Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, Eric Bazilian collaborated with Rob Hyman to form The Hooters in 1980. Nervous Night, The Hooters’ debut on Columbia, sold in excess of 2 million copies and included Billboard Top 40 hits such as “Day By Day” (#18), “And We Danced” (#21) and “Where Do The Children Go” (#38). After creating six well-received albums, The Hooters achieved superstar status throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. As a result, The Hooters were asked to perform at three of the most important musical events of the century: The Live-Aid Concert, 1985 in Philadelphia, the Amnesty International Concert at Giants Stadium in 1986, and Roger Waters’ extravaganza at The Wall in Berlin in 1990.
In 1996, Bazilian was involved with Joan Osborne’s debut project. Relish was nominated for six Grammy Awards in 1996 including Song Of The Year for the #3 Billboard smash hit “One Of Us,” which he is proud to have single-handedly written. In 2000 he released his debut solo album The Optimist. A Very Dull Boy, his sophomore effort, followed in May 2002.
In 2012 Bazilian released What Shall Become Of The Baby an album with long-term collaborator Mats Wester in Sweden. Since then he has been writing with and producing numerous artists in a myriad of musical styles, both at his studio at home in Pennsylvania and in his provisional basement studio in Stockholm, Sweden.
Eric is currently riding out the pandemic storm in Stockholm, while working with new and developing artists such as Alexxis And The Medicine in Philadelphia, and Manu in Slovenia. He will be releasing his first solo album since 2002 in the Spring of 2021.
Today Glide is excited to offer a sneak peek of that new album with a premiere of the song “I Miss Everything” and its accompanying video. The song will be released digitally on December 4 (PRE-SAVE). In its alone, “I Miss Everything” immediately connects to a feeling we all have these days as the world continues to be shut down and seemingly all moments of spontaneous fun are still on hold. The folky anthem finds Bazilian channels his frustrations in verses that, surprisingly, express a sense of gratitude even as he shouts out for the life he’s missing an ocean away. What makes the song especially interesting is the way he contrasts the folksy soundtrack with a rocking, power ballad chorus. The video was created by Philadelphia-based Holly Monson (who also created the video for his recent single “Heaven Ain’t Gonna Save Us”). She took iPhone footage of Eric singing and playing, laboriously hand drawing images over the screen to create a rotoscope-like effect.
Bazilian describes the inspiration and process behind the song:
“I wrote ‘I Miss Everything’ on July 29th, 2020, in a basement in Stockholm, Sweden, where I’ve been riding out the pandemic storm since March. Although the music and lyrics contain their fair share of pathos, the overriding sentiment is one of gratitude, for all the things that I have here, despite missing the ‘friends and family, my collection of guitars, the piano which my mother, many years ago, gave to me’ that are waiting for me when I do finally get to go home.
The track begins wistfully, with a Swedish mandola accompanying the solo voice, building gradually with the addition of bass and harmony vocals, until it explodes in the exuberantly melancholic chorus, ‘yeah, I’ve got everything, and I miss everything.’”
WATCH:
Photo credit: Thron Ullberg
