Omer Fedi: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shootįedi’s innate ability to find his people has led to most of the important relationships in his career. But he always trusted that “I’m going to meet a musician somehow, and we’ll figure it out.” (He turned 21 in March but still has a preteen’s excess of energy - constantly climbing up and spinning on his stool and later politely denying a photo shoot request for a “slower, quieter” pose with a matter-of-fact “I’m really a pretty intense guy.”) It was an adjustment for Fedi, who quips that, at the time of his family’s move, he was failing his English class in Israel. “Which I appreciated! Because then I would be like, “Oh, have to practice, have to make sure I’m better than everybody.’ ” (The lessons have stuck: His manager, Conor Ambrose, says Fedi just took his first day off “like, ever” a few weeks ago).Īsher moved his family to Los Angeles when his son was 16 to give the apparent prodigy - who also plays piano, drums, bass and varied other stringed instruments - the greatest opportunities possible. “When we were jamming, he would always be like, ‘Oh, you have to practice this, and you have to do this…’ He would never be like, ‘Nice,’ ” says Fedi. (Later, he gives a different explanation: “Guitar players get more girls than drummers.”)įedi credits his father not only with expanding his musical universe but instilling a freelancer’s work ethic and competitive drive in him as well. That owes in part to Fedi’s wide range of influences - including rock guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as hip-hop and jazz - much of which he absorbed from his father, Asher, a studio and session musician whom Fedi refers to as “the biggest drummer ever in Israel.” Fedi also started on the drums but switched to guitar after seeing an episode of Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh in which Drake slings a six-string. “I like that nothing I do sounds alike,” Fedi says. “ ‘Mood’ doesn’t sound like ‘Without You.’ ‘Without You’ doesn’t sound like ‘Call Me.’ ‘Call Me’ doesn’t sound like anything MGK did.”
OMER FEDI WITH SHORT HAIR MOVIE
1, Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”: with no overt pop-punk or alternative signifiers, it’s built off a flamenco-tinged riff (inspired by a Spanish movie Fedi was watching at the time) and a hand-clapped beat based on a recording of Fedi’s own drumming on a countertop. His sound might be immediately recognizable, but it’s not always predictable.
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As much as any artist whose name appears on his or her cover art, Fedi has been responsible for dragging the guitar back to the forefront of top 40, helping to revitalize alt-rock and pop-punk in the mainstream and, in turn, helping pave the way for artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Willow Smith to crash the charts with electric-powered ass-kickers of their own. More important than the hair, of course, is that the 21-year-old Israeli-American’s sound - piercing, melodic, muscular-but-melancholy riffs laid over super-charged rock and/or trap beats - has become just as distinctive a presence in modern pop. “And some kid came up to us and was like, ‘Producers have to get the recognition! KBeaZy and Omer!’ ” KBeaZy says it has happened multiple times: “I was telling him the other day, ‘Yo, the red hair’s like a crazy branding advantage.’ ” “We were just sitting outside, talking probably about nothing,” recalls Fedi. Now that the world is reopening following the COVID-19 shutdown, Fedi is even getting recognized in public - like on a recent trip to Chipotle with Keegan “KBeaZy” Bach, his best friend, roommate and most frequent collaborator. Or on Saturday Night Live in May, when he strapped on an acoustic to back The Kid LAROI and Miley Cyrus on their collaborative version of the former’s breakout ballad, “Without You.” But Fedi isn’t just the new sideman of choice for all these artists he has quite literally played an instrumental role in creating all their most recent hits, writing, producing and/or performing on each. Or maybe on Ellen last November, when Fedi played the ubiquitous guitar riff to 24kGoldn and iann dior’s “Mood,” the Billboard Hot 100-topping smash he co-wrote and produced.
You might have seen it in photos alongside Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker. It’s becoming an increasingly unavoidable sight. Omer Fedi photographed on June 22, 2021 at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles.
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