The Kid LAROI Explains Songwriting Credits on Justin Bieber Duet “Stay”—and he’s making sure there’s no confusion left about how the chart-topping hit came together.
The Australian pop star recently addressed long-standing rumors surrounding the creation of “Stay,” his massive 2021 collaboration with Justin Bieber. Speaking candidly during a recent The Road to Before I Forget Twitch livestream, LAROI clarified exactly who wrote what on the track.
According to LAROI, he personally penned every lyric of the song except for Bieber’s verse. “Justin wrote every lyric of his verse,” he explained, shutting down claims that the track was handed to them fully formed. He also pushed back against the belief that Charlie Puth—who co-produced the song—wrote the entire record and simply passed it along. “That didn’t happen,” LAROI said, emphasizing that “Stay” was written in his signature punch-in style, line by line.
The impact of “Stay” speaks for itself. The song dominated the summer of 2021, hitting No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard Global 200. It went on to collect five trophies at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards, including Top Streaming Song and Top Collaboration. Perhaps most impressively, it became the first song in Hot 100 history to spend all 40 of its charting weeks inside the top 10.
Some of the confusion stemmed from a 2022 SiriusXM interview in which Puth discussed how he built the song’s chord progression. Online listeners took his comments to mean he had written the entire track himself, a takeaway LAROI admits was discouraging.
Reflecting on the situation, LAROI shared how personal the achievement still is for him. He noted that he was just 17 years old when he wrote the song and felt deeply proud of the work. Seeing people suggest it was simply given to him was disheartening, he said, though he made a point to acknowledge that many collaborators contributed to the final product. Still, he stood firm: every lyric outside of Bieber’s verse came from him.
Looking ahead, LAROI is preparing for the next chapter of his career. His sophomore album, Before I Forget, arrives on Jan. 6 and follows 2023’s The First Time, which peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard 200. He has already released a couple of tracks from the upcoming project, including lead single “A Cold Play,” a song fans believe draws inspiration from his past relationship with Grammy-nominated pop star Tate McRae.
With renewed clarity around “Stay” and new music on the horizon, LAROI is confidently owning both his past accomplishments and his future direction.