the first album,” Klein recalls. But this time, they’ve upgraded to an actual studio and worked with producer Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, The 1975) to help elevate their sound. “We know what we’re good at, but we just got so much better and you’re gonna hear it,” he adds. “The fans are gonna be like, “What. The hell. Is going on?”

LANY isn’t a Top 40 act or a household name, but the trio already has a rockstar fanbase. Girls cry in the front rows of their concerts. They’ve sold out stadium shows in Asia and played the main stage at Coachella. Fans around the world collaborated to write Klein a joint birthday card on Tumblr. The band boasts over 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, 263,000 followers on Twitter, and over 375,000 on Instagram at the time of writing. The lyric video—not even the official music video—for their hit “ILYSB” has 44 million views on YouTube.

LANY performing in New Orleans in 2017

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“Anyone who listens to us and follows us knows that I will be speaking to them directly,” explains Klein, who’s extremely hands-on with the group. In addition to playing manning vocals and keys (Jake Goss is on drums and Les Priest is on guitar and backup vocals), he helps creative-direct art and merch based off of the thousands of posts he’s saved from Tumblr. He is LANY’s social media manager. He writes journal-like newsletters for his fans, which has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and saw an 85 percent click-rate at one point.

The trio only started posting music online in early 2014, but the tracks quickly gained traction. They dropped three EPs in the following years (I Loved You., Make Out, and kinda) ahead of their eponymous first album in 2017, which tied for the highest-charting debut album on the Rock chart that year. Now, the next chapter begins.

Ahead of releasing “Thru These Tears,” Klein talked to BAZAAR.com about turning his heartache into art, his relationship with his fans, and what he’ll do after after LANY—if he ever decides to stop.

Harper’s BAZAAR: You said on Instagram post that wrote the album between January 4 and February 14. What made you work in that compact of a timeframe?

Paul Jason Klein: Well, I got my heart completely shattered and it was really all I knew. I could’ve gone through that season a thousand ways. I could’ve tried to numb the pain by a million things and then come out of that season of heartbreak with nothing to show for it, but it almost felt like the only way to survive was just to put myself in the studio and just live to see another day.

I just told Rupert [Lincoln, LANY’s manager and Paul’s best friend], “I can’t have a single down second. I need you to put me in the studio every single day. I don’t know how I’m going to go a single day if I don’t have something to do like this, and an outlet.” So, I put my head down and just spent every waking moment writing songs. I didn’t accidentally write album two, but it wasn’t on purpose.

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the calm before the storm pic.twitter.com/pjuBHJaZfm

— LANY (@thisisLANY) April 19, 2018

HB: I feel like we’ve all kind of gone through something like that, where you just need to be busy or create something to get yourself back on your feet.

PJK: Totally. I was gonna call the album January, because I feel like we’ve all had a January, right? Whether that January was actually August, September, or October, but we’ve all had that timeframe where it almost feels like the world has stopped spinning and nothing is moving.

I ultimately decided on Malibu Nights because I felt it was more indicative of my experience. Heartbreaks come from all sorts of different things. It doesn’t have to be love, it could be a death in the family, or just disappointment, or waking up one day and realizing, “Holy sh*t, I’m not who I wanted to be.” I feel like everyone’s going to be able to relate.

HB: Lyrically, what kind of themes or narratives can we expect?

PJK: The aftermath of heartbreak. The range of emotions are similar and so vast at the same time. The overarching theme is you just want back what you had, but then there’s all kinds of nuances.

Then there’s moments of, I’ve been hurt for so long and I’ve been drinking myself to sleep. I actually feel my body shutting down. There’s moments like that where I don’t know if I can go another day. Malibu Nights is exactly that. I drove myself home every night, and I slept in Malibu in my house alone. And I tossed and I turned and I dealt with all of those emotions. I kept a really clear head about it all, and that was something that I’m really proud of, if I can say that.

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HB: For sure.

PJK: I didn’t fall asleep with any girls in my bed, and I didn’t try to numb in other ways. I wanted to just be in that moment and feel and go though it and be honest to myself and my experience. I don’t ever want to go through this again. I don’t ever want to feel this again, so let’s make the most of it now, so when I’m done and I’m through it, we got what we got. If I’m gonna go through it then you better f*cking believe I’m coming out of it better.

HB: Do you feel like you learned more about yourself?

PJK: Oh, my God, girl. I bet I’m preaching to the choir. I gotta be honest with you. It still f*cking hurts, but it’s okay. I’m gonna make it. I just I feel like I understand the human condition better. And there’s people that have experienced way worse pain, but at least I felt a little bit like what that feels. I had never had my heart broken. And actually, I’m so glad I got it broken. I am actually so glad somebody broke my heart. I thought about writing homegirl a thank you letter. Really. I joke about that.

“I’m actually so glad somebody broke my heart. I thought about writing a thank you letter.”

HB: You’re into art and you’re very involved with LANY’s creative direction. Would you ever consider just doing an art project on its own in the future?

PJK: Totally. I said loosely to the boys, “Look, I’m only doing this for 10 more years.” For 10 years it’s just all that I’m doing, but when I’m done, I’m done, and then I want to be like the creative director of Chanel, or something like that.

That’s kind of the direction I want to move in when I’m done with LANY. I also want to get into film and acting. We’ll reevaluate it when we get like 2028, and I’m sure Jake and Les will be like, “Are we actually done?” And I’ll be like, “You know what? I don’t know.”

“Thru These Tears” single artwork

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HB: Already in four years you guys have risen up so quickly from dropping music that you made in your kitchen on SoundCloud to playing arenas in the Philippines and playing the Coachella main stage. How are you processing this major shoot-up?

PJK: To be honest, I’m not. I haven’t. [Laughs] It’s something that I need to work on, and I’m learning. But I am so thankful. Because it was my birthday yesterday, I was reflecting on the years that I’ve had on Earth and what we’ve done as a band. And I actually thanked God that I’m not where I want to be yet, because I think if I’d gotten that when I was 22, I’m just so insatiable that I’d be like, “What do I do now? Where do I go from here? I’m bored.” I was thankful that I had more time to do that and something to work towards.

HB: This upcoming album for you is very personal. How do you bring emotional content like that onto a stage and perform it in front of people without completely losing it?

PJK: Sometimes I do lose it. But I think that’s why we are who we are. That’s why we have the fan base that we do. You can’t really argue with honesty. You just can’t be mad at it. Everyone ultimately just respects it; it’s magnetic. You’re baring your soul and what’s really happening is you’re doing what everyone else really wants to do, but maybe doesn’t feel brave enough to do. I think if I can just inspire people around me through whatever I went through and then they see that emotion onstage, it makes for a beautiful experience. Ultimately, I think it just brings everyone together.

And you can tell I’m not singing songs that somebody else wrote for me; that’s not who we are. Are we on our way to being the biggest band in the world? We are, and we’re gonna do it on our own terms. It might take us a little longer because some Swedish guy isn’t writing a Swedish pop radio song for us. We’re gonna do it with authenticity and honesty and we’re gonna do it the right way, slow and steady, and just build and get better every day.

“I’m not singing songs that somebody else wrote for me; that’s not who we are.”

HB: What’s one piece of advice you’d give someone who’s also going through heartbreak?

PJK: Allow yourself to feel it. It didn’t happen long, but maybe the first day or two I wanted to run from it. I didn’t want to feel that way. And then somebody told me, “Hey, it’s okay to feel like this. It’s okay to be this hurt.” You should let yourself be this hurt and let it hurt for as long as you need it to.

Say you’re not okay when you’re not okay. So when people asked me how I’m doing, I’m like, “I’m doing so bad. I can hardly breathe most of the time.” You know what, I didn’t cry for two weeks. You know when you’re so upset that you just want to throw up? I remember being up at the house on a Saturday, frozen, putting ice in my cup for water. I would have to say to myself, “Paul, move, move, move.” Literally, I had to speak to myself, “Paul, move. Move your foot. Walk out the door.” It was nuts.

But be honest about it and honest with yourself and to the few people in your life that you trust and you really care about who have your back. Maybe there’s just one person. And if you can’t find anybody, then you just gotta trust yourself and talk to yourself like I did. Of course it’s gonna be okay eventually. Who knows when? But it is gonna be okay.

Malibu Nights releases later this year.

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This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Erica Gonzales

Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she’s listening to Lorde right now.