Lyn Lapid is a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic. Her sophomore EP, to love in the 21st century, is an alt pop sonic journey through the DMs-over-daisies state of modern love as seen through the eyes of its all-too-relatable protagonist. The 20-year-old indie songstress wears her heart on her sleeve for each track. “All of the songs on the EP are based on my personal experiences with someone who I’m very close with,” she admits in an exclusive interview with Her Campus.
Her lyrics draw inspiration from romantic films like 500 Days of Summer and La La Land, but the EP was mainly inspired by the storytelling aspect of Gen Z rom-coms like The Summer I Turned Pretty and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. Lapid released a cinematic trailer as well as a series of song visualizers that make it clear that to love in the 21st century catalogs the life cycle of a situationship, from the initial meet-cute to the hard-earned closure. Let’s be clear: We’re talking about a situationship, not a relationship, a difference which “just epitomizes what it’s like to love as a Gen Z person in the 21st century,” Lapid laments. “For some reason, we hate commitment and we don’t like to put labels on relationships.”
Her Campus spoke to Lapid fresh off the plane from her TLIT21C Tour across North America to hear her exclusive take on the story behind each song and what it really means to love in the 21st century.
“intro”
“intro” is a fully instrumental warm-up that establishes the EP’s cinematic nature. The track “starts with soft piano and string sounds. As the song goes on, it starts to get more intense until it cuts out to nothing at the very end,” Lapid explains. Though it doesn’t have lyrics, “intro” is still grounded in storytelling: “It summarizes the whole story arc of the no-label relationship: Everything starts very mellow, and then feelings get more and more intense, and then something could happen and it could just cut out to nothing. You’re left wondering what just happened.”
“poster boy”
“‘poster boy’ describes the moment when they meet,” Lapid shares. “It’s the situation where you see a cute stranger in public and you imagine your whole life with them even though you’ve never even spoken a word to them.”
Lapid posted a TikTok saying that “poster boy” was inspired by a boy who came up to her at a park, but the first lyric of the song is, “Saw you at the corner store.” So what’s the real story? She laughs, “Something had to rhyme with ‘boy.’ I write from my personal experiences, but I also like to bend the truth a little bit to make my songs more relatable.”
“do u really?”
“‘do u really?’ is when you’ve gotten to know the person a little bit. … You’re trying to see if this is gonna go anywhere or if they’re just trying to mess around with you,” Lapid says. This is the oldest song on the project; Lapid actually made it before her debut single, “Producer Man.” It was originally a half-written Ruth B demo, which Lapid happily finished during her first studio sessions. The song sat in her drafts for three years, waiting for the right project to come along — and it finally did.
“This is my first collab on a project of mine. I was so excited that it was gonna be with Ruth B because I’ve been such a big fan of her since her Vine days. I met her one time when we were filming a visualizer separate from the EP. She’s the sweetest human being; I loved working with her,” Lapid gushes.
“pick your brain”
“‘pick your brain’ is kind of similar to ‘do u really?’ It’s about wanting to take a peek inside your crush’s mind and see what they really think of you,” she shares. The song’s chorus ends with the lyric, “I must have met you for a reason.” Lapid says the idea of fate “messes with people’s brains. It’s a hopeless romantic kind of thing to think that everything happens for a reason. Fate pulls you into this idea that you’re supposed to be together, which sets up unrealistic expectations.”
“keep me around”
“‘keep me around’ is the point in the no-label relationship when you’ve been talking for quite a bit, but things seem to not be going anywhere. You start to notice little things that make you feel strange, like them only hitting you up at very late hours of the night, or them acting like you don’t exist. You get in your head about where this is all going and if this person actually cares about you at all.”
If you listen to the album in order, you might get whiplash from how different this song is from the dreamy crushing in “pick your brain.” Lapid says their back-to-back placement is an intentional smack into the “reality of a generation obsessed with hookup culture. So many of us are involved in non-committal relationships without wanting to be a part of that at all. We want the old-school love and the courting and, you know, all that romantic stuff.”
“TLIT21C”
“‘TLIT21C’ is the interlude where you realize that your no-label relationship has never, and will never, grow into anything more than what it’s been,” Lapid asserts matter of factly.
Modern love is lonely, especially with social media in the mix. “Social media has allowed us to be the most connected generation in the world, but at the same time, I feel like we’re still so separated. It also exposes you to movies that make you feel lonely because you yearn for what you see on screen.”
“like you want me to”
“like you want me to” is “the one song in the entire project that takes the perspective of the other person and not me. It’s also my favorite track on the EP,” Lapid reveals. “It’s not really a rejection song; it’s more like an unrequited love song. The person basically gives you the typical ‘You deserve better than me, I can’t give you the love that you deserve’ speech. That’s the breaking point of the no-label relationship.”
“We see love in films and books, and we want that so much for ourselves,” Lapid says of hopeless romantics’ tendency to be emotionally unavailable. “But when we come across the real thing, we get scared and instinctively shut off or run away.”
“the alternative”
Lapid explains, “‘the alternative’ is when you get in your head about, Was all of this worth it or was I just doing this because I didn’t want to be alone?” She sings almost the entire song with a strong chest voice, claiming she’s OK with a love that crashes and burns. It’s only in the last line that her voice gets breathlessly quiet. Her performance was intentional: “That last bit where my voice goes really soft is a recognition that things didn’t go how you planned. You accept that the relationship is over.”
“cross ur mind”
At this point in the story arc, “You’re not talking to this person anymore, but for some reason, you’re still thinking about them and wondering if they’re thinking about you. It’s an in-your-feelings kind of song.” The emotional cocktail of melancholy and nostalgia goes down easily; it’s hard to scrub the details of someone you fell in love with from your brain.
“ok with it”
“ok with it” is the last track on the project. “It’s the point where enough time has passed that you’ve been able to process your emotions. … It’s a very bittersweet but also freeing kind of feeling when you realize that you didn’t need this person to be happy.”
To anyone looking for the same sense of closure Lapid sings about on this track, her advice is self-admittedly cliche: “I definitely believe that time heals all wounds. I feel like not trying to force any kind of healing is the way to go.”
One detail you may have missed: Two tracks on the EP interpolate melodies from classical pieces of music. The project’s interlude, “TLIT21C,” bases its melody on the romantic cello suite “The Swan.” Lapid also reveals that the chorus melody of “like you want me to” is based on “the last three minutes of the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor,’” a fact she recalls as easily as reciting the alphabet. It’s clear from even one listen that to love in the 21st century carries as much heart and soul in its tracks as the idealist who penned it.