“BASTIAN BAKER” album

RELEASED: 26.10.2018

A first album for the second time.

The new album by Bastian Baker is released on the 26.10.2018. Eponymously-titled, it is his fourth to date. But it’s also something of a new beginning, the artist says with a radiant smile. It befits a young man for whom writing non-stop hits seems as simple as saying hello. Happiness is written all over his face. And rightly so. Because with Bastian Baker, the artist has just embarked on perhaps the greatest adventure of his life.

In the beginning, there was ice hockey. When Bastian Baker lived in Lausanne and aspired to become a professional hockey player, he struck up a friendship with the national team star, Roman Josi. He had just joined the Nashville Predators when he said to Bastian Baker:

‘You’re a musician and have never set foot in Nashville? That can’t be possible!’ Bastian Baker responded: ‘OK, I’ll come, but you have to find me a gig.’ Josi was true to his word and organised a concert at the legendary Douglas Corner Café. The first person that he got talking to was Caleb Followill, the Kings of Leon vocalist.

This place is great, I’m going to stay!’, Baker said to himself. And so it was. God moves in mysterious ways, and Nashville became his second home.

Bastian Baker has written some sixty songs in one year. It was also an opportunity for the artist to make a discovery; having preferred to write all the songs on his previous albums alone, he took great pleasure in allowing himself to be inspired by other songwriters. ‘Previously, if a song wasn’t finished in ten minutes, that would annoy me’, he says. ‘But when you’re working on a song with someone else, it becomes a challenge. You want to prove that you are also a good songwriter. And when the flow stops, it’s just a matter of inspiration. When one begins a line, the other finishes it.’

With its back-and-forth between thoughtful lyrics and catchy refrain, the captivating Stage Fright is the first track, a collaboration with the Swiss exiles to Nashville Caroline Marquard and Zoe Mirkovich. Bastian Baker takes off to New York to work with the indie/dream pop producer Vlad Holiday with whom he wrote the two earworms Stay and All Around Us. The piano ballad You Should Call Home has its origins in a conversation with Josh Bruce Williams. The two men confessed to each other to not calling home very often – and thus the song’s refrain was born. Other songs were composed in Los Angeles, Toronto and at Bastian Baker’s home.

And then there’s Jacquire King, a producer whose list of collaborations runs from Kings of Leon to Shania Twain, by way of Norah Jones and Tom Waits. Shania Twain, a long-term close friend of Bastian Baker, put them in touch. Bastian Baker sent him sixty songs, of which three would be recorded: Love on Fire, Time and Down.

‘I find Down great just from a sound point of view’, says Baker. ‘Sometimes, when I’m in the car, I just turn up the volume and go crazy’. I’ve learned a lot from all my recording sessions. It’s like I’ve been a member of 35 different groups. It’s really inspired me and shown me the possibilities within myself’. As the diversity of credited co-authors suggests, Bastian Baker reveals new facets of his artistic personality on his new album. What hasn’t changed from his first three successful albums is his sense of melody, and of course, his outstanding voice that radiates with joie de vivre even when he sings a sad song. ‘The year I spent with these songwriters was a marvellous experience for me’, Baker says. ‘I’ve met so many good people. Bastian Baker is like a second first album’.

To hark back to the title of his second hit from 2011, Lucky, luck is certainly smiling on Bastian Baker. Having hardly finished recording his new album, lady luck extended her hand once again. Shania Twain personally invited him to open for her on her world tour. This began on the 3rd of May 2018 in Tacoma in Canada and will finish 77 concerts later on the 22nd of December 2018 in Dunedin in New Zealand. From Canada to New Zealand, with stops in the United States, Brazil, Europe and Australia along the way, Bastian Baker is bringing his music live to over a million spectators. Bastian Baker stands alone on the stage night after night to sing old and new songs ‘to see how the crowd reacts’. Then Shania Twain brings him back on to duet on Party for Two. ‘I’ve got used to the pressure’, says Baker. ‘But after the first concert with her, it was an entirely new level. Everyone was asking themselves: “Who is this guy opening?” Everyone thought I was going to fall on my face. But thankfully everything went great and everyone is happy’.