ON THE RISE
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — The pop-punk, rap-rock duo Levi Zadoff and Dead Hendrix have worked hard to encapsulate the months of COVID-19 in an album called “Dead Summer,” and they haven’t even met in person yet.
That will change at the end of September when they meet up and perform live at ArtBarLA in Venice Beach, California on Sept. 30, but don’t expect any big emotional outburst over meeting in person for the first time from either artist.
“On an emotional level I don’t think it’s going to be much different,” Dead Hendrix said. “We’re already close as hell. Of course we talk every day on social media and on call so we’re already good friends.”
Their five-track EP, “Dead Summer” rolled out on all platforms on June 3 and has already been viewed 50,000 times.
Zadoff said the EP is an emotional ode to the losses both suffered from the pandemic and associated mental toll it took on friends and loved ones, and they hope listening to the album will help others who can relate to the pain suffered by many.
“So me and Hendrix experienced a lot of similar things,” Zadoff said. “He had a very close friend die from Fentanyl and I had a friend die from a Fentanyl overdose and a friend die from suicide, both people I knew for a very long time growing up in San Francisco. We know we are not the only individuals that went through something like this. This was a global thing, so many people were dying whether it was from the pandemic and the disease itself or from the mental health issues that came from all the isolation and being all cooped up. The inspiration was if we can relate to this, other people can and it’ll be therapy to them. It’s therapeutic to us but it's also therapeutic to others.”
And the name of the album relates directly to the message in the music.
“The summer was dead, nothing was going on, we were locked in our houses, not a lot of social stuff was going on,” Hendrix said. “There were people dying from COVID, from drug abuse, from suicide. Emotionally, I think a lot of us were pretty dead inside. It was just that, that’s what was going on in our lives when we wrote the project and that’s what came out.”
Based in Los Angeles, Zadoff uses lyrical versatility and life experiences to create music on track to set the mainstream music industry on fire. He is a firm believer in freedom of artistry and the idea that music is one of the best communication tools.
Dead Hendrix is a punk/rap artist from Centretown' CT' in Ottawa, Canada. He is 20 years old and has been writing songs since his single-digit years. He covers true-to-life topics such as drug abuse, heartbreak, insecurities, and trauma in his music while being as unique and original as possible.
The duo met during the pandemic when Zadoff found a clip of Hendrix performing on Snapchat and was moved by the music.
“I had to say ‘what’s up,’ because the song he was previewing was so good,” Zadoff said. “I heard him previewing the song on Sound Cloud and I swiped up and I wrote him to say how fucking objectively good that song was and how much I wanted to collaborate with him.”
Zadoff, from Los Angeles, sent Hendrix, who lives in Ottawa, Canada, a song idea he had and asked if he'd be interested in working together on it.
“As an artist you get a lot of that, you get a lot of people reaching out, so at first I took it with a grain of salt,” Hendrix said. “But after I heard what he sent me and I looked more into him and I was like this would be perfect to collab. And then it started with we were just going to collab on one song but as our friendship grew and we realized how good we were at collabing it grew from one song to a whole project.”
Both said collaborating from a distance over the internet has been significantly different from collaborating with other artists in person.
“I don’t think one or the other is worse or better,” Hendrix said. “I have some friends I collaborate with here in my city and we go to the studio and it’s more in person. I think me and Levi clicked and this has been one of the easiest collaborations I’ve been involved with. It just flows naturally.”
“100 percent, I think Hendi really summarized it really well,” Zadoff added. “I think that collaborating over the Internet has been obviously different but in some ways it streamlined the process of the song creation.”
Both artists said they really don’t have a favorite of the five songs, but they said “Love Games,” serves as the essence of “Dead Summer.”
“It gives off that energy we were trying to encapsulate,” Zadoff said. “‘Teenage Dirtbag’ in my opinion it’s an absolute classic. I really think that song has a lot of mainstream potential, depending on the listener, I’d point people to one of those or the other if they had the chance to listen to only one track.”
Make sure to stay connected to Levi Zadoff and Dead Hendrix on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
Stream Dead Summer
Levi Zadoff Website
Levi Zadoff Instagram
Dead Hendrix Soundcloud
Dead Hendrix Instagram
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Pop and soul singer Sharon Watkins is preparing to share her very first album in 2023. Working alongside producer Sam Miller (known for his work with The Hoosiers and One Direction), she is following up with her newest release, The One That Got Away, which arrives on 18 November 2022. The track is a tender acoustic ballad that tells the story of leaving behind a harmful relationship, finding strength, and welcoming a fresh start. With gentle piano arrangements and Sharon’s unmistakable soulful voice, the song captures an intensely emotional journey.
Her earlier singles, Proud and Stranded, have already connected with listeners in a big way, reaching more than 250,000 views on YouTube and 150,000 streams on Spotify. With this momentum building, Music News sat down with Sharon to talk about her music and what comes next.
Hi Sharon How are you?
Doing really well thanks! So excited about all the momentum we’ve had with our first 3 singles, honestly, it has been insane to have had BBC radio interviews, rotations, global press coverage and to have won an international song contest in such a short space of time!!
Tell us about your latest release ‘The One That Got Away’?
Well, it starts out as a real wintery piano ballad, portraying that moment when you suddenly realise that someone you're with is messing you around. Then, with the help of big strings and orchestral percussion, it develops into a powerful "I'm over you" song…. It is really a defiant two-fingers up at the ex that never appreciated you until it was too late. It moves from the turmoil of still having feelings for that person, cutting lose and moving on to triumphant recovery, knowing that you made the right decision.
The music video is visually stunning and the dance is beautiful, talk to us about the filming of this video and the creative decision to use dance to express the meaning of the track.
Thank you, that means a lot! We’re really pleased with the way the video came out. Me and my brother, Sammy J Stopford, who has been my partner in crime on this whole album project, knew very early on that we wanted a contemporary dance that portrayed the turmoil in this song. I also knew I wanted the video to express the mental turmoil you go through after finishing a relationship and the underwater medium just seamed such an ideal metaphor for that. We put out a request for dancers and choreographers on Instragram not thinking we would get much interest. One of our lessons on this project is that you can’t pore the right energy into a project if you don’t love the music and so this was the main pre-requisite for dancers…. “please only contact us if the song inspires you!”…. we couldn’t believe the response!! We ended up watching so many amazing dance videos from such talented people. Our album is about adult life lessons and so we knew we wanted a believable couple, that had a great connection and were old enough to have gone through an adult relationship and breakup. We chose Florivaldo Mossi (Michael Jackson in West End Show “Thriller”) & Ashley Cavell (Star of many shows, including ABBA Fever) as they are both incredible dancers but also fit the storyline so well. I couldn’t believe it when Choreographer, Stewart Arnold (choreographer & dancer to Kate Bush) agreed to work on the project!!
The writing in the song is very personal. Was it emotional pouring these emotions into lyrics?
Honestly, it is like an exorcism. Songwriting is how I process and deal with life’s ups-and-downs and so I would be lost without that outlet. It forces me to really dig deep on my emotions towards things. You can’t write songs about superficial stuff, otherwise it just sounds cliché.
What do you hope people take away from ‘The One That Got Away’?
I feel like it’s the song you need a friend to play you when you have broken up from someone and are feeling injured and unsure. You need someone to tell you that you missed a bullet and one day that ex will look around and realise that they lost something very special. I have had people reach out already and tell me how relatable the message is and that it has helped them… this is the biggest compliment of all!!
Talk to us about your influences as an artist.
I grew up in Manchester surrounded by an incredible 90’s music scene, in a house where my dad played everything from The Beatles to Zappa. I then spent 8 years living in the states, picking up some great American influences like Carole King. I have now made Nottingham my home, which is where I recorded the album and I have honestly really been enjoying the return in popularity of singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi and Tom Odell …. So all-in-all a pretty varied range of influcences… making for an eclectic pop album that I hope you all like.
Going back briefly on the video, you collaborated with some great people on the video such as Stewart Arnold who worked closely with Kate Bush and Florivaldo Mossi, noted for being Michael Jackson in Thriller Live. Tell us about your experience working with them.
It's been the stuff of dreams really. I am a massive Kate Bush fan and to work with Stewart was like a dream come true. He and I had some long conversations about our vision for this video and the turmoil I wanted to portray. His ability to translate that into dance is something amazing to watch. I had the honour of watching him choregraph the dancers on the morning of the shoot and it was like watching a master at work, the artistic ideas that he brought to this project were incredible. Flori Mossi and Ashley Cavell are both experienced dancers but seeing the way they clicked together, and their interaction and interpretation of the song just blew me away.
What can we expect from you next?
Well, we have 3 more singles coming ahead of the album launch in 2023, so make sure you follow me on Spotify to keep up with those (Sharon Watkins) and we’re also going to be doing a series of “Live Lounge” performances of our tracks ahead of the album release so follow me on socials @sharonwatkinsofficial to keep an eye out for those.
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