“I was gonna quit music this weekend. From day one, it was clear I was an accidental pop star.”
That’s what Shamir Bailey wrote to accompany Hope—his surprise album drop on his personal Soundcloud in 2017. Two years earlier, after the release of his breakthrough full-length dance-pop debut Ratchet, fueled by its inescapably catchy single “On The Regular,” Shamir became the toast of music critic “best of” lists, opened for Duran Duran and The Killers, and even had The New York Times travel to his apartment in North Las Vegas to interview him.
Problem was…for nineteen-year old Shamir, Ratchet was an experiment in a sound and an artist image he was not comfortable with. It wasn’t supposed to make him famous.
So when his label tried to make him replicate Ratchet for his follow-up, Shamir rebuffed, which resulted in an unreleased album, an unhappy label and management team, and a severe crisis of self-confidence.
Coupled with growing undiagnosed bipolar disorder symptoms, the Muslim-raised, queer and non-binary lover of punk, country and lo-fi music self-recorded the darker hued and grungy Hope instead. He made it in a single weekend and dropped it on Soundcloud thinking it would be his final artistic statement; he planned on quitting music altogether.
A little over a week later, Shamir suffered a psychotic episode that landed him in the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania for five days. After that life changing event, he rebounded by self-recording, self-producing and, for the most part, self-releasing four albums full of gritty, electric guitar-based soundscapes and revelatory personal lyrics: Revelations (2017), Resolution (2018), Be the Yee, Here Comes the Haw (2019), and then Cataclysm which he dropped earlier this year in March just as the pandemic took off in America.
Along with 2017’s Hope, these five statement albums illuminated the path for an artist finally free to develop himself and explore his art. Along the way he launched his own label, Accidental Popstar Records, to help shepherd other young music artists as they also develop their artistry.
That long, complicated road from 2015’s Ratchet has led to his most recent collection, Shamir, which he released earlier this month. This time working primarily with Philadelphia indie rock producer Kyle Pulley (Thin Lips, Diet Cig, Hop Along), Shamir’s pop-rock skewing yet genre-fluid self-titled collection is easily his most confident, buoyant and repeatable album yet.
If 2020 wasn’t such a shitshow, our interview would have taken place in South Philly or maybe on the “Rocky Steps” of the Philadelphia Museum of Art since we were only forty miles from each other. Instead, we zoomed for over an hour on a rainy Monday morning recently for a wide-ranging conversation about the new album, mental health, and the risky business of being an independent artist.
Of course I remember when Ratchet arrived in 2015. But since then I’ve wondered, “Whatever happened to Shamir?” Until recently, I wasn’t aware of the albums you’ve made between Ratchet and this brand new self-titled collection.
I worked really hard for people to not be aware, so it’s okay. [Laughs]
You’ve pitched Shamir in the press as your most “commercially sounding” album since Ratchet. Was that an effort to get back in front of people again after the past few years of the under-the-radar artistic legwork you’ve been putting in with the albums you’ve made since Ratchet?
Yeah, of course. All of the records in between were just me working out my artistry and redefining it—establishing myself as the artist I always wanted to be. And I wanted to do that quietly. It was part that, and also part being frustrated not seeing other black, non-binary and queer artists given the same platform that I was given.
I had this notion that I had created this groundwork and from then on there would be other “Shamirs” popping up and doing better than me, which is what I wanted. But that didn’t really happen and that frustrated me. I remember being on the phone with my friend complaining, “Where are the major black, queer, non-binary pop stars?” Other than Janelle Monáe who was already established by the time she came out. And also just the lack of that representation in indie rock as well.
All I knew was that I needed to make this record, ‘cause everything else was in limbo. I didn’t have management, I had just come out of the fucking psych ward, and I just came back to Philly and every producer that I hit up basically ghosted me. I was just ready to show people that more accessible pop music doesn’t necessarily have to be electronic based or really layered.
I wrote these songs with my three-piece band in mind. There’s very few tracks in the recordings. And I just wanted to bring that simplicity to pop music. I knew it was possible, but I wasn’t seeing it, so I was like if not me then who? [Smiles]
You wanted to do a pop record, what does that mean to you? How do you define what “pop” is?
Just accessible, widely relatable—sonically and lyrically. There’s really no formula to pop—contrary to popular belief. I think it can be a formula, but I think “formula” is an art—it’s fleeting. If you think about a song like [The Cure’s] “Just Like Heaven,” that’s a perfect pop song in my eyes. But looking at the structure, there’s no way it should have been a pop song: the long-ass intro, the weird anti-chorus, the way the verses flow.
I think “pop” is just a feeling, you just kind of know. I think with good pop music you don’t have to think about it, but it’s still direct—it’s doing what it needs to do where everyone gets the same kind of feeling or at least can apply it to something that they’ve felt before. But it’s still open enough where everyone can feel it and get it.
That’s what I’ve come to over the years and especially now that this record is out and I’ve seen the songs that people gravitate towards, like “Diet.” It wasn’t a single, but everyone I had sent the record to beforehand was like, “It has to be a single.”
Why do you think people really like that song?
Because it’s a perfect catchy pop song—the chorus, the melodies and the harmonies especially in the second half of the song. And it’s just really hook-y and earworm-y. I didn’t want it to be a single because it’s a straightforward rock song and this was supposed to be my “pop comeback” and I didn’t want to risk it. Now I’m like I should have released it as a single.
When I first heard “Diet,” I thought it was a song about lusting about somebody, but then I read that you were inspired by the movie My Friend Dahmer about notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
It is about [lust]. If you’ve seen My Friend Dahmer, it’s like he’s singing the song to the character that Alex Woolf played (“Derf”) who befriended Dahmer because he thought Dahmer was weird and funny. That’s why in the second verse I go, “He doesn’t see the crime in my mind / He thinks that I’m unique.”
It’s also about adolescence because that film wasn’t focused on the gore, it focused on [Dahmer’s] adolescence. I think it was important for the creators to humanize him in that way because, while we’re all not bloodthirsty serial killers, we all still go through this process of accepting gore or battling gore with our internal neuroses, you know? And that’s just a part of growing pains.
And unfortunately, part of his growing pains was grappling with the fact that he was a serial killer. [Laughs] And I think everyone relates to that—the weird things about yourself that you’re gonna accept or something that you’re always gonna fight with.
For me, it was always really important to accept my neuroses because, you know, me being black and queer, everything was kind of against me so I felt like I had to make the conscious decision during adolescence to not care. [Shrugs]
Recently, you tweeted that “Paranoia” is actually a cover of a song your two childhood best friends wrote in high school. You also revealed it was a song you remembered during an “episode” you had last year. You’ve been very open about your mental health issues in the past, can you tell me the story behind the episode you had and why you wanted to record the song for Shamir?
Yeah, it was during Coachella last year. [Laughing] My mom drove me and my best friend to Coachella and we got this nice Airbnb. I had just started new medication that I later found out I did not agree with, so I was just struggling through that whole time. I had an episode where I convinced myself that the guy who owned the Airbnb was a serial killer who was going to hack us all in the middle of our sleep. I had to sleep with my mommy, like a five-year-old. [Smiles]
When I had an episode hangover the next morning, that song just started playing in my head. I asked my friend RESA who co-wrote it if she was still using that song. I was like, “This song is for me. I am a paranoid, mentally ill mess and I feel like the song has to be for me.” And she was like, “Yeah, we’re not using it.” I feel it was meant for me anyways because it was always my favorite of theirs.
Which is your favorite song on this album?
It goes back and forth between “Pretty When I’m Sad” and “Diet.” I think “Pretty When I’m Sad” is just a perfect pop song to me, I think it’s one of my favorite choruses.
That song immediately takes me back to the mid-nineties.
It’s the most nineties-sounding. It’s also one of the few on the record that I self-recorded and self-engineered and I think it’s my first jingle-y riff—the guitars are very jingle pop.
When you say “self-recorded” and “self-engineered,” what does that mean?
I recorded it here [his apartment] —the vocals, guitar and the bass—and the drum was just a loop that Grant [Pavol], my artist on Accidental Popstar, did for me.
You live in a row house in South Philly, do your neighbors ever hear you singing, playing or recording?
I would think so, but they’re cool, they’re music nerds. We share records and stuff, which is cool.
2020 has taught many of us how important it is to support small businesses. In the music industry, independent artists like yourself are small businesses. You self-finance albums, self-record and also design and sell your own merch. So, when you release a new album, what do you have to do every day as an entrepreneur to keep everything going?
I don’t know, that’s the problem.
What do you mean? Are you trying a handful of promotional ideas and merch efforts to see what keeps you afloat? How does the business side of Shamir work?
I don’t have a business plan. I’ve kind of just gone with the wind. I’ve sustained this long because of Ratchet and “On The Regular” gets a lot of licensing. [Laughs] So, I get lucky that way, but I don’t really make anything or break even from the stuff that I make or release.
I have a PR team, that’s about it. That’s all I can afford, but yeah everything else is me. I’m still trying to figure out how to make what I do sustainable. I’ve just been hoping that along the way I’ll figure out an airtight business plan, but it’s really hard to have one without feeling icky about it.
It’s so hard mixing business with art. I have an LLC and I have business managers which helps a lot because all I have to do is just make the money and I make it all from my art and that’s a really cool feeling.
Was that your dream when you were growing up in North Las Vegas, to earn a living making music?
I always wanted to be a part-time musician. I never thought it was possible to be a full-time musician, and here I am seven years into it—I’ve been a full-time musician, I haven’t had a day job since 2014.
I spent so many years actively trying to sabotage my career...and it just wouldn’t let up. Like, I released Hope and as far as I was concerned, that was it. And then I made Revelations. And I sent it literally to no one but [Jessi Frick] from Father/Daughter Records and she released it. Next thing I know, I’m touring the record and I’m back in the shits again. [Laughs]
It all just happened naturally. Like, I didn’t try for it. Music just never left me as much as I tried to leave it. So, me incorporating accessible pop music again has been me just putting up my white flag and being like, well what would it be like for me if I actually tried?
You know, I spent five years not trying and not caring. [Shamir] is the first time where I’ve ever tried or even had ambition. I might as well try and see what kind of change I can make.
At Albumism, we celebrate the album as an art form. So, what are your five favorite albums at this time?
Number one is and always will be Cut by The Slits. That record changed my DNA. Then I’ll say Hole’s Live Through This, The Con by Tegan and Sara, Adulthood by CocknBullKid, and the Vivian Girls’ first album.
Buy Shamir here
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