How LCN! built a music career from his bedroom

On an uneventful night in March 2023, Elsian Atienza, a 20-year-old undergraduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle, held his breath and uploaded his first song to TikTok. His expectations were low; he had a whopping eight followers. But that all changed by the next morning, when he woke up to notifications on his phone, alerting him that the post had gone viral.

Two years later, Atienza, who goes by LCN! and is now 22, has nearly 50,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and his top song, “PLEASE WAIT FOR ME,” has been listened to 1.4 million times. In 2024, he signed with 88 Rising, a media company, record label, and creative agency focused on promoting artists from the Asian diaspora. So far this year, Atienza headlined his first sold-out show in Seattle, and released songs “LOVERS IN SPACE” and  “PROWER,” the latter of which dropped today. 

No one is more surprised by his rapid success than Atienza. Having learned how to produce music by watching YouTube tutorials, he still makes all his music on a laptop in his bedroom at his parents’ house. He’s still also a full-time student, studying digital communications and squeezing his music in between homework assignments.

While his parents were initially apprehensive about his pursuit of a music career, Atienza credits his Filipino heritage for his love of singing. His parents are from the Philippines, and every time he’d visit family there, karaoke would be involved. “I think the stereotype is like, all Filipinos can sing, and I'll say those rumors are true,” he says. “I definitely think it helped me become the person I am today.”

JoySauce recently chatted with him about where he’s been, where he’s at, and where he’s going.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Annie Atherton: Do you think you’ll ever change how and where you work?
Elysian Atienza: I don't know, actually, because I like the way I sound when I record in my own room. I've tried recording at a studio. I've tried recording on other people's equipment, and it feels a lot different. I like the comfort of just being in my room, being able to produce everything. I've been using the same equipment as when I started. So this laptop is my brother's laptop that he lent to me, and the microphone I record on is a dented microphone. For editing, I use Logic Pro X.

AA: When do you do most of your music work?
EA: I commute about an hour and 40 minutes to school Monday through Friday. My classes end around three or four o'clock. So then I also commute back. Every time I'm on the bus or the light rail, I always have my laptop. I’m either mixing, or writing down lyrics in a notebook. Then I’d go home, do my family stuff, and stay up until around two a.m. every night, then wake up for eight a.m. classes. So it’s been a little tough, but I'm making it.

AA: When did you get interested in music?
EA: I owe it all to my mom and dad. They would always bring me to church and say, “Sing, sing!” My mom put me in piano lessons, which I hated at first, because I think I was 7 or 8 years old. I didn't learn to love it until middle school, and I didn't really know what else to do except join a band. So then I joined a band, and that’s when I got really into music. I started writing my own music and about two years ago, I started producing my own stuff.

AA: Are your parents surprised that this is the path that you're on?
EA: I have three older siblings. Two are engineers, one is a nurse. So when I said, “I think I want to go down a creative path," my parents were like, “No, you don't want to do that.” But I think with them being from the Philippines, especially my dad, he's very hardcore. He doesn't have very open-minded thinking. At the same time, Filipino culture influenced me as well. Because whenever we visit his family, there's a lot of singing.

AA: And they're happy that you're doing this now?
EA: I would like to say so. I made it a goal, though, that I'm going to finish school. I made a promise to them.

AA: How did you come up with the name LCN!?
EA: My name is Elsian. It’s a combination of my mom’s and dad's names. My mom's name is Elizabeth, that's the E-L, and my dad's name's Cassiano, so that's the S-I-A-N.

My dad always says, “You're the only Elsian in the world.” And I've tried looking up other Elsians. I couldn't find them. But then in school, whenever I wrote that name down, my teachers would pronounce it wrong. My classmates would pronounce it wrong. I was like, “Okay, what can I do here?” So now I just ended up writing my name as the three letters, LCN, so people couldn't pronounce it wrong.

AA: You just dropped a new song, “LOVERS IN SPACE.” How’s that been?
EA: That song was one of the first songs I ever wrote. I just decided to release it because I've been holding on to it for too long. In my mind, it was always the best song that I've ever written, so I'm really glad people are liking it.

AA: What kept you from releasing it for so long?
EA: It was the sentimental value. It was the first love song I ever wrote. I originally wrote it as a generic love song. I was like, “I've never been in love,” but then I eventually found someone to connect that song to. And then a fun fact is, every love song that I've written has been about the same person. But we don't talk anymore, it's just in my head. I just have so much emotion and so much experience that I gained from this I just write every love song about this person.

AA: What are your biggest influences?
EA: Growing up, I would watch a lot of ukulele YouTube channels like mxmtoon, a fellow Asian artist. She used to do ukulele covers, so I’d watch her a lot, as well as Dodie Clark, who's another ukulele singer. Steven Universe is a cartoon I was really into, and Rebecca Sugar is the composer of all the songs I really liked. In high school, Joji and NIKI were the ones I would always listen to, and it's really cool that I'm connected to them now.