The 2020s File Feature
Stay
Stay: How The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber Conquered the Charts in 2021 "Stay," the collaborative single by Australian rapper The Kid LAROI and Canadian pop s…
01 The Story
Stay: How The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber Conquered the Charts in 2021
"Stay," the collaborative single by Australian rapper The Kid LAROI and Canadian pop superstar Justin Bieber, became one of the defining commercial achievements of the summer and fall of 2021. Released on July 9, 2021, through Columbia Records and LVRN/Interscope, the track combined LAROI's raw, emotionally direct vocal style with Bieber's polished pop instincts to produce a record that resonated with listeners across age groups and musical tastes. The song's impact on the charts was immediate and unprecedented for an artist at LAROI's career stage.
The Kid LAROI, born Charlton Howard in Sydney, Australia, had already earned attention as a teenager signed to Columbia through his connection to the late rapper Juice WRLD. By 2021 he had released his debut mixtape and accumulated a devoted streaming audience, but "Stay" represented a quantum leap in visibility. Justin Bieber, meanwhile, was in the midst of one of the most commercially productive stretches of his career, having released his sixth studio album "Justice" earlier in 2021. The pairing was carefully considered, bringing together two artists who shared a sonic sensibility rooted in melodic rap and contemporary pop.
"Stay" was written by The Kid LAROI, Justin Bieber, Charlton Howard, Blake Slatkin, Omer Fedi, Magnus Hoiberg, and Jacob Kasher Hindlin, reflecting the collaborative nature of modern pop songwriting. Production was handled by Omer Fedi and Blake Slatkin, who crafted a track built on layered electric guitar tones, compressed drums, and a propulsive energy that pushed the song forward with a driving urgency more common to rock than to contemporary rap. The unusual sonic palette, often described as pop-punk adjacent, positioned "Stay" at an interesting intersection of genres precisely as the pop-punk revival was gaining traction in mainstream music.
The commercial trajectory of "Stay" was staggering. The song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on the chart dated July 31, 2021, and it held that position for seven consecutive weeks before finally yielding. That run at the top of the Hot 100 gave LAROI his first number-one single in the United States and added another chart-topper to Bieber's already extensive collection of peak positions. The song also reached number one in Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, and numerous other territories, establishing its status as a genuinely global phenomenon.
Streaming figures underpinned the song's chart dominance. In its opening week, "Stay" accumulated enormous numbers across Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms, reflecting the way streaming had become the central engine of chart performance in the early 2020s. The track became one of the most-streamed songs of 2021 globally, appearing on year-end lists compiled by Spotify and other services as one of the defining audio moments of the year.
The music video, directed by Cole Bennett of Lyrical Lemonade, featured The Kid LAROI performing in a frantic, high-energy setting while scenes of a turbulent relationship played out in parallel. Bennett's visual signature, characterized by quick cuts, saturated colors, and kinetic camera movement, suited the song's restless energy. The video accumulated hundreds of millions of views on YouTube within its first few months, reinforcing the song's presence across every digital platform simultaneously.
Critical reception was generally positive, with reviewers noting the efficiency of the songwriting and the way the chorus locked into memory with unusual speed. Music critics pointed to the production's guitar-forward sound as a distinguishing element that separated "Stay" from the more trap-influenced mainstream of the time. Some observers drew comparisons to the pop-punk and emo-influenced sounds that artists like Juice WRLD and Lil Peep had introduced into the rap mainstream in the preceding years, suggesting that LAROI was continuing and developing that lineage.
Awards recognition followed the song's commercial success. "Stay" earned nominations at the Grammy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and various other ceremonies. At the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, "Stay" was nominated for Video of the Year, acknowledging the song's cross-platform cultural footprint. The track was also nominated at the Billboard Music Awards and received recognition from music industry bodies in multiple countries.
The cultural context of "Stay" is worth examining alongside its commercial data. The song arrived during a period when the emotional directness associated with artists like Olivia Rodrigo and the broader pop-punk revival was reshaping mainstream taste. Themes of romantic anxiety, the desire for a partner to remain committed, and the frustration of feeling unable to communicate clearly resonated with a young audience that had spent much of the preceding year navigating disrupted social lives during the pandemic. The song's success reflected something genuine about the emotional register young listeners were seeking.
For The Kid LAROI specifically, "Stay" transformed his commercial profile permanently. The single became the best-charting debut by an Australian artist on the Billboard Hot 100 in the modern streaming era, a distinction that underscored how comprehensively he had broken through internationally. Following the song's success, LAROI signed deals and released material that reflected his newly elevated commercial standing. The collaboration with Bieber also demonstrated the continuing power of strategic pairings in the streaming era, where an established star could dramatically amplify a rising artist's reach by lending their platform and audience to a shared project.
The production team of Omer Fedi and Blake Slatkin cemented their reputations as among the most commercially effective producers working in contemporary pop music following the success of "Stay." Fedi in particular became one of the most sought-after production collaborators in the industry, his guitar-heavy aesthetic having demonstrated its mainstream viability on one of the biggest singles of the decade's early years.
02 Song Meaning
The Emotional Architecture of "Stay": Longing, Frustration, and the Fear of Losing Someone
"Stay" by The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber operates on a single, crystalline emotional premise: the desperate wish for a romantic partner to remain present despite a relationship defined by conflict and miscommunication. The song distills a very specific type of romantic anxiety, one in which the speaker knows the relationship is troubled yet cannot bring themselves to accept its end. This tension between clear-eyed awareness of a problem and the emotional inability to walk away has made the song resonate with listeners who recognize this pattern in their own experience.
The perspective throughout the song is that of someone who acknowledges their own shortcomings in the relationship. The narrator does not position themselves as blameless. Instead, there is an implicit admission that their behavior has contributed to the partner's desire to leave. This honesty, even when filtered through the conventions of pop songwriting, gives the track a quality of self-awareness that elevates it above simpler pleading. The singer is not simply asking someone to stay without reason; they are asking for time, for the chance to do better, for the relationship to be given another opportunity despite its difficulties.
The emotional register of "Stay" connects directly to The Kid LAROI's personal history and artistic background. Having grown up partly without stable family structures and having experienced significant personal loss at a young age, LAROI developed a vocal approach rooted in emotional exposure. His delivery on the track carries a rawness that does not feel performed, and listeners responded to that authenticity. The song's themes of abandonment and the terror of being left behind are consistent with recurring concerns in LAROI's broader catalog.
Justin Bieber's contribution to the song's emotional meaning is equally significant. Bieber, who has publicly discussed his own struggles with relationships, mental health, and the distortions that fame imposes on personal life, brings a layer of lived experience to the track. His vocal moments on the song suggest familiarity with the kind of relationship where patterns of behavior keep repeating despite genuine desire to change them. The collaboration between two artists who have both navigated extraordinarily public personal lives gives the song a credibility that listeners may not consciously articulate but certainly feel.
The production choice to build the track around electric guitar riffs rather than the synthesizer pads and trap percussion common to much contemporary pop music is itself a meaningful decision. Guitar in this context carries connotations of directness, of the singer-songwriter tradition, of music that comes from personal expression rather than sonic calculation. Even though "Stay" is clearly a commercial production, the guitar sound signals emotional sincerity, aligning the sonic texture of the track with its lyrical themes of genuine feeling and vulnerability.
The song's structure reinforces its emotional meaning. The chorus arrives quickly and repeats with insistence, mirroring the way the narrator's plea keeps returning despite the partner's apparent desire to leave. The repetitive quality of the hook, which some reviewers noted was unusually compressed into a short melodic phrase, functions as a kind of emotional loop, suggesting that the narrator is trapped in the same thought, returning to the same request again and again without being able to move forward.
The generational resonance of "Stay" cannot be separated from its 2021 release context. Young people emerging from periods of social isolation and disrupted relationships found in the song a precise articulation of emotions that had been intensified by circumstances beyond their control. Relationships that had frayed under pressure, connections that had become strained, and the specific loneliness of feeling disconnected from someone you care about were all experiences that the pandemic had amplified for millions of listeners. "Stay" gave those feelings a form and a melody.
The word "stay" itself, as the central word of the entire track, is worth considering. It is one of the simplest words in the English language, a monosyllable with enormous emotional weight. The choice to use this word as the title and the hook reflects an understanding that in moments of genuine emotional crisis, language compresses. People do not make elaborate speeches when they are afraid of losing someone. They reach for the simplest possible expression of their need. The reduction of an entire complex emotional situation to a single word is one of the reasons the song communicates so effectively across cultural and linguistic barriers.
Thematically, "Stay" belongs to a long tradition of pop songs about romantic retention, but its specific emotional texture sets it apart. The song does not idealize the relationship it describes. There is no suggestion that everything has been perfect and that a minor misunderstanding can be resolved. Instead, the implicit understanding is that both parties know things are difficult, yet the narrator is asking for the relationship to continue anyway. That willingness to acknowledge imperfection while still choosing to stay is itself a meaningful emotional statement.
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