Badly - other side

Over the past few months, solo artist Badly has taken over Tik Tok and is blowing up faster than imagined. In late 2020, he released a single called “I’m Okay Now” and promoted it on his Tik Tok account, and since then numerous other people have used the sound and the song now has over 7 million streams. That’s not including any other platform. Although this is where it all took off for him, his fame is constantly progressing with his self promotion on social media. He creates short videos that somehow he makes feel so personal, in a way that fans feel connected to him within a matter of 30 seconds. He recently moved to LA to pursue his music career, and it can only bring good things from here.

 While it is not his most recent song, he dropped one called “other side”. The song is about waking up to a call and wondering what it would be like to feel what that other person is feeling. After being asked about what inspired the song he said “So, the inspiration of the song was really just- literally like the first lyric of the song song is like the facetime call… and it was based off of I woke up to a facetime call from a girl I used to have a thing with. And it was super like out of left field, I didn’t even answer it, but I was like alright this is annoying. Cause i wasn’t thinking about this person at all and now they like entered my mind and I’m gonna be thinking about it all day cause of this… So this is what sparked it. And then “I wrote it with my cousin Luke and used that experience to like, when on other past experiences we’ve both been through, and just the whole idea of like being on the other side of a situation and wanting to be.” 

The sound of “other side” brings out the emotion of the lyrics with its lofi beat and the instrumental overlay. It makes the situation he went through feel so personal to anyone who is listening. Whether they have gone through it or not. I asked him how he wanted listeners to feel when they played this song, and surprisingly, it was different from his prior releases. He said “I would say like for me it's kinda like, not necessarily- I mean like a little bit romanticizing the feeling of that, like I feel like the chord progression and the way that the music feels, it kind of lets you not take it so seriously, but it's kind of funny cause a lot of my music that’s what I try to do, and that’s how it makes me feel. Cause it makes the situation a little bit more romanticized and less like just sad, but then people will be like “I cried to this song” and I’m like “Oh, damn… um haha I guess it’s more sad than I thought.” But it’s really meant to be casual and just chill, like I know the lyrics are pretty heavy I guess in parts, but I want people to just like be able to relax and listen to the music when they hear it and hopefully it can help them in some way. To just like, I don’t know, realize everybody’s going through that type of stuff… and that it’s kind of like a cool part of life. The negatives of life are just as important as the positives, and I think it’s kind of cool in that way.” So he takes a negative thing and puts his emotions into something he loves and the end result is beautiful. He says he doesn’t really put his emotions into words, but instead just says how he feels. He described his lyric writing as freestyle and he writes his songs by playing a song and singing what he would say, then going and fixing into the perfect song and being what he wants to say. “I don’t really try to focus on rhyme schemes or saying something the right way, I really just try to say it how I would say it in general.” His writing process brings out the brutal honesty of what he’s going through and in turn hoping he can help someone else going through similar things.

Make sure to go listen to Badly and follow him on social media @badlymusic and on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/artist/2REKndUsYi3335RA5rxbTT?si=zvSGkDBdSOOM_gaJFDywjQ&dl_branch=1 .

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