Pop singer/songwriter Jonathan Yoni Laham, known onstage as BRIDGE, was only following his muse when “It’s OK” fell into his lap. Flooded with electric guitars, courtesy of musician Lee Barbour, the track (co-produced by Majeed Fick and Seeno Shahrooz), quivers with an R&B stickiness. “Don’t give me useless tries / I’m too good with goodbyes,” Laham sings.
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“It’s OK” is the kind of song that owes everything to “some initial guitar chords” to set the sultry, candlelit mood. “To keep it blunt: [this is] a raw retelling of a raunchy love story I experienced in the most simple, direct way I could tell it,” he tells American Songwriter.
The accompanying music video, directed by Arrad (Nicki Minaj, Marshmello), fully steeps in a dangerously alluring vintage style (think: Lana Del Rey). Playing the role as resident bad boy, Laham heads out into the countryside with his lover, played by actor Hannah Glasby, for a secluded rendezvous. “Take all of me tonight,” he sings with potent breathiness.
An LA native, Laham began releasing a series of singles in 2017, and his debut record, Wreck, arrived later that year. The follow-up, SMUG, dropped two years later, and both entries display a great knack for blurring genres, from pop to indie R&B. His silky tenor lights his way, often veering through halls built by James Blake ─ perhaps his greatest influence.
“There’s no boundaries,” he observes of his genre-bending fearlessness. “When you don’t have rules of a genre to abide by, it’s different. It feels like every thought you have is valid. Any idea you think of you can reach for. That’s what art is meant to be. Boundless expression.”
Since his last body of work, which he describes as “an interesting project in a difficult time,” found him “almost… masking an emotion of what was really going on in my life. That was one of the darker stages of my life, and for that reason, it felt like I tried to make this lighter piece of work. 2019 was decent, but 2020 has been my best year yet.”
Many artists have either found themselves completely depleted of creativity or feeling more inspired than ever this year. Laham is firmly in the latter category. “I’ve never felt more creative, independent, or in the right headspace to create,” he offers. “When you’re working for yourself, you just have a different attitude about things.”
As he evaluates his career so far, he looks back to 2019’s “DYDRM” as a distinct turning point in his work. “[It] was the first record I really put out independently on my label XX Recordings. ‘24’ with Vory is up there [too] cause it made me feel like I could express myself how I wanted to sonically, and ‘It’s Ok’ is my favorite release to-date.”
Photo by Ganna Bogdan
