LANY Artistfacts

2014-
Paul KleinVocals, keyboards, guitar
Jake GossDrums
Les PriestKeyboards, guitar2014-2022
LANY nearly named themselves TTYL (text speak for "talk to you later"). They had a particular aesthetic in mind and wanted a four-letter name, but all the good four-letter words had already been used by other bands. So, they moved on to acronyms and nearly settled on TTYL before going with LANY, which stands for "Los Angeles New York."

"I think a four-letter band name is great, and I searched every four-letter word in the English dictionary. It had already been trademarked or taken. So, then I moved to thinking about the opposite ends of the spectrum and the country, LA and New York, and I was like, 'That could be cool,'" he said on the Off The Record podcast.

The band name was meant to be pronounced as the city abbreviations are pronounced, but fans ubiquitously pronounced it "Lay-nee," so that became the accepted standard.
The TTYL idea came into play again in 2023 with the release of their fifth album, A Beautiful Blur. They seriously considered titling it Thank You and then naming their next four albums For Everything, Talk, To You, Later. With the ninth album, fans would realize the band were saying goodbye, at which point LANY would drop a 10th and final album titled X (the Roman numeral for 10). Frontman Paul Klein liked the idea of setting a finish line for the band, a preordained stopping point at which LANY would tie up their legacy and bow offstage permanently. He eventually decided against the idea because he didn't want the band to get boxed in.
Despite the meaning of their name, no one in LANY was born in or even near Los Angeles or New York. Klein was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Jake Goss in Bentonville, Arkansas; and Les Priest (who left the band in 2022) in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

The band first met in Nashville and were friends before forming LANY. Klein moved to Los Angeles to work on his own music while Goss and Priest worked on an electronic music project called the WRLDS Project. After a couple years Klein visited Nashville and the trio wrote two songs ("Walk Away" and "Hot Lights") in four days. They moved to Los Angeles and uploaded songs anonymously onto SoundCloud while performing around California. Their first single to blow up was "ILYSB," which went Platinum.
From the start, aesthetics were as much a part of LANY as the music. "I want everything about LANY to be just a little bit more beautiful than real life," Klein told KXSU 102.1 FM. "I want it to be extremely aspirational, so whatever we do, sound, vibe, and our appearance...I want to just be like very out of touch with reality, like the colors are just a little bit brighter, the sounds are just a little bit louder, the lyrics are just a little bit, almost unreasonably, emotional. I want it to be aspirational in that sense."

To this end, Klein puts a lot of thought into all of the band's promotional materials and social media. He uses a vintage 35 millimeter camera for much of their photography, giving their image a romantic, timeless aura.
LANY is big not only in Japan but also in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Their fanbases in those countries drove much of their early success. The band made history when they became the first American group to sell out multiple consecutive shows at the Mall of Asia Arena in the Philippines in 2022.
Drummer Jake Goss got his first drum set when he was 11 years old and really into the 1996 Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do, which is about a fictional 1960s band. Goss "wanted to be" Guy Patterson, the drummer in the film. His parents encouraged his interest and enrolled him in lessons. His first teacher was Kevin Bonner out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. He started a band named Very Special Guests and played at his church. A great aunt got Goss the opportunity to study with Chester Thompson at Belmont University. Twice a year from the time he was in eighth grade, he'd make the drive from Bentonville to Nashville to study. The experience helped land him a spot in the Belmont school of music, which he successfully graduated from.
While still attending Belmont, Goss worked with producer Mitch Dane, who hooked him up with an opportunity to tour with Jars of Clay, which he did for the next six years.
Goss is known to chomp on tea-tree cinnamon toothpicks while he plays. He uses it to focus.
Goss saw U2 when he was a teenager. He was in the very back row of a stadium and was moved by Bono's determination to reach him with the band's energy. He wanted to make this a focus of his own when he performed, and Klein agreed. "Bruce Springsteen said it, then Chris Martin said it, but tonight could be somebody's first show and tonight could be somebody's last show," Klein told Junkee. "We always keep that in mind."
A friend of Klein said that LANY made "make out music," a descriptor Klein immediately took to. So, in 2015 the band released an EP titled Make Out, which he nearly titled Make Out Music. It has six tracks, all of which are remastered versions of songs they'd already released, tweaked for added passion.

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