“Everything That I Have Dropped [So Far] Has Elevated Me Even More”: Love Spells On Album LOVE IS THE LAW

From overcoming homelessness to living with Kevin Abstract and working with an ’80s Stevie Nicks collaborator – the Houston-hailing dream-pop artist is one of 2026’s most fascinating and autonomous new finds.

“I feel 21, but I don’t at the same time,” Love Spells says. People often argue that the age you become famous is the age you remain. It’s an uncharitable notion for many a pop culture icon whose personal evolution endured decades beyond. But there’s no denying that the relationship between sudden stardom and sun rotations can be a significant one. 

Love Spells – born Sir Taegen C'aion Harris – isn’t quite a household name at the time of his Man About Town interview. The Houston-hailing recording artist chats backstage at East London’s MOTH Club (capacity: 300), on the afternoon of his first London gig. The iconic music venue’s interiors lean charmingly more working men’s club than popstar luxury. I’m told I can sit anywhere on the banquettes of the communal dressing room, apart from one section – it fell through when somebody tried to perch there earlier. 

However, all signs indicate a more enveloping form of stardom could genuinely be around the next corner for Harris. His debut album LOVE IS THE LAW landed in July, his first music to be released as part of an auspicious major label deal with RCA Records. Twelve tracks of languid dreampop-meets-indie rock, Harris’ vocals rarely thicken to more than an exhale – listening feels like rubbing aloe vera on your skin as a delicate high washes over you. Justin Bieber, Lorde and Erykah Badu are fans. And, as is a marker of a 2020s breakthrough, he boasts a TikTok hit – track one of LOVE IS THE LAW, “Don’t Touch”. 

Does 21 feel like a good age for everything to be gathering pace? “Absolutely, yeah,” he says. “No quarrels about that.” It’s one of five times he replies “absolutely” to a question in our 30 minutes together, in instances where “yes” doesn’t match his intended emphasis. Another is when I ask if, prior to release, he believed LOVE IS THE LAW would capture listeners’ attention in the way it has. “I just believe in myself a lot,” he explains. 

He’s unbothered by nerves in the run-up to stage time and, as such, doesn’t have any pre-show rituals. “I usually just hang out until I have to get on stage.” Today he’s also fit in a set of back-to-back interviews. How does he find all that? “I don’t know, my… what are they called? Publicists? They just do that,” he says. “Oh, wait no…” he interrupts himself, laughing heartily, as he realises the query was regarding his experience of completing press rather than its acquisition. “It’s been pretty chill all day. I’ve been going through the motions.”

Blazer, shirt, pants LAUTARO TAMBUTTO; ring ALAN CROCETTI, earrings ALEXIS BITTAR

He’s green on some aspects of industry mechanics, has a distinctly youthful ease-of-being and an inclination for laughter, but says he often feels like he’s closer to his late 20s than the lower end of the decade. It’s a self-perception that aligns, in many ways, with how he presents – not least in the clarity of his identity. Harris has been releasing as Love Spells since 2023 (his real name, itself not lacking in stage-name credentials, hasn’t been wholly discarded – he says he might come back to it, in the way others have switched monikers to release disparate art). However, with this album, the identity around the persona has noticeably crystallised. He says people have started to recognise him from silhouette alone. “People say, ‘I can just tell it’s you, if I see you from behind.’ It’s so sick.”

The centrepiece detail is his hair – a feathered, spiked cut, reaching in all directions as if he’s just had a run-in with a plug socket. Artfully so, however. He pulls up an ’80s picture of new wave frontwoman Aimee Mann – “I love her hair,” he enthuses. She was the primary reference, alongside Billy Idol and Tina Turner’s textured chops. His clothes wouldn’t be out of place in their era, either. Today, he pairs Levi’s jeans with a leather jacket he picked up from a “leather man” in Berlin, and sunglasses that remain on throughout. The leather man is called Peter, he tells me – “He’s amazing.” 

One explanation for Harris’ old soul qualities might simply be the life circumstances he’s been exposed to. “I’ve had to take care of myself for a while.” He grew up “really poor”, rarely in one place for long, sometimes staying in hotels. He doesn’t remember how many times his family moved. As a result, at an early age, he outgrew the youthful compulsion to fit in. “I just stopped caring about trying to adjust anywhere.” In middle school, he tells me he was “very annoying, loud and obnoxious. I don’t think my [classmates] would have liked me very much.” He hated school. “But I was still dancing during that time.” And he remained outgoing and with allies throughout. “I had friends everywhere. I still have a lot of friends everywhere.” 

Subsequently, his transition into adulthood was a turbulent one. After turning 18, Harris found himself homeless.“Obviously it sucked, you know?” An emotional nadir was one Thanksgiving evening. It was raining, and Harris was sitting under a Target for shelter until his phone battery dropped. He called his friend who lived nearby, asking if he could power up at his house. “He was like, ‘Yeah, but my entire family’s over and you kind of have to sneak in.’” Harris was smuggled to his bedroom. “I had to sit in the dark and charge my phone. I locked the door. I was just listening to his family laughing and stuff in the living room. I think that moment was a pretty telling and encompassing description of how it was for me – how it felt.” Eventually, he’d move in with an online friend in California. 

Hardship aside, there was no dearth of love in his early years. And whether his album title, his stage name or his art itself, it remains at the crux. His name was landed on after friends noticed how transparently he would lay bare his feelings. He says his godfather John was the key influence on the way he loves today. “He’s such an unconditionally loving person. It helps me be more loving. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him hate on anyone. I would have turned out very differently if he wasn’t there.” 

(Left) Blazer, shirt, scarf CELINE (Right) Jacket SANDERLAK; blazer LU’U DAN; earrings & rings ALEXIS BITTAR

While others might emerge from adversity with a heightened sense of empathy, that was never something Harris says he was lacking. “I’ve always been pretty understanding of other people. That was just my mom – she instilled that into us.” His mum was also the first person to spot his singing abilities, leading Harris to his school choir as a boy. “I still didn’t think I could sing, but my mom said I could.” 

That first foray into music was fleeting, however, until Harris was 17, when he says he finally clicked onto his own talent. He can’t put his finger on why he got the inclination, but “I just wanted to try singing,” he explains, “and like a woman.” He succeeded on both fronts. His voice today is featherweight and feminine, a reflection of the tones of artists like Clairo and Hope Sandoval whose work he schooled himself on at that time. “I was trying to sound more and more vulnerable. More and more intimate.” 

Whether in his fashion choices, his lithe dancing, or gauzy falsetto – the influence of Prince is worn strongly, too. He was always a fan, as he believes, disputably, was normal for kids of his generation. His favourite track, today, is Diamonds & Pearls’ “Insatiable”. “I listen to it every second. On my Close Friends [Instagram] story, I’ll always post it.” An immersion in Prince and his contemporaries came also, he tells me, in nights spent as a teenager at beloved Houston club Numbers – a space dedicated, chiefly, to underground ’70s and ’80s sounds, the likes of industrial, post-punk and new wave. He was technically underage, but “They would let you in just to dance. The people who work there really care about you, but they are very strict. If you are underage, there’s no way in hell you’re getting any alcohol.” 

Numbers seems to have given Harris his first like-minded musical milieu, but the second came via an ostensibly unlikely source – Brockhampton lead singer, Kevin Abstract. Harris’ time spent living in California post-homelessness didn’t just give him stability, but the opportunity to make the most of the state’s industry amenities. He would journey on public transport for hours each day to some of its most iconic studios – including Rick Rubin-owned Shangri-La. That West Coast stint would last six months before he ventured back to Houston, where he would quickly receive a call from fellow local boy Abstract, inviting Harris to join him and a coterie of creatives to live together and create Abstract’s 2025 album, Blush. “It felt like family. We were all just hanging out, making music, going to Whataburger, going bowling,” Harris recalls. And “There was partying – a lot of that.”

Coat, trousers, shoes DIOR

Abstract taught Harris, above all, to “show people who I am.” When Blush wrapped in spring 2025, he made his way back to LA to make more music of his own. There he would eventually find himself in the studio with another mentor and one of the first people Harris says he would now call if he needed advice on anything – Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Rick Nowels. While Nowels has latterly worked with Jamie xx, Dua Lipa and, in the ’90s, Madonna, his earliest hit came in 1986 for Stevie Nicks (“I Can’t Wait”). “He opened my eyes to a lot of different ways of doing things. He’s just very wise.”

Finding his way into the same room as the likes of Nowels is one boon of Harris’ record deal. However, one would imagine the constraints and steamrolling that have been synonymous with a major label could be at odds with an artist whose individuality seems to be his lifeblood. “I was scared at first,” he says. However, “Everyone on the label is so nice to me, and they’re all so involved.” He says he can call CEO Peter Edge just to chat. “That’s rare.” 

The subsiding of his label fears is perhaps unsurprising, as Harris reports today being impervious to fear of any kind. With the exception of one – “Not catching my good ideas that I have.” Constantly voice-memoing fragments of songs remedies that. Another fear might be his concern over losing himself, which he says he’s filled with when he considers the potential for his profile to balloon further. But he retracts: “I’m already [where I am now], and I am myself, so that’s not going to change.” He did, after all, want this album to accelerate things in the way it has. “And thank God it did. Everything that I have dropped has elevated me even more. The proof is in the pudding.” 

He feels “very fortunate” to be where he is. “My other friends that are my age, they’re in college, and they’re living such different lives.” Twenty-one is an age where many are just standing up and beginning to catch their bearings. “w,” he says self-deprecatingly. It’s coming together quite nicely, though? “Oh, absolutely.” 

LOVE IS THE LAW is out now via RCA Records