Seemingly burdened by his recent success, the 24-year-old artist’s freshman album ends up suffering from a lack of clarity as well as self-confidence.
It is always a colossal success that tests a musician’s determination.
History has shown how, once a musician tastes the glory of scoring a chart-topper or sold-out shows or industry accolades, they would later choose one out of the three available routes. Route A: The musician in question uses their success as both a foundation and a fuel for their next move, believing that their rise to stardom is just a warm-up. Route B: The musician in question immediately assumes, consciously or not, that they have discovered their formula and will stick to it until the world dictates otherwise. Route C: The musician becomes undecided as they are trapped between the burden of extending success and the fear of trying to repeat one.
Unfortunately, as evident in his debut full-length album Nadhif, the 24-year-old Nadhif Basalamah went straight to Route C. This album was supposed to be Basalamah’s anointment to join the voices of the future. Nadhif was also supposed to be the proof that indie is the new mainstream. Instead, this album turned out to be an illustration of what happens when an artist with great potential becomes his own worst enemy.
So, where exactly did Nadhif go wrong?
To be fair, Nadhif, indeed, radiates sincerity that does not often come along in comparison to his peers (especially Indonesian pop male artists in their early twenties). From start to finish, Nadhif proves itself as a self-reflective, diaristic record that also explains why Basalamah decided to have his first name as the title of his first LP. Moreover, looking at the choice of Basalamah’s co-writers and producers — just to name a few, Petra Sihombing, Gamaliel Tapiheru, Mikha Angelo, and Ibnu Dian — it was palpable that he was keen on making the best album possible. Basalamah’s intentions were clear, commendable, and noble. Unfortunately, what Basalamah and his team at After School Records seem to forget is that well-intended, autobiographical songwriting is not a fool-proof recipe for a sterling piece of music. Sincerity without ingenuity can easily lead to a blubbering mess.
The lack of self-confidence, as well as a convincing direction, in Nadhif is immediately visible in the album’s opening, “Tulis/Terapi”. Basalamah might wish to set the tone by underlining that what the music audience can expect from the whole album is immensely vulnerable and indisputably raw. Having said that, by the end of the song, “Tulis/Terapi” *sings* everything, yet *says* pretty much nothing. Basalamah laments about how to “open the heart that has been making excuses” (he sings in Indonesian: “Membuka hati / Yang s’lama ini / Terus Berdalih”), but since the lyrics offer neither enough elaboration nor specificity, what ultimately lingers is confusing ambiguity. Basalamah’s heart, indeed, opened up, but it was only a small crack.
The music audiences might assume that there would be more clarity in the following track, “Tiba-Tiba Jumat Lagi”. Unfortunately, in this morose ballad, what Basalamah does here is merely describe the water in which he is already emotionally drowned. It does not help Basalamah’s case, either, that “Tiba-Tiba Jumat Lagi” is also the weakest number in the album. Friday as the metaphor for the future is already a cliché figure of speech, and the repetitive lyric, as the verse progresses, makes “Tiba-Tiba Jumat Lagi” sound more like a satirical take on the Indonesian children’s song “Nama Nama Hari”. The danger of putting out a self-reflective song is that if you are not clever enough in crafting all the elements of it, what is supposed to sound heartfelt can come across as mopey or worse, cringe-worthy. At this point, music audiences could not be blamed if they would rather skip to the seventh track, the familiar and emotionally detoxing “Penjaga Hati“, instead.
The audiences who remain patient might give the whole album a shot by continuing to follow Basalamah’s curated tracklist and listening to the third track, “Penuh”. Is this number as cringeworthy as “Tiba-Tiba Jumat Lagi”? Fortunately, no. However, the meet-cute “Penuh” feels like a rushed joy which, in turn, undermines the already hollow grief presented in previous tunes. It is as if Basalamah had suddenly changed his mind and switched the purpose of the album — from Nadhif being a reflection of a young man’s inner demons to Nadhif being a Top 40 romantic record. Basalamah later tries to return to addressing the turmoil in his soul in the album’s sixth number, “Isi Kepalaku”, but this only underscores his reluctance to also go deeper into the heart department. It is as if Basalamah had also gotten cold feet (again) and decided to change the topic (again). Or perhaps Basalamah crafted “Isi Kepalaku” as the emotional aftermath of the preceding number, the angry-and-angsty “Sesuatu”. However, those two songs are pretty much Heaven and Earth in terms of lyrical tone as well as music production that it is impossible to observe the red thread (if any) that connects “Sesuatu” to “Isi Kepalaku”. Whatever Basalamah’s true intentions are, as the album progresses, it grows more and more difficult to take his confessionals seriously.
Basalamah later tries to peel a deeper layer of himself in the album’s closer “Bersimpuh”. Unfortunately, the spiritual ballad also suffers from the same irresolution as most songs within Nadhif. The song’s restraint, yet gratingly repetitive lyrics would even leave the most avid fans of religious music utterly underwhelmed. When all is said and done, as ‘personal’ as Nadhif claims itself to be, the entire eight songs within the album reveal that Basalamah only dares to play in the shallow waters.
The second major issue of Nadhif is the lack of comprehensible shape — as reflected by the album’s disjointed music production. It is as if Basalamah wanted to pursue too much only to come home empty-handed. Perhaps Basalamah initially wanted to showcase his versatility as a musician by tapping into different soundscapes and vibes. However, such experimentations can only be successful if and only if the artist’s personality never fails to shine through. In the case of Nadhif, sadly, his personality ends up becoming the sacrificial lamb for his music producers’ wizardry. Music producer Petra Sihombing goes on full-throttle pop-rock mode in “Sesuatu” which immediately clashes with Basalamah’s soulful delivery. Music producer Ibnu Dian goes left to the country-folk fantasia in “Isi Kepalaku” which puts a wet blanket on Basalamah’s brooding charm. “Jatuh Cinta Lagi” is a much better song compared to the others, but the overly familiar production makes the song belong more to the co-producer Mikha Angelo (who is also the front-man of TheOvertunes) than Basalamah.
What seems to be the root of all these problems? Ironically, that head-scratching root is the album’s — as well as Basalamah’s — biggest song to date: “Penjaga Hati”. The charm that makes “Penjaga Hati” one of the smashing hits of 2023 (and early 2024) is the song’s simplicity as well as elegance — two adjectives that are rare to find among Indonesian pop male soloists’ common body of work. Looking at the entirety of the album, it is very likely that Basalamah, either consciously or not, put “Penjaga Hati” on a pedestal and used it as a ‘template’ to draft Nadhif. This is also, most likely, the reason why the rest of the songs in Nadhif are frustratingly simplistic; it is the same lyrical approach that Basalamah applied in “Penjaga Hati”.
If Basalamah wished to be clever, he could have tried elevating the songs and remedying the incompatible music productions by delivering a much richer vocal delivery. There is an abundance of mediocre pop songs out there, and the reason why those songs can dominate the charts is the vocal charisma of the singer. Also, despite his soft-as-clouds vocal texture, Basalamah has demonstrated, in his various live gigs, that he also possesses the prowess to belt out high-powered chops that could even make Armand Maulana tremble in awe. Suspiciously, however, his vocal deliveries in other songs in Nadhif turn out to be identical, if not blatantly carbon-copy, to his gentle vocal delivery in “Penjaga Hati”.
What makes this entire predicament extra heartbreaking is that, in the past, Basalamah has actually delivered a cohesive, emotionally rich, much more clear-eyed body of work. His 2022 EP, Wonder in Time, did not boast as many co-writers and music producers as Nadhif, but the EP possesses a quality that is of a much higher class than Nadhif. Unlike his new album, Wonder in Time EP finds Basalamah successfully song-crafting a rhapsodical universe that is captivating, un-skip-able, and even seductive. On top of that, despite the Herculean success of the down-to-earth “Penjaga Hati”, it is actually Basalamah’s unpredictable candour (“She lied about reasons why we broke up,” he once lamented with surgical precision in the underrated “Without Me (Sera)”) as well as his brooding wit (“Oh, I’m catching feelings and this will take long,” he once sighed in a heart-on-his-sleeve misadventure “To Be with Me”) that makes him the most talented young man in the music biz right now. Where Nadhif feels like a binder full of random diary entries, Wonder in Time EP is a full-bodied opus that, two years passing by, has not lost its magic.
Personally speaking, it was not “Penjaga Hati” that convinced me that Basalamah is a star of tomorrow. Instead, it was the Wonder in Time EP.
There is no point in thinking about what-ifs, though I could not help but wonder: If “Penjaga Hati” had never been such a gigantic success that later put an invisible shackle around Basalamah’s creativity, perhaps Basalamah would have ended up making a much stronger album instead. Perhaps if the idea (and anxiety) of being a so-called ‘pop star’ had never existed in the first place, Basalamah could have made something that is more interesting as well as memorable.
Although it might require extra promotional work, there remains a possibility that Nadhif could notch a couple of more hits for Basalamah — especially, despite their flaws, “Sesuatu” and “Jatuh Cinta Lagi”. On top of that, the album’s flaws do not change the fact that Basalamah remains one of the most distinguished male pop vocalists in the scene right now. Having said that, instead of reflecting on love, pain, and faith, Basalamah must reflect, first and foremost, on what kind of musician he genuinely wants to be — and, more importantly, how *not* to become a victim of his own success.
Photos courtesy of After School Records.