How Justin Bieber Talked The Kid LAROI Into Releasing “Stay”

It is hard to imagine pop history without “Stay,” but The Kid LAROI says the song might never have reached the world if Justin Bieber had not insisted he release it.

The Kid LAROI at the MTV Video Music Awards 2025 held at UBS Arena on September 07, 2025 in New York, New York.

Gilbert Flores/Billboard

Speaking with Carter Gregory on The Set List, LAROI laid out the simple, almost accidental origin story: Bieber had sent him a song for his own album, and LAROI felt obliged to return the favor. What followed was a familiar negotiation between instinct and industry polish — the artist doubting whether the track was “too pop,” and the superstar collaborator refusing to let it go.

“That song came about because he sent me the song for his album and I was kind of like alright I gotta send him back one now from mine,” LAROI said. “I don’t know, there was a part of me at that point in my career I think I was very in my head about like, ‘oh is this too pop of a song? Is this gonna be weird if I put this out?’ I think I was overanalyzing things, I remember asking him ‘do you want to put this on your project or something?'”

Bieber’s answer was blunt and decisive. “He was like ‘bro, are you out of your mind? You have to release this, you keep this for you,'” LAROI recalled. “He literally was like ‘Bro this is a smash, you gotta put this out.'” That counsel, it turned out, was right. Released in 2021, “Stay” climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for seven weeks, picked up ARIA and APRA Awards, and now sits among Spotify’s top 10 most-streamed songs with more than 3.9 billion plays.

There is a practical side to Bieber’s influence here — the kind that helps a song cross over — but LAROI emphasized something quieter about their dynamic: Bieber listens. “He’s always dropping some really good stuff. I think though, the most helpful and useful thing is something that you wouldn’t think of, maybe off rip, but something I think he does so well is that he just listens really well,” LAROI said. “He’s really good at just being like ‘man, I’m sorry. That sucks, let’s talk about it.'”

That kind of acknowledgment, LAROI suggests, is its own form of mentorship. “He always has great advice but just talking about something and being acknowledged like ‘damn that sucks’ you know, that’s a thing in itself that sometimes,” he said. “I find it helpful when he shares his experiences with me. He just cares too which is cool, he’s never approaching it from like ‘I know everything’ which is really cool. He’s very honest about things and if he doesn’t know something he will always be like ‘I don’t know, but I’m here for you.'”

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Their rapport is part friendship, part cross-continental kinship — a connection between Canada and Australia that surfaced elsewhere on Justice, Bieber’s sixth studio album, where the two also teamed up on the track “Unstable.”

Charlton Howard, who performs as LAROI, is still building his own lane. He is currently on the A Perfect World tour across the United States, supporting Before I Forget, his third full-length project that debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year. The story behind “Stay” is a small but telling detail in a young career that has already benefited from the blunt force of pop validation and the quieter currency of mentorship.