Lauv reflects on the superficial nature of social media and its detrimental repercussions in his new video for “Drugs & the Internet.” The song will appear on his forthcoming LP, How I’m Feeling, which is the follow-up to his 2018 compilation, I Met You When I Was 18.
The song opens on a contemplative note with a piano melody as Lauv moves down a deserted street after a night at the bar. “I wonder what it feels like to be more than I am,” he sings as he kicks an old computer monitor, which transports him to an alternate digital universe in the Jenna Marsh-directed clip.
As the song kicks into a bouncy groove, Lauv finds himself in a bleak new world. “And I don’t want to base my actions on reactions or the things they say/And I don’t want to hit delete on all the parts of me that they might hate,” he sings as he attends a sterile dinner party where mannequin-like people seem oblivious to the fiery peril around them.
It’s interspersed with scenes of Lauv examining how he portrays himself in a mirror. “I traded all my friends for drugs and the internet,” he sings on the chorus. “Ah shit, am I a winner yet?”
“I wrote ‘Drugs & the Internet’ at a time I was struggling with feelings of extreme emptiness and depression. I wrote it as a sort of self-analysis for my obsession with the way I wanted present myself to the world — a commentary on the world we live today,” he said in a statement. “It is as much self-deprecating as it is serious and sad. It flew out of me in an hour. It felt more therapeutic than any song I’d written before.
“As the first song off of my album, How I’m Feeling, it is the perfect entrance into the next phase of my life and music,” he continued. “I am more proud of this song and video than anything I have ever created in my life, and I’m so excited that it’s yours now.”
Earlier in the year, Lauv and Troy Sivan teamed up for collaborative track “I’m So Tired…” Lauv will embark on his How I’m Feeling tour in the fall.