The scene on the Chipotle on Ventura Boulevard within the San Fernando Valley at first regarded very similar to some other Friday night. Six handsome guys of their early 20s sat round a desk consuming burritos, laughing and ribbing each other. They’d landed at LAX that morning after a 16-hour flight, however regardless of their jet lag, the vibe was full of life.
Then an emergency alert lit up one in all their cellphones. Seconds later, a warning buzzed on one other gadget. After which one other, and one other, and one other, and but yet one more. It was Oct. 6 — already Oct. 7 on the opposite facet of the world in Israel — and the second issues bought very actual for as1one, the first-ever boy band comprising Israeli and Palestinian musicians.
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The fellows had arrived in Los Angeles from Tel Aviv, Israel, to put down tracks for his or her forthcoming debut album — a trek made following months of visa coordination and greater than a yr for the reason that group formally fashioned, after first being conceived in america years prior. The crew behind as1one, led by longtime music executives Ken Levitan and James Diener, envisioned a Center Jap model of BTS, and within the effort to create it, Israeli and Palestinian casting administrators had held auditions in main cities and tiny villages all through Israel in 2021. (Auditions couldn’t be held within the West Financial institution or Gaza because of logistical challenges.) A thousand younger males auditioned; the six who had been glued to their telephones on the Sherman Oaks Chipotle had made it in.
There’s Sadik Dogosh, a 20-year-old Palestinian Bedouin Muslim from Rahat, Israel, with a piercing gaze and an performing background. Neta Rozenblat, a Jewish Israeli who’s 22 however seems youthful, grew up in Tel Aviv, the place he studied pc science earlier than entering into singing, which led to a 2021 efficiency on the Israeli model of The X Issue. Hailing from Haifa, Palestinian Christian Aseel Farah, 22, is the group’s rapper and its self-proclaimed introvert. Twenty-three-year-old Jewish Israeli Nadav Philips grew up close to Tel Aviv, idolizes Mariah Carey and used to carry out as a marriage singer. Niv Lin, 22, is a Jewish Israeli from a desert city in southern Israel and performed skilled basketball earlier than shifting to singing. (He additionally carried out on The X Issue.) And Ohad Attia, additionally 22 and a Jewish Israeli, grew up in Tel Aviv singing and taking part in the guitar, a talent he flexes fantastically within the group.
On the floor, the six younger males examine all the same old boy group containers: They strike the requisite steadiness between dreamy and lovable and sing ballads and bangers with heart-melting harmonies about women, love and “dancing like the entire world is watching,” as one in all their songs proclaims. However whereas every knew they had been signing up for a boundary-pushing endeavor just by becoming a member of a bunch composed of Palestinians and Israelis, they couldn’t have predicted that their message of unity can be so intensely examined earlier than that they had even launched any music.
When the blokes went to sleep at their L.A. rental home on the evening of Oct. 6, they weren’t but positive what to make of the alerts. They’d all grown up accustomed to intermittent rocket warnings that usually handed with out incident. However by morning, it was clear what was taking place again at house had little precedent: Hamas operatives had killed about 1,200 folks all through southern Israel in coordinated assaults on villages, kibbutzes and at a music pageant. (“Niv lives not removed from the place that rave was, so he undoubtedly would have been there,” Diener says, including that the girl Lin had simply began courting, together with different mates, was killed within the assault.) Their scheduled sightseeing tour of L.A. was canceled. As a substitute, the blokes spent the day frantically calling and texting with family and friends again house.
As information of the Oct. 7 assaults unfold, as1one was given the choice to fly again to Israel as quickly as attainable. However after speaking amongst themselves, they determined to remain. “At first, we actually felt unhealthy that we couldn’t do something, that we couldn’t assist our households and mates in Israel,” Attia says. “However then when you consider it, you actually notice we’re on a mission and that we might be useful. We are able to present the world.”
The subsequent day, as1one went to its scheduled studio session and met with songwriter-producers Jenna Andrews and Stephen Kirk, who collectively have credit on mega-hits like BTS’ “Butter” and “Permission To Dance.” Andrews and Kirk had already joined as1one for writing classes in Israel, and that familiarity helped the duo channel the group’s intense feelings into music because the horrific information from Israel continued.
“The hardest moments had been throughout the classes,” Rozenblat says. “I used to be instructed about two mates that had been killed, Niv was instructed about mates of his that had been killed — lots of us discovered about actually terrible stuff throughout that session, to not point out that now there’s a complete struggle happening.”
However by the top of the session, that they had a brand new music. Two-and-a-half weeks later, in a sun-drenched convention room in Century Metropolis, they play it for me via a beat-up Bluetooth speaker.
“What if we simply stopped the world/Maintain the telephone/Confronted the harm/Take me house/We’re not constructed for this/We’re constructed for extra/Overlook the rating/Present me what it’s like after we cease the world,” the sextet sings over a pulsing beat. It’s the type of anthem that’s vocally paying homage to the Backstreet Boys’ heyday and thematically evocative of — relying on the way you’re listening — both a tumultuous romance or the Israeli-Palestinian battle.
“How loopy is it to get hugs from Palestinian mates when my Israeli mates died?” Lin says. “That’s our story.”
As1one wasn’t essentially supposed to perform as a singing six-man reply to the Israeli-Palestinian battle.
Seeing how Okay-pop and Latin music grew to become international forces over the previous few years, Levitan and Diener wished to type a bunch from outdoors the Western world that they might construct right into a celebrity act. They’d expertise with this caliber of artist: Levitan helped develop Kings of Leon, managed Bon Jovi and, as co-founder and president of Nashville-based Vector Administration, has labored with Kesha, The B-52s, The Fray and extra. Diener launched A&M Octone Data, the place he developed acts together with Maroon 5, and after the label offered its 50% share to Interscope Geffen A&M, he co-founded the music publishing and administration agency Freesolo Leisure.
Collectively they regarded to Israel, a spot, Diener says, the place “we felt that what they should say musically hadn’t actually been given a shot on the world stage.” The pair weren’t searching for to create a bunch made up of Israelis and Palestinians — solely to, as Levitan says, “depart no stone unturned” of their seek for the nation’s highest expertise. They started touring to Israel in late 2021, first to seek out the Israeli and Palestinian casting administrators and consultants who may get them entry to native music faculties, conservatories and recording studios the place they might scout expertise. (They’ve been again to the nation each two months for the reason that first journey.) Ami Nir, an A&R government at Common Music Group in Israel, grew to become their associate within the venture and was essential in creating connections.
Even earlier than assembly any potential singers, the pair — who seek advice from themselves because the group’s founders and producers — encountered loads of challenges: elevating funding cash, working in a overseas market (and through a worldwide pandemic) and, above all, the historic tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Throughout one assembly, a possible Palestinian expertise scout was so against the thought of a combined band that she flicked her cigarette ashes at Levitan and Diener.
“We had been actually working from destructive one, not even at zero,” Levitan says of the assembly. “She was very pessimistic.” However as the 2 defined their historical past within the enterprise and their imaginative and prescient for the group, the scout uncrossed her arms and listened — and, shortly thereafter, joined the crew. Such unlikely adjustments of coronary heart occurred many times at conferences all through the nation. “I feel folks felt our sincerity,” Diener says. “They didn’t really feel like this was in any means a gimmick or a pretext.”
As Diener explains, assembling a bunch from this a part of the world inherently meant being “confronted by the query of, ‘Are you prepared to place collectively a bunch that could be combined?’ ” He and Levitan agreed that they had been — however that it will require selecting “the fitting guys who may deal with and recognize that blend of expertise inside the band,” Diener says.
As they narrowed down the expertise pool throughout auditions, Levitan and Diener met with households of potential members, promoting dad and mom, siblings and prolonged family members on the thought, typically via translators, and lots of occasions whereas sitting across the household’s kitchen desk after a meal.
By this level, that they had additionally enlisted a documentary crew to movie the method; cameras had been put in place after folks near Levitan and Diener recommended what they had been doing “would possibly simply be historic,” Diener recollects. In the end, the native Israeli crew was changed with a crew from Paramount+, which has since shot lots of of hours of footage for a forthcoming five-episode docuseries produced by James Carroll (Waco: American Apocalypse, Evening Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer). “It’s by no means a actuality sequence,” Levitan says. “That is one thing rather more considerate and cinematic.”
The cameras had been rolling throughout the remaining part of the audition course of: a Could 2022 boy band boot camp in Neve Shalom, an Israeli village based in 1969 by Israeli Jews and Arabs to show that the 2 teams may reside collectively in peace. Right here, the blokes performed devices, posed for picture shoots, confirmed off their dexterity with social media and sang collectively. “You’d be singing to your self, then somebody standing on the opposite facet of the highway can be doing a concord with you,” Attia recollects.
A psychologist was on web site as effectively, not solely to make sure potential members had been mentally ready for the demanding work schedule forward, but in addition to weigh in on whether or not they would match effectively inside the distinctive mixed-group dynamic. “There have been [guys] we actually wished to work with,” Diener says, “however as their neighborhood and fogeys grew to become extra conscious of what this was going to appear like, they couldn’t endorse it in the identical means they’d endorsed the audition course of, so we misplaced just a few actually good prospects.” (Levitan provides that these prospects wouldn’t have essentially made it into the group.)
A year-and-a-half after beginning the scouting course of, Levitan and Diener had settled on the fitting six guys — it was simply by circumstance that 4 had been Jewish Israelis and two Palestinian.
When Levitan and Diener Zoomed Dogosh to inform him he had been accepted, the digital camera crew caught him leaping round so enthusiastically that his microphone broke. “Getting accepted within the band, it was like a fever dream,” says Rozenblat, who had been monitoring 25,000 steps a day whereas pacing round his home ready for the information.
Recording began shortly thereafter, with the blokes intermittently touring from their respective properties to a Tel Aviv studio. Philips and Lin say that they had by no means spoken with a Palestinian individual till becoming a member of as1one — a reputation that the blokes selected from just a few choices that the crew had provide you with and that’s pronounced “as one.” Over time, camaraderie grew, and by the point they gave their first reside efficiency at a non-public occasion for TikTok Israel eight months after their inception, they had been trying, sounding, transferring and dealing the room like a band. (Levitan and Diener typically use the phrases “brotherhood” and “unity” when describing the group’s bond.)
The bonding course of ramped up in August, when as1one traveled to London to report at Abbey Street Studios with Nile Rodgers, who performs guitar on one of many songs written by Andrews and Kirk. (The session got here collectively after Diener despatched Rodgers the group’s cowl of Rodgers’ Daft Punk collaboration, “Get Fortunate.”) After they wrapped, Rodgers gave his guitar to as1one guitarist Attia, who says he was “actually shaking” and instantly FaceTimed his mom to inform her. (Overjoyed for her son, she cried.)
On Oct. 5, as1one boarded a flight for what was meant to be a monthlong journey to L.A. The scheduling turned out to be prescient: The crew had thought-about flying the blokes out just a few days later — which, had it occurred, would have put the venture on perpetual maintain amid a struggle that thus far has killed round 1,200 Israelis (and claimed an estimated 240 hostages) and greater than 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza, based on stories from Gaza’s Well being Ministry (an company that, as The New York Instances has reported, “is a part of the Hamas authorities in Gaza however employs civil servants who predate Hamas’ management of the territory”).
Whereas their households stay within the more and more precarious scenario overseas, as1one is in L.A. indefinitely, dwelling in a rented home in Sherman Oaks with Andrew Berkowitz (the group’s government accountable for expertise who was concerned in casting and has greater than 30 years’ expertise in artist promotion at labels together with RCA and Arista) and touring to varied native studios making music. “Our coverage with them is no matter they want, together with if they should go house, we’ll make that occur,” Diener says. “There’s lots of people conserving their eyes on them.”
The group has recorded seven songs within the 4 weeks since its arrival, with collaborators together with Andrews, Kirk, Danja (Nelly Furtado’s “Say It Proper,” Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack,” Britney Spears’ “Gimme Extra”), Justin Tranter (a go-to co-writer for Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Maroon 5 and Think about Dragons) and Y2K (Doja Cat’s “Consideration”).
The songs as1one performs for me reside on this convention room embrace a stirring ballad with lyrics original in boilerplate boy band parlance (“I wouldn’t be me with out you!”), rendered in beautiful six-part concord and delivered with ardour. (They shut their eyes loads whereas singing.) When the blokes launch right into a peppier, sexier jam about being hot-blooded animals on the dancefloor, it’s simple sufficient to think about a stadium filled with followers screaming alongside. The songs are intelligent and well-constructed, and the melodies keep in my head lengthy after the assembly is over.
The fellows, together with Levitan and Diener, are fast to make clear that they’re much less a “boy band” and extra a “male pop group,” provided that they play devices (Attia is on acoustic and electrical guitar, keyboard and drums; Lin performs keys and acoustic guitar; Philips performs keyboard; Rozenblat performs keyboard and acoustic guitar; Farah is on percussion; and Dogosh is studying piano) and don’t plan on performing choreography. And Levitan and Diener count on that the group’s story will entice a wider-than-usual fan base for an act of this sort. Nonetheless, because the duo sees it, their core fan base will doubtless be — within the high-pitched squealing custom of teams like *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys — what Levitan calls “a really, very excited and energetic feminine viewers.”
It’s not but clear when the primary as1one single will probably be launched, and the group hasn’t but introduced a label signing. (Levitan and Diener say they will’t disclose particulars on label negotiations past that “there’s actual curiosity within the band.”) They’re backed by a 30-person crew and 15 attorneys representing every member individually and collectively throughout emblems, music, movie and normal counsel, and repped by WME, the place additionally they have movie and TV illustration. That documentary crew lives with them, nonetheless capturing their each transfer — from jam classes on the home (the place there’s a “No harmonicas after 11 p.m.” coverage) to the a lot darker and extra complicated moments of their current historical past.
All this infrastructure is being solid with a singular imaginative and prescient: to make as1one the most important musical group on the planet. “I imply, significantly,” Levitan says. “That’s our objective.”
The stakes for as1one had been at all times excessive, however they’ve after all turn out to be considerably greater over the past six weeks. Eight of the group’s family and friends members have been killed within the battle. It could be overwhelming for anybody, and positively have to be for the six younger males now dwelling 7,500 miles from their house, the place a brutal struggle is being fought. However whether or not via teaching or real perception, the blokes current a silver-lining angle.
“There’s no technique to describe how unhealthy you are feeling,” Philips says. “Your first intuition is to return and be along with your family and friends. Then just a few days later, you notice there’s no higher service to the world than what we’re doing, and it simply provides us an even bigger function.”
“We don’t wish to be political,” provides rapper Farah. “We simply wish to be humanitarian.”
In addition they don’t wish to be inextricably linked to the battle that, prefer it or not, has outlined their formation. “One of many issues we’ve instructed them,” Levitan says, “particularly with all the things happening now, [is that these events] might be an affect [on the music] however simply can’t be instantly associated, as a result of [the music] has bought to be broad sufficient the place all people can relate to it.”
Proper now, although, the inherent message of an Israeli-Palestinian group named as1one might give the act a better that means than Diener and Levitan may have ever imagined, no matter what the blokes are singing about. Conversations now aren’t nearly being the most important band on the planet, however concerning the Nobel Peace Prize.
“You could say it’s a pie-in-the-sky type of objective,” says Levitan. “However what this has turn out to be is that vital.”
This story originally appeared in the Nov. 18, 2023, issue of Billboard.
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