Tag: Spotify Viral Charts

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Glassio and Beauty Queen Team Up on Dreamy and Bittersweet “A Friend Like You”

Sharjah, United Arab Emirates-born, New York-based Irish-Persian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam R. spent the bulk of his formative years split between the third largest Emirati city and Monterey, CA. He fell in love with music listening to Pet Sounds and Graceland on his way to school in the mornings. “It was that  juxtaposition of hearing Brian Wilson’s harmonies in a very barren, desert/Arabian landscape that I think planted the seeds for my love for making music that mixes different influences and challenges associations you might have with certain instruments,” Sam explains.

Started over seven years ago, Sam R.’s solo recording project Glassio has seen him amass millions of streams across digital streaming platforms and a loyal fanbase globally as a result of a sound that has seen apply a melodic sweetness to brooding dance beats — and often bridges influences from Big Beat to Chamber Pop to New Wave.

His debut EP 2016’s Poptimism was released to critical acclaim and featured viral single “Try Much Harder,” which peaked at #9 on the Global Viral Charts on Spotify. A series of singles and 2018’s Experience EP saw the New York-based artist quickly establishing an approach that paired electronic music with insightful storytelling.

2020’s full-length debut For The Very Last Time amassed over 7 million streams through digital streaming platforms and was named one of the best electronic records of the year by Bandcamp. Last year’s See You Shine charted at #1 on multiple iTunes Charts globally and made ways in Europe — perhaps as a result of “Breakaway” being featured in Amazon Studio’s Don’t Make Me Go and Netflix’s Locke and Key.

The next year or so will see the acclaimed New York-based electro pop artist release a string of singles collaborating with a number of artists — and the first single “A Friend Like You,” features Los Angeles-based dream pop artist Beauty Queen.

Hawaiian-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Katie Iannitello is the creative mastermind behind rising dream pop project Beauty Queen. Iannitello crafts sun-bleached, washed out music that has been described as the perfect soundtrack to crying in the bathroom during a high school dance.

Her Henry Nowhere-produced EP Out of Touch was released to critical praise across the blogosphere for material that drew from her laid-back Hawaiian upbringing paired with 1950s and 1960s songwriting influences and her lilting croon.

Their collaboration together “A Friend Like You” is a dreamy lullaby built around twinkling keys, thumping toms, bursts of angular post-punk like guitars and an anthemic hook paired with Iannitello’s plaintive crooning and the duo’s soaring harmony for the song’s hook and chorus. But despite the song’s anthemic nature, the song is actually a bittersweet and heartbreaking farewell to the “friend that sends you down bad choice road” that recognizes that this is indeed, a farewell forever.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: DENM Releases an Ode to Summer and Southern California

Back in 2015, the emerging pop artist DENM was a bedroom producer, playing in a touring band full-time and producing songs on the side in his spare time. “My solo project basically started out as something to do when I was bored on tour,” DENM says in press notes. “We would all have our computers out, making our own music for fun on the road. I remember making this random dance song in the back row of a sprinter and thought it sounded pretty cool. I played it for a few friends and label people, and when they demanded to hear more, I took it to heart.” 

That dance song eventually became his critically applauded and commercially successful debut single “Lit,” a single that Pop Crush called “a garage house-y ode to hedonism and the rush of infatuation.” Within a month of its release, “Lit” amassed over a million streams and landed on the Top 10 of Spotify’s and Hype Machine’s Viral and Hot New Electronic Charts respectively. “Honestly, I just got super lucky,” DENM admits. “I didn’t make the song with the intention of it getting the reaction that it did. I was blown away by how well it did, but it also became somewhat of a curse to me. The people around me at the time wanted to hear more songs just like ‘Lit.’ But that wasn’t who I was or wanted to be as an artist. I’m not really an EDM artist. And I wanted to make music I truly believed in. Unfortunately, not everyone around me understand that, which left me stuck in this tension of wanting to be myself as an artist, but also not wanting to let my team down.” 

Since the release of “Lit,” DENM has been busy discovering who he is an artist, a lengthy process that at one point had him contemplating quitting music altogether. But instead of immediately quitting, he wrote “Life’s Too Short.” “When I wrote ‘Life’s Too Short,’ I had no money, nothing was working, and it seemed like I’d hit the final wall,” DENM shares.  “So as a form of therapy, I wrote a song about how life is too short – how it all flies by so fast. I mean, I remember being a little kid like it was yesterday. And now I’m an adult. Just like that. I’d been so focused on trying to make it, that I wasn’t even enjoying my life. So I decided to try and change my mindset. I let go. I told myself that I was going to be alright. That whatever will be, will be.”

Shortly, after writing “Life’s Too Short,” DENM was in a one-off writing session at Rock Mafia with some of the music industry’s biggest hitmakers. And as the story goes. when he was asked what he had been recently working on, he played a demo of “Life’s Too Short.” The industry folks dug the song, praising his laid-back, yet honest take on life. “Meeting them was life-changing for me,” recalls DENM. “I was so burned out from making music I didn’t like for other people. I told Rock Mafia how hard it was to write and create music under that kind of pressure. They simply responded, ‘Well, what kind of music do you wanna make?’ That question shifted something in me. It gave me this spark of hope inside. The energy in that room felt magical as we listened to the demo of ‘Life’s Too Short.’ I guess that’s where it all started for us. That’s when everything in my life began to change.”

Last year, DENM signed to Rock Mafia as an artist, songwriter and producer. Shortly after signing to Rock Mafia, the production team and the up-and-coming indie artist began working on his recently released Endless Summer EP.  Interestingly, the EP’s latest single, “Blow It Up” is a breezy summertime jam, centered by twinkling and reverb drenched keys, a sinuous bass line, a slick yet infectious hook and DENM’s laid back yet earnest delivery. And while bearing an uncanny resemblance to Sublime, the song is a subtly anthemic ode to hanging with your crew, getting high and escaping the shiftiness of your own life for a little while at least. Certainly, it’s a familiar theme for an uncertain and uneasy adulthood, which so many of us go through. 

The recently released video is a trippy and fitting ode to all things Southern California as you see DENM and his crew getting stoned under purple skies, playing craps and drinking beer. Others start a barbecue while local kids skateboard nearby. It’s the perfect ode to summer, as yet another year rushes by.