Bazzi
Album: Cosmic
Label: Atlantic Records and iamcosmic
Release Date: April 12, 2018
Cuttin’ Cookies
Written by Silas Valentino
Bazzi has a formula and damned if he’s going to tamper with it. Keep the melodies front and center, don’t stray far from the electronic keyboard and drumbeat combo and for the love of God never let a song break three minutes in length. It’s a simple method and hundreds of millions of streams later he proves it’s a successful one – but like the fleeting melodies he crafts or the short songs he sings, does the Bazzi formula translate into something sustainable or is this just another quick-burn click in the age of six-second videos?
A year ago most of the adult world was unaware of Bazzi, born Andrew Bazzi from just-outside Detroit, Michigan. He was a Vine (R.I.P.) celebrity who had the bygone social media’s premier “featured track” in 2015 with his song “Bring Me Home.” Vine was the perfect medium to illustrate Bazzi’s talents with its ephemeral beauty and tawdry aesthetic. Then in July 2017 while swimming and smoking by the pool, a melody popped into Bazzi’s head: a descending nine-beat staccato ear worm that instantly connected and as he told Rolling Stone last month, he knew immediately it’d be a hit.
What would follow – “Mine” – was indeed a smash, racking up millions of listens between streaming services and even sparking a fad on Snapchat that uses the “Be Mine” filter to let users highly a loved one. Less than a year later Bazzi has a multi-platinum single, a Top 20 album and a slot as the opener for Camila Cabello’s debut tour. Not bad for a 20-year-old kid from Michigan who idolized Justin Bieber.
In interviews, Bazzi admits he intentionally keeps his songs short to encourage listeners to hear the whole production. Cosmic barely breaks 42 minutes in length but offers 16 tracks – the longest, “Beautiful”, clocks in at 2:58. The brevity of Bazzi allows for the hits to leave listeners craving more while letting the clunkers pass by quickly; however, Cosmic is more blackhole than star-shining hits.
The record opens with “Dreams” which fits well in the trap-soul epoch of the moment. Armed with a falsetto croon and a delivery that suggests a possible Caribbean accent (something he lacks in conversation), Bazzi sings about his usual topic: women and eye balls. “I had a dream about you last night/Your eyes were shining so bright/Those lips and that bittersweet smile,” he sings with such conviction you’re left assuming it was a pretty slick dream.
Bazzi’s appeal lies not so much in his originality, rather, in his way of mixing his influences into his own music. “Myself” sounds like a cross between NSYNC’s thumping boy-beat bounce and the unexpected thrash of AWOLNATION’s “Sail” while the melody in “Mirror” is a dead-on cousin of Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” but with soulful Seventies-era piano sensitivity. His talent is easily recognizable since he wrote these songs himself and self-released his album (along with the juggernaut Atlantic Records) but innovation isn’t a trait of Bazzi’s, at least not before he reaches the legal drinking age.
Cosmic closes with “Somebody” where Bazzi sums up his first two decades of existence and personal credo: “Bad vibes, I just block them out/Michigan where I was poppin’ out/Now I’m in the Hills and I’m poppin’ now/I can’t take my eyes/Take them off this life.” It’s quite the statement for a young man just entering the unforgiving world of pop music but Bazzi’s bravado suggests he’s going out blazing, thinking solely of his dashing and fleeting present, and not of his star’s inevitable crash landing.