FEATURE:
Spotlight
Shamir
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THIS is a Spotlight feature…
where I am highlighting an artist who has been around a while but warrants a closer look. Shamir might not be known to many. Shamir Bailey is a Las Vegas artist whose debut E.P., Northtown, was released in June 2014. He put out his debut album, Ratchet, the following year. I am going to get to his current album, Heterosexuality, soon. That was released earlier this year to rave reviews. His eighth album, Shamir has this amazing consistency. Following from the brilliant Shamir of 2020, there is no signs of the amazing artist slowing or producing anything less than phenomenal. I am going to come to a recent interview, together with a couple of reviews for the brilliant Heterosexuality. Another Mag interviewed Shamir in 2020. During the worst of the pandemic, it was a strange time to be planning and releasing a new album (Shamir):
“AK: I saw a tweet recently that asked the question about what your career would be like if you looked like Troye Sivan. You said that people weren’t ready for that conversation. That was weeks ago and a lot has happened since then. Do you think that things have changed since then that people might be willing to have that conversation?
SB: I was like, maybe I spoke too soon? [Laughs]. The world on the whole is ready to have a lot of conversations. But even then, on the grand scheme of things that seems relatively petty. Look, I toured with Troye. He’s one of my friends. The last thing I want to do is make it look like I’m pitting myself against him. But the fact stands that I do think I’m as talented as Troye. There are parts of my career where I’ve denounced pop, but part of me thinks how much more revered Troye would be if he had gone off to make weird indie-rock records that he played everything on and produced himself and released every year. I can imagine that being received better than it was received for me.
AK: Do you think you’ve become more assertive when it comes to your career in terms of the differences between artists and what you feel you’re entitled to?
SB: I can’t do that. I feel like if I do that it’ll be enough to make me go mad. I do everything just for the sake of art because that’s all I can do. I know that what I put out is always going to be undervalued. It always has been. Even when people look at Ratchet. Ratchet was a success and everything, but look at how much people have taken from that album and are still taking five years later. I made it with pennies! My whole career has been undervalued. That’s something that I’ve had to live with and [now] I put all my energy and focus into making the best possible art that I can.
AK: When Ratchet came out you said you wanted to lead the way for a slew of non-binary Black pop stars. That didn’t happen. What’s it like to still be leading the way in that respect?
SB: It’s deeply frustrating. I thought that releasing Ratchet and leaving would be enough. I really did. And the fact is, I didn’t see enough artists like me being given the platform that I had or higher. But it just didn’t happen and that frustrated me.
Realistically I wanted to be the weirdo indie rockstar making weirdo records for the rest of my life. That is me and that is still apparent in this new record, but I wanted to do whatever I wanted to do and be selfish in a way that my specifically white, specifically male and specifically straight contemporaries get to be. However, when you’re a part of not only one marginalised group but multiple marginalised groups, that weight does fall on you. It’s not fair, but it does. I think had to work through that. It’s not fair and I know it’s not fair. But I have to do this to be the change that I want to see in the world. If anything, me returning to pop and making myself accessible again isn’t for me. It’s for everyone like me.
AK: When your identity is politicised without you even being born, it has such an impact that people don’t even understand. You can’t move without your life being a statement. You’re an activist because you exist.
SB: It’s not even that. I think that’s how I did feel. I felt like I was cosplaying activism, even though I never viewed myself as one. I was frustrated by that. But like so many things, it’s just another thing to bear: being Black, being queer, being all of these things. But being labelled an activist is put on you because you’re a public person. I have this problem because I have this platform. That is fairly easier than racism, which I’m not sure is every going to go away. As much as I want to be my own person, I think it’s incredibly reckless when people who are in the margins get a platform and don’t use it to lift up other people like themselves. So I take one for the team.
AK: If you can, how would you describe 2020’s energy?
SB: Transformative. It sucks, but transformation is hard. It’s not easy. But things have to die in order for things to be born. When people say abolish the police, we mean that. It’s not reform. You have to get rid of the old to get something new. You can’t keep trying to gloss over the old when it’s literally decaying. Everything has an expiration date. Trying to hold on to things that are past their expiration date prevents the new from coming in. These things are going to continue to happen around the world, but specifically in America. They are going to keep happening until we throw out the old, start over and allow space for the new”.
Although I have not long been a fan of Shamir, I am listening back to his previous work and catching up. I feel Heterosexuality may be his best album so far. Under thew Radar spoke with him earlier in the year about the creation and process of writing the album (among other themes):
“Do you ever write from that place of frustration, or is that something you reflect on later?
I don’t write in the heat of the moment. I can’t do that. I’d rather process my feelings first before I blow on them. I talk about that a lot. I think that’s a thing that a lot of artists need to practice, because, like, I notice that it can get really toxic when artists write in the midst of their emotions as opposed to working through their emotions and then creating after.
When and where did you actually compose the songs?
It was a really quick process. To touch on the last question again, I think a lot of my songs touch on queer rage. I think queer rage has always been a thematic throughline through all of my work. And I think anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I often go on certain rants about that. And it was just a 3 a.m. rant, and then through the midst of that 3 a.m. rant that I was going on on Twitter, that’s when I was hit with the visual concept. I kind of just bookmarked that in my mind. I was just like, okay cool, that’s the concept for another album. I wasn’t even trying to write anything.
This was October [2020], like three weeks after my last album [self-titled] came out. After I had the visual idea, like a day or two later, that’s when Hollow Comet DM’d me about working together. And I just loved his sound so much that I was instantly inspired. I want to say literally the next day I started demo-ing, and then the record was basically written by December.
What about his sound appealed to you?
I was familiar with his band Strange Ranger, but I wasn’t too familiar with his Hollow Comet stuff. The sound of his production stuff with Hollow Comet sounded like what I had been dreaming up for myself for years, but I couldn’t do it myself and couldn’t find other people to do it. I remember just freaking out because I was like, “WHAT!? Here he is, right under my nose, doing it the entire time.” We obviously knew each other, but I think we had only met once in person before he had hit me up. We didn’t even know each other [well]. It was purely just being inspired by the music and the sound.
You’ve said previously that you want to make paths for more queer and POC voices in pop music. Were you surprised by the mainstream success of Lil Nas X’s album last year?
No, of course not. I think Lil Nas X is someone who kicked the door down. I think the door wasn’t open, and it still isn’t open, but I think he kicked it down. It’s clear that he has not had a warm welcome. Yes, he’s highly successful, but again, not without BS. And I think it goes back to what I said earlier about the freedom thing. Yes, you see that he’s living in freedom and truth within himself, but look how much he has to pay.
You said you had some concepts and titles before the record took shape. How did you land on Heterosexuality?
‘Cause I’m a troll! I just think it’s funny. And, you know, it’s not lost on me that despite being a very openly queer artist my entire career…this is my most queer album. And I think that is because there is so much trauma around me being very explicit about my queerness in my music. When I first came out during my first album cycle, I felt like nobody wanted to talk about the music and only wanted to talk about my queerness, and that record wasn’t even specifically about my queerness! So, yeah, there’s a lot of trauma around me being too explicitly queer in my music for fear that that was all that people wanted to talk about. So I think also me calling it Heterosexuality was just like extra measure to make sure that I’m not just talking about my queerness. Plus I think it’s funny. I’m a troll, what can I say?”.
Prior to getting to a couple of positive review for one of this year’s strongest albums, Atwood Magazine wrote why Heterosexuality is such an important and powerful album – from an artist who has faced resistance and oppression from the very start of his career:
“26-year-old Shamir Bailey just might be indie’s most beloved underdog. Following the breakout success of his 2015 debut album Ratchet, he struggled against a rigid and racist music industry that could not figure out how to make his unique sense of experimentalism marketable, leading him back to his DIY roots. Writing, recording, producing, and releasing music outside of the world of labels and corporate pigeonholing, he strove to explore his artistic identity with new savvy as he reckoned with his wounds, rediscovering himself in the process. A success in risk-taking, his inimitable 2020 self-titled album was a triumph of his own determination as he showcased his masterful songwriting chops and creative versatility. With his latest record, he delves deeper into the emotional territory he carved out with Shamir, honoring his ongoing transformation as he harnesses the larger-than-life power of his own authenticity.
As part of his transformation, he fashions himself as an androgynous deity of destruction, posing plainly as a display of the inherent beauty of his existence in the face of a transphobic, patriarchal system attempting to stifle and extinguish his flame. In doing so, he reframes this Baphomet-like figure as a mark of growth, rebirth, and resilience, in all its messiness and glory. He stands his ground as a nonbinary person on the bold “Cisgender,” where he doubly refuses genre conformity with crunchy industrial beats, atmospheric synths, distorted guitars, and his soaring vocal range. Tracks like “Gay Agenda” and “Abomination” examine queerness as an act of noncompliance at its core, extending the definition of “queer” to the refusal to comply with the white, cis capitalism that further ensures our collective oppression as a society. Even in his queerness, Shamir pioneers a brave new frontier that only he can.
Boundless and ever-surprising, Heterosexuality shows us a new possible future for indie music and artists—after all, Shamir is a key figure in the new vanguard. Averse to stasis, he’s not interested in being anything other than himself, which he is continuously expanding upon, reinventing, rediscovering. With his devotion to honesty, sonically and otherwise, he presents himself with the gift of being undefinable. It’s perhaps one of the greatest gifts of all”.
I will wrap up with a couple of reviews for Shamir’s Heterosexuality. It is an album that garnered a lot of praise and interest. If you are new to the music of Shamir, I would definitely recommend you check the album out. This is what DIY said in their review:
“Vegas-born Shamir has never been one to sit in a box. Breaking through with debut album ‘Ratchet’ in 2015, the multi-instrumentalist quickly parted ways with the sound that made him. A turbulent split with then-label XL, and subsequent battles with his mental health, saw Shamir release six studio albums across four years. Each presented a different facet of his creativity, underpinned by candour and an innate need to experiment.
‘Heterosexuality’, Shamir’s first to delve into his queerness, truly breaks the mould. “You’re just stuck in the box that was made for me,” he offers with both spite and vulnerability on the industrial-laden opener ‘Gay Agenda’. It sets the tone for a record that actively looks to dismantle labels. “I’m just existing on this god forsaken land,” he affirms on ‘Cisgender’, “you can take it or leave it, or you can just stay back.” It cements ‘Heterosexuality’ as an empowering acceptance of trauma largely imposed from the outside. The record bounds between unfaltering self-belief and fundamental pain. The hauntingly spiteful ‘Cold Brew’ gives way to the comparably joyful ‘Marriage’. “I’m married to me,” he exclaims, “I’m sorry to break the news that I’m taken.” At first glance contradictory, together they secure the notion that you don’t have to be fixed to be happy.
In style, Shamir mirrors his stand against the conventional. The furious ‘Abomination’ sees him rap with an otherworldly blend of power and gentleness. Across the record, the industrial tones of the opener part way for sultry R&B and indie guitars, all pulled together by Shamir’s emotive falsetto. It provides space for a poignant message, one that supersedes outdated expectations.
The queer community remains raised on trauma, and hope can only be found by facing its effects head on. With resounding beauty, ‘Heterosexuality’ deconstructs social norms through a powerful freedom of self-expression, yet also acknowledges this pain and struggle. “Things that give us life makes us question if we can take it anymore,” he laments on closer ‘Nuclear’ before defiantly concluding, “but we put up anyway”.
I will end with a review from The Line of Best Fit. Heterosexuality has this narrative cycle that takes in so many different sounds and genres. It is an album that most definitely reaps rewards upon multiple listening. I have come back to Heterosexuality a few times since I first heard it:
“Gay Agenda” begins almost like an alarm call, with Shamir’s soft voice in front of ominous strings and a crunchy, palpable beat. Touching on toxic masculinity with lines like “You’re just stuck in the box that was made for me,” the song asserts his identity – completely free to do what he pleases, a running motif though the album.
On the rap “Abomination”, Shamir reclaims slurs used against him while using a skillful strategy – softening his voice to a saccharine playfulness, heightening his ideas even more. “Say my life matters, but it’s just an option,” he tackles on the heavy, industrial beat. His musings on capitalism, exploitation, and race are tight, with only a few clunky missteps (“My words heavy on your mind like a hippopotamus”).
Lyrics from these tracks are insightful glimpses to his mind, but the true power comes from the soaring vocals he employs. On “Cisgender”, after minutes of dense electronic build-up, the words almost explode out of him: “I’m not cisgender, not binary trans / …I’m just existing on this godforsaken land.” He does the same on “Nuclear”, an easier song with a breezy, “Margaritaville” like beat, its final verse a grand finale to an album of sonic expertise and finesse.
Shamir smartly incorporates highs and lows within the album – after the barrage of the first four tracks, complex ideas swirling and evolving, we get some easy pop songs in “Cold Brew”, “Married”, and “Caught Up”. Toying with an ‘80s beat, “Stability” speaks to the anxieties of a new relationship: “I don’t want to squander / This beautiful mess.” “Caught Up” leans into indie rock, but presents a similar statement – “So cut me down, I don’t wanna be this high,” he pleads. These catchy songs pose as a welcome relief from the focused, norm-challenging songs at the front of the album.
Heterosexuality is an interesting title choice for an album for which norm-subverting is wholly within the music; it’d be like Björk titling an album “Disco.” But this album has it all, and listeners who crave forward-thinking, statement-making pop will find homes with “Gay Agenda”, “Cisgender”, and “Abomination”, while those less involved can relax with the jams of “Cold Brew", “Nuclear”, and “Stability”. His future is spread out in a number of artistic directions, but for now, he (rightfully) just wants to be”.
A major talent who I hope will release a lot more albums before his career comes to an end, the spectacular Shamir is someone who should be on everyone’s radar. If you are new or a bit hesitant about diving in, then I would suggest that you…
LISTEN now.
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