Interview: Bazzi almost sold off “Alone” (but in the end kept it as his debut single!)

We had a little chat with American singer Andrew Bazzi, or more commonly known as just Bazzi, when the 21-year-old landed in Malaysia last week for his first ever show in the country.

Despite the nearly 3-hour delay (the 4pm interview only started a little before 7pm) as the rising singer was feeling under the weather, he appeared all smiles for the interview at Alila Bangsar.

In our short 5-minute chat, we managed to learn some fun facts about the singer, like the time he almost sold this particular song of his called “Alone” (which he thankfully kept in the end because it went on to become his solo debut single) and his interest in collaborating with K-pop acts like EXO and BTS.

Read on for more from Bazzi:

Bazzi talks to us about song writing and collaborating with K-pop acts.

TheHive.Asia: Hi Bazzi, tell us when did you start writing songs and what do you think of your older lyrics when you look back at them now?

Oh yeah, anytime I look back, a lot of cringing happens. I wrote my first song when I was, I’d say I was 5 years old, but it was like, I didn’t sing or write lyrics – I wrote a guitar melody.

Making my original music was something I didn’t really think about, but I wrote my first song and I moved to L.A. I was 15 or 16, and I immediately realised that my ability was in writing and producing, creating music, like that.

When you started writing songs, have you always written them with plans on performing them yourselves or you’ve always considered writing them for other singers?

Yeah, I mean the dream was always for me to sing the songs myself but I was also very broke and I needed to make money. I was open to the idea of giving my songs to other people.

Like, fun fact, my first song that I ever released as Bazzi, I almost sold it for, like, 2000 dollars. It’s a song I had called “Alone”.

I had no idea how I was gonna pay my rent and someone had offered me 2 grand to buy the song and I was like, that song changed my life, and I almost did it but I was, like, I rather be broke and kept it.

Oh, wow! Okay, so K-Pop is big here in Malaysia, so I have to ask, how’d you get to write songs for SM artistes (EXO, NCT); and they’re big, so did you ever feel nervous about how the songs you wrote for them would be accepted by their fans?

I never really got nervous when it comes to music. It’s something creative and it’s something fun, and I feel, like, with that perspective, keeps it that way. But it’s amazing, I’m such a fan of K-pop acts and you know, experiencing the culture the first time I went to Korea was unbelievable. I wanted to live there originally, yeah, I loved it.

So I had these producers I work with in L.A. and SM had hit them up to come on a trip and literally, I had like nothing out, like there was nothing you could really find of me. And like a day before they were supposed to leave, one of the writers for the camp dropped out and this producer group was like begging them to bring me. They’re like “bring Bazzi, trust us.” They were like begging and begging until [SM was] like fine. I think on that trip I wrote 6 placements and 3 number 1 after that trip.

EXO (top) and BTS are among the K-Pop acts Bazzi is interested in working with.

Do you see yourself doing any collaboration with EXO, NCT or other K-pop acts in the near future? 

Definitely. I see myself doing a lot of music with a lot of different K-pop acts. Everybody, I mean my boys in BTS, I love those guys, very cool, very talented.

Singers tend to experiment with different genres with each single/album, how would you describe your music now and which direction do you think you’ll be going with your next releases?

I’d like to say that my sound right now, you could probably call it future pop, or like innovative pop, hip pop. I don’t know, it’s just different. I don’t know, I describe it best by just saying Bazzi. Sounds like myself.

In the future I may make a rock album that will still sound like Bazzi, you know what I’m saying, there’s no limitations to creativity for me, there’s no box I’m trying to stay inside of. So I’m very open to everything.

So you’re doing your Asia Tour right now, do you think you’ll be doing lots of recordings in your hotel rooms with your basic setup (as you showed on your IG)?