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Trigger warning: the following story contains descriptions of sexual assault.
In an emotional TikTok video posted over the weekend, former Drake & Josh star Drake Bell shared that a ballad from his 2005 debut album Telegraph, entitled “In the End,” featured lyrics alluding to his sexual abuse at the hands of Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck. That abuse was explored in the recent docuseries Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which chronicled stories of emotional abuse and traumatic experiences suffered by teen and tween actors on the sets of a variety of Nickelodeon programs.
“Wrote this song when I was 15 about what happened before I said anything to anyone,” Bell captioned the one-minute video, in which he sits with a forlorn, pained look as the song’s emotional lyrics play out. “Wake up/ It’s time to get your things together and drive away/ ‘Breathe out, future days will treat you better’/ That’s what they say,” he sings. “Another day gone without a say/ But it’s okay if you turn around/ And feel the memories bringin’ you down.”
The song’s lyrics never appear to explicitly mention abuse, but the chorus (not included in Bell’s video) hints at dark themes. “Wake up/ The monsters in your head have left you/ All to yourself, it’s alright/ If ugly little things remind you of how it felt,” he sings, adding, “Another day, no one tells you what it means/ What’s in your way and poisonin’ your dreams/ The darkest place that you’ve ever been.”
Trending on Billboard
Bell, now 37, detailed his abuse for the first time in the four-part series that plumbed the toxic work environment at the Viacom children’s network on sets run by Dan Schneider, creator of such hit programs as Drake & Josh, The Amanda Show, Zoey 101, iCarly, Victorious and Sam & Cat, which launched the careers of such superstars as Ariana Grande, Amanda Bynes, Kenan Thompson, Victoria Justice and more.
In the series, Bell discussed his abuse by Peck — who was convicted of sexually assaulting a Nickelodeon child actor (Bell) in 2004 — for the first time, alongside other then-underage actor’s stories alleging abuse, sexism, racism and inappropriate alleged predatory behavior at the network.
Peck was convicted in 2004, a year before Bell’s debut album was released and several years after authorities said the abuse of the then 14/15-year-old actor took place. Peck was accused of molesting a child in 2003 and later convicted of a lewd act against a child and oral copulation of a person under 16 — resulting in a 16-month sentence and registration as a sex offender.
“Now that Drake Bell has disclosed his identity as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, we are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward,” Nickelodeon said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter prior to the series’ debut earlier this month.
Bell is slated to release his sixth studio album, Non-Stop Flight, later this year. The video for the album’s power pop first single, “I Kind of Relate,” features scenes that directly allude to the abuse some other difficult chapters in the singer/actor’s personal life. “I kind of relateI found beauty in my pain/ I’m running away/ From the abuse and all the shame,” he sings on the Beach Boys-esque tune. “‘Cause no one comes/ To my house anymore/ No one knocks on my door.”
Watch Bell’s TikTok video below.
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.
Trigger warning: the following story contains descriptions of sexual assault.
Former Drake & Josh star Drake Bell details his alleged sexual abuse at the hands of his former childhood dialogue coach Brian Peck in the new Investigation Discovery docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the four-part show dives into the toxic work environment at Nickelodeon on sets run by Dan Schneider, who created such hit programs as Drake & Josh, The Amanda Show, Zoey 101, iCarly, Victorious and Sam & Cat, iconic kids’ programs that launched the careers of such superstars as Ariana Grande, Amanda Bynes, Kenan Thompson, Victoria Justice and more.
In the series, Bell shares the details of his alleged abuse by Peck — who was convicted of sexually assaulting a Nickelodeon child actor in 2004 — for the first time, including allegations of abuse, sexism, racism and inappropriate behavior involving underage stars and crew and alleged predatory behavior at the network. The series will premiere over two nights on ID on March 17 and 18.
In the third episode, Bell graphically recounts the alleged grooming and sexual abuse he suffered at Peck’s hands when he was 14- and 15-years-old. The series reveals that when Peck was accused of molesting a child in 2003 and later convicted of a lewd act against a child and oral copulation of a person under 16 — resulting in a 16-month sentence and registration as a sex offender — it was then-15-year-old All That and The Amanda Show star Bell who was at the center of the criminal case and conviction.
Bell describes waking up on Peck’s couch one morning to the dialogue coach “sexually assaulting me. I froze and was in complete shock,” he says. “I had no idea what to do or how to react.” The series reportedly claims that Peck manipulated Bell’s mother and other adults to allow him “free rein” with the minor,” with Bell describing the abuse getting “worse and worse and worse and… worse, and I was just trapped and I had no way out.”
According to People, Bell, now 37, says he became close to Peck because they had “a lot of the same interests,” which he now realizes was “a bit calculated” on the part of his adult coach, who would often invite Bell to his house for acting lessons.
The abuse stopped after the mother of Bell’s then girlfriend asked why Peck wouldn’t stop calling the young actor that Bell began therapy, though at the time he was not yet ready to share his secret. “Then I realized it was so calculated. You (Peck) moved all the pieces into place. The whole thing was mental manipulation,” Bell said of the behavior by the dialogue coach, who appeared on screen as the character “Pickle Boy.”
People reported that Peck later became Bell’s manager, which caused a rift between the actor and his father, who was concerned about Peck accompanying Bell on auditions an hour away from where the young actor lived with his mother, sometimes necessitating overnight stays at Peck’s home.
Bell finally went to the police in 2003 and told his mother about the abuse, which included a “brutal” interview with two detectives in which Bell had to call Peck to get the coach to admit his guilt on a tapped phone line.
Soon after, Bell says, Schneider phoned him asking if the case was tied to the young actor. Feeling close to the boss, Bell says he confirmed the case was about him, at which point Schneider allegedly responded, “‘You don’t need to talk anymore about it. That’s all I needed to hear. Are you okay? Do you need anything from me? Anything you need.” Bell, who would then go on to topline his Drake & Josh series, says he doesn’t recall any other Nickelodeon executive reaching out to him at the time. Bell, who says his life was upended by the abuse, says in the series he began drinking and using drugs in the aftermath and in 2021 pleaded guilty to two charges tied to his online interactions with an underage fan; he was sentenced to two years’ probation and community service.
“Now that Drake Bell has disclosed his identity as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, we are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward,” Nickelodeon said in a statement to THR.
The series claims that kid actors were made to wear suggestive costumes and take part in inappropriate sketches with pornographic undertones. All That actor Leon Frierson recalls playing a superhero character called Captain Big Nose in tights and underwear, with a prosthetic nose and matching noses on his shoulders.
“You can’t help but notice that it looks like penises and testicles on my shoulders,” he says, noting that one sketch included Captain Big Nose unleashing a giant sneeze caused by his allergy to asteroids, resulting in a messy goo on the face of a young woman. “The joke in that sketch is effectively a cum shot joke. It’s a cum shot joke for children,” culture writer Schaachi Koul says in the first episode. “Looking back, it’s very strange. Frankly, it was just uncomfortable. In the moment, I thought this is what we got to do to stay on the show, to stay in the cast and stay in the good graces of people that were higher up,” says Frierson, who also discusses that being close to “kingmaker” Schneider could mean an extra level of success for the young actors. “It was important to be on his good side, and he made it known who was on his good side,” he says.
The Amanda Show actress Raquel Lee Bolleau — who appeared on the show when she was 12-years-old — says that “you wanted Dan to like you, because otherwise he was mean to you,” describing the time Schneider allegedly “flipped out” when he thought a birthday cake on set for Bolleau was too big. “Dan yelled a lot. Dan was like a tornado. He’d show up and you’d say, what just happened? Dan showed up. The set wouldn’t feel the same when he’d leave, because everyone was on their toes, scared,” Bolleau says of the showrunner who others describe as tormenting, humiliating and yelling on set.
That theme is a recurring one in the series, in which the young actors say they feared that if they spoke up for themselves, or their parents did, they would never work again.
“Working for Dan was like being in an abusive relationship,” Christy Stratton, one of only two women writers on The Amanda Show, says in the docuseries. Stratton and the other female writer on the show, Jenny Kilgen, reportedly had to split a normal staff writer salary to get hired, with Stratton recalling that Schneider told her, “he didn’t think women were funny” and Kilgen adding, “He [Schneider] challenged us to name a funny female writer, and he said this to the writers in the writers room.”
Kilgen also says that Schneider allegedly had pornography on his computer screen and told her he’d put one of her sketches in the show in return for a massage. “He always presented it like a joke, and he’d be laughing while he said it. But you always felt like disagreeing with Dan, or standing up for yourself, could get you fired,” Kilgen says, recalling that one day in the writer’s room Schneider asked her to lean across her desk and simulate being sodomized.
The series claims that Schneider’s alleged abusive on-set behavior didn’t stop until after the rise of the #MeToo movement, with Nickelodeon eventually splitting with Schneider after “years of whispers and rumors.” That move came after a 2014 internal investigation about toxic conditions on the set of the Grande/Jennette McCurdy show Sam & Kat resulted in hands-on boss Schneider no longer interacting with the series cast while being sequestered in his office. Schneider — whose shows were moneymakers for the network — created two more series, Game Shakers and Henry Danger before being the subject of a second internal investigation by Nickelodeon, which cleared him of any “hint of sexual misconduct,” but which paved the way for his leave-taking in 2018.
“Everything that happened on the shows I ran was carefully scrutinized by dozens of involved adults. All stories, dialogue, costumes, and makeup were fully approved by network executives on two coasts,” Schneider said in a statement to THR about the series. “A standards and practices group read and ultimately approved every script, and programming executives reviewed and approved all episodes. In addition, every day on set, there were always parents and caregivers and their friends watching us rehearse and film.”
In a statement about the series’ allegations of misconduct, Nickelodeon said, “Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon as a matter of policy investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct. Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crew, but of all children, and we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.
Michael Jackson‘s name has surfaced in recently unsealed court documents tied to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — though the late pop star was not accused of any wrongdoing in the documents. The files, which were unsealed late Wednesday (Jan. 3), are part of the 2015 lawsuit victim Virginia Giuffre filed against Ghislaine Maxwell, the late financier’s girlfriend, who was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse underage victims. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years.
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The late King of Pop — who was acquitted in 2005 of allegations that he molested underage boys, and vehemently denied the allegations during his life — comes up during the deposition of a witness, which took place May 18, 2016, according to the documents obtained by Billboard. In the transcript, Giuffre’s lawyer Sigrid McCawley questions the witness — who is also an Epstein accuser — about the bold-faced names she had encountered with the financier, who was known for his connections to the rich, famous and powerful.
“Did you ever meet anybody famous when you were with Jeffrey?” McCawley asked.
“I met Michael Jackson,” the witness responded. “At his house in Palm Beach. At Jeffrey’s house in Palm Beach.”
McCawley also asked whether the witness had given Jackson a massage, which she denied doing.
Later during the deposition, Laura Menninger — an attorney for Maxwell — followed up the line of questioning regarding the 13-time Grammy winner: “You were asked about the famous people. You said you met Michael Jackson?”
Once again, the witness confirmed she had met the musician, and denied once more having ever given him a massage. There are no allegations of any wrongdoing on Jackson’s part in the documents.
Billboard has reached out to the Michael Jackson Estate for comment.
A judge ruled in December that the previously sealed documents could be made public. Since the files were unsealed Wednesday, people on social media have alleged the unsealed documents include several prominent musicians — but a search of the official court documents failed to confirm the social media rumors.
Epstein, 66, died by apparent suicide in August 2019. He was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York while awaiting trial. He had been charged with sexually abusing multiple underage girls.
Shaul Greenglick, an Israeli soldier and Eurovision Song Contest hopeful, has died in combat amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The 26-year-old singer was one of three soldiers recently reported dead by the Israel Defense Forces, per The Times of Israel, following Israel’s intensified ground operations in Palestine. The country has been in active war […]
Tiffany Haddish was arrested Friday (Nov. 24) and charged with driving under the influence, police said. The actor and comedian was detained after Beverly Hills police received a call about 5:45 a.m. Police said she appeared to be found slumped over the wheel of the vehicle while the car engine was still running. Haddish, an Emmy and Grammy […]
The scene at the Chipotle on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley at first looked much like any other Friday evening. Six good-looking guys in their early 20s sat around a table eating burritos, laughing and ribbing one another. They had landed at LAX that morning after a 16-hour flight, but despite their jet lag, the vibe was lively.
Then an emergency alert lit up one of their cellphones. Seconds later, a warning buzzed on another device. And then another, and another, and another, and yet one more. It was Oct. 6 — already Oct. 7 on the other side of the world in Israel — and the moment things got very real for as1one, the first-ever boy band comprising Israeli and Palestinian musicians.
The guys had arrived in Los Angeles from Tel Aviv, Israel, to lay down tracks for their forthcoming debut album — a trek made following months of visa coordination and more than a year since the group officially formed, after first being conceived in the United States years prior. The team behind as1one, led by longtime music executives Ken Levitan and James Diener, envisioned a Middle Eastern version of BTS, and in the effort to create it, Israeli and Palestinian casting directors had held auditions in major cities and tiny villages throughout Israel in 2021. (Auditions could not be held in the West Bank or Gaza due to logistical challenges.) A thousand young men auditioned; the six who were glued to their phones at 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 acting background. Neta Rozenblat, a Jewish Israeli who’s 22 but looks younger, grew up in Tel Aviv, where he studied computer science before getting into singing, which led to a 2021 performance on the Israeli version of The X Factor. 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 near Tel Aviv, idolizes Mariah Carey and used to perform as a wedding singer. Niv Lin, 22, is a Jewish Israeli from a desert town in southern Israel and played professional basketball before shifting to singing. (He also performed on The X Factor.) And Ohad Attia, also 22 and a Jewish Israeli, grew up in Tel Aviv singing and playing the guitar, a skill he flexes beautifully in the group.
On the surface, the six young men check all the usual boy group boxes: They strike the requisite balance between dreamy and adorable and sing ballads and bangers with heart-melting harmonies about girls, love and “dancing like the whole world is watching,” as one of their songs proclaims. But while each knew they were signing up for a boundary-pushing endeavor simply by joining a group composed of Palestinians and Israelis, they couldn’t have predicted that their message of unity would be so intensely tested before they had even released any music.
When the guys went to sleep at their L.A. rental house on the night of Oct. 6, they weren’t yet sure what to make of the alerts. They had all grown up accustomed to intermittent rocket warnings that often passed without incident. But by morning, it was clear what was happening back at home had little precedent: Hamas operatives had killed about 1,200 people throughout southern Israel in coordinated attacks on villages, kibbutzes and at a music festival. (“Niv lives not far from where that rave was, so he undoubtedly would have been there,” Diener says, adding that the woman Lin had just started dating, along with other friends, was killed in the attack.) Their scheduled sightseeing tour of L.A. was canceled. Instead, the guys spent the day frantically calling and texting with friends and family back home.
As news of the Oct. 7 attacks spread, as1one was given the option to fly back to Israel as soon as possible. But after talking among themselves, they decided to stay. “In the beginning, we really felt bad that we couldn’t do anything, that we couldn’t help our families and friends in Israel,” Attia says. “But then when you think about it, you really realize we’re on a mission and that we can be helpful. We can show the world.”
Ohad Attia
Austin Hargrave
The next day, as1one went to its scheduled studio session and met with songwriter-producers Jenna Andrews and Stephen Kirk, who together have credits on mega-hits like BTS’ “Butter” and “Permission To Dance.” Andrews and Kirk had already joined as1one for writing sessions in Israel, and that familiarity helped the duo channel the group’s intense emotions into music as the horrific news from Israel continued.
“The toughest moments were during the sessions,” Rozenblat says. “I was told about two friends that were killed, Niv was told about friends of his that were killed — a lot of us found out about really awful stuff during that session, not to mention that now there’s a whole war going on.”
But by the end of the session, they had a new song. Two-and-a-half weeks later, in a sun-drenched conference room in Century City, they play it for me through a beat-up Bluetooth speaker.
“What if we just stopped the world/Hold the phone/Faced the hurt/Take me home/We’re not built for this/We’re built for more/Forget the score/Show me what it’s like when we stop the world,” the sextet sings over a pulsing beat. It’s the kind of anthem that’s vocally reminiscent of the Backstreet Boys’ heyday and thematically evocative of — depending on how you’re listening — either a tumultuous romance or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“How crazy is it to get hugs from Palestinian friends when my Israeli friends died?” Lin says. “That’s our story.”
Sadik Dogosh
Austin Hargrave
As1one wasn’t necessarily intended to function as a singing six-man answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Seeing how K-pop and Latin music became global forces over the past few years, Levitan and Diener wanted to form a group from outside the Western world that they could build into a superstar act. They had experience with this caliber of artist: Levitan helped develop Kings of Leon, managed Bon Jovi and, as co-founder and president of Nashville-based Vector Management, has worked with Kesha, The B-52s, The Fray and more. Diener launched A&M Octone Records, where he developed acts including Maroon 5, and after the label sold its 50% share to Interscope Geffen A&M, he co-founded the music publishing and management firm Freesolo Entertainment.
Together they looked to Israel, a place, Diener says, where “we felt that what they have to say musically hadn’t really been given a shot on the world stage.” The pair weren’t seeking to create a group made up of Israelis and Palestinians — only to, as Levitan says, “leave no stone unturned” in their search for the country’s very best talent. They began traveling to Israel in late 2021, first to find the Israeli and Palestinian casting directors and consultants who could get them access to local music schools, conservatories and recording studios where they would scout talent. (They’ve been back to the country every two months since the first trip.) Ami Nir, an A&R executive at Universal Music Group in Israel, became their partner in the project and was crucial in creating connections.
Aseel Farah
Austin Hargrave
Even before meeting any prospective singers, the pair — who refer to themselves as the group’s founders and producers — encountered plenty of challenges: raising investment money, working in a foreign market (and during a global pandemic) and, above all, the historic tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. During one meeting, a potential Palestinian talent scout was so opposed to the idea of a mixed band that she flicked her cigarette ashes at Levitan and Diener.
“We were really working from negative one, not even at zero,” Levitan says of the meeting. “She was very pessimistic.” But as the two explained their history in the business and their vision for the group, the scout uncrossed her arms and listened — and, shortly thereafter, joined the team. Such unlikely changes of heart happened again and again at meetings throughout the country. “I think people felt our sincerity,” Diener says. “They didn’t feel like this was in any way a gimmick or a pretext.”
As Diener explains, assembling a group from this part of the world inherently meant being “confronted by the question of, ‘Are you willing to put together a group that may be mixed?’ ” He and Levitan agreed that they were — but that it would require choosing “the right guys who could handle and appreciate that mix of talent within the band,” Diener says.
As they narrowed down the talent pool during auditions, Levitan and Diener met with families of potential members, selling parents, siblings and extended relatives on the idea, often through translators, and many times while sitting around the family’s kitchen table after a meal.
Nadav Philips
Austin Hargrave
By this point, they had also enlisted a documentary crew to film the process; cameras were put in place after people close to Levitan and Diener suggested what they were doing “might just be historic,” Diener recalls. Ultimately, the local Israeli team was replaced with a crew from Paramount+, which has since shot hundreds of hours of footage for a forthcoming five-episode docuseries produced by James Carroll (Waco: American Apocalypse, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer). “It’s in no way a reality series,” Levitan says. “This is something much more thoughtful and cinematic.”
The cameras were rolling during the final phase of the audition process: a May 2022 boy band boot camp in Neve Shalom, an Israeli village founded in 1969 by Israeli Jews and Arabs to demonstrate that the two groups could live together in peace. Here, the guys played instruments, posed for photo shoots, showed off their dexterity with social media and sang together. “You’d be singing to yourself, then someone standing on the other side of the road would be doing a harmony with you,” Attia recalls.
A psychologist was on site as well, not only to ensure potential members were mentally prepared for the demanding work schedule ahead, but also to weigh in on whether they would fit well within the unique mixed-group dynamic. “There were [guys] we really wanted to work with,” Diener says, “but as their community and parents became more aware of what this was going to look like, they couldn’t endorse it in the same way they’d endorsed the audition process, so we lost a few really good prospects.” (Levitan adds that these prospects wouldn’t have necessarily made it into the group.)
A year-and-a-half after starting the scouting process, Levitan and Diener had settled on the right six guys — it was just by circumstance that four were Jewish Israelis and two Palestinian.
When Levitan and Diener Zoomed Dogosh to tell him he had been accepted, the camera crew caught him jumping around so enthusiastically that his microphone broke. “Getting accepted in the band, it was like a fever dream,” says Rozenblat, who had been tracking 25,000 steps a day while pacing around his house waiting for the news.
Neta Rozenblat
Austin Hargrave
Recording started shortly thereafter, with the guys intermittently traveling from their respective homes to a Tel Aviv studio. Philips and Lin say they had never spoken with a Palestinian person until joining as1one — a name that the guys chose from a few options that the team had come up with and that is pronounced “as one.” Over time, camaraderie grew, and by the time they gave their first live performance at a private event for TikTok Israel eight months after their inception, they were looking, sounding, moving and working the room like a band. (Levitan and Diener often use the words “brotherhood” and “unity” when describing the group’s bond.)
The bonding process ramped up in August, when as1one traveled to London to record at Abbey Road Studios with Nile Rodgers, who plays guitar on one of the songs written by Andrews and Kirk. (The session came together after Diener sent Rodgers the group’s cover of Rodgers’ Daft Punk collaboration, “Get Lucky.”) After they wrapped, Rodgers gave his guitar to as1one guitarist Attia, who says he was “literally shaking” and immediately FaceTimed his mother to tell her. (Overjoyed for her son, she cried.)
On Oct. 5, as1one boarded a flight for what was meant to be a monthlong trip to L.A. The scheduling turned out to be prescient: The team had considered flying the guys out a few days later — which, had it happened, would have put the project on perpetual hold amid a war that to date has killed around 1,200 Israelis (and claimed an estimated 240 hostages) and more than 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to reports from Gaza’s Health Ministry (an agency that, as The New York Times has reported, “is part of the Hamas government in Gaza but employs civil servants who predate Hamas’ control of the territory”).
While their families remain in the increasingly precarious situation abroad, as1one is in L.A. indefinitely, living in a rented house in Sherman Oaks with Andrew Berkowitz (the group’s executive in charge of talent who was involved in casting and has more than 30 years’ experience in artist promotion at labels including RCA and Arista) and traveling to various local studios making music. “Our policy with them is whatever they need, including if they need to go home, we will make that happen,” Diener says. “There’s a lot of people keeping their eyes on them.”
The group has recorded seven songs in the four weeks since its arrival, with collaborators including Andrews, Kirk, Danja (Nelly Furtado’s “Say It Right,” Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack,” Britney Spears’ “Gimme More”), Justin Tranter (a go-to co-writer for Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Maroon 5 and Imagine Dragons) and Y2K (Doja Cat’s “Attention”).
Niv Lin
Austin Hargrave
The songs as1one performs for me live in this conference room include a stirring ballad with lyrics fashioned in boilerplate boy band parlance (“I wouldn’t be me without you!”), rendered in gorgeous six-part harmony and delivered with passion. (They close their eyes a lot while singing.) When the guys launch into a peppier, sexier jam about being hot-blooded animals on the dancefloor, it’s easy enough to imagine a stadium full of fans screaming along. The songs are clever and well-constructed, and the melodies stay in my head long after the meeting is over.
The guys, along with Levitan and Diener, are quick to clarify that they’re less a “boy band” and more a “male pop group,” given that they play instruments (Attia is on acoustic and electric guitar, keyboard and drums; Lin plays keys and acoustic guitar; Philips plays keyboard; Rozenblat plays keyboard and acoustic guitar; Farah is on percussion; and Dogosh is learning piano) and don’t plan on performing choreography. And Levitan and Diener expect that the group’s story will attract a wider-than-usual fan base for an act of this kind. Still, as the duo sees it, their core fan base will likely be — in the high-pitched squealing tradition of groups like *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys — what Levitan calls “a very, very excited and active female audience.”
It’s not yet clear when the first as1one single will be released, and the group hasn’t yet announced a label signing. (Levitan and Diener say they can’t disclose details on label negotiations beyond that “there’s real interest in the band.”) They’re backed by a 30-person team and 15 lawyers representing each member individually and collectively across trademarks, music, film and general counsel, and repped by WME, where they also have film and TV representation. That documentary crew lives with them, still capturing their every move — from jam sessions at the house (where there is a “No harmonicas after 11 p.m.” policy) to the much darker and more complex moments of their recent history.
All this infrastructure is being forged with a singular vision: to make as1one the biggest musical group in the world. “I mean, seriously,” Levitan says. “That’s our goal.”
The stakes for as1one were always high, but they’ve of course become significantly higher over the last six weeks. Eight of the group’s friends and family members have been killed in the conflict. It would be overwhelming for anyone, and certainly must be for the six young men now living 7,500 miles from their home, where a brutal war is being fought. But whether through coaching or genuine belief, the guys present a silver-lining attitude.
“There’s no way to describe how bad you feel,” Philips says. “Your first instinct is to go back and be with your friends and family. Then a few days later, you realize there’s no better service to the world than what we’re doing, and it just gives us a bigger purpose.”
“We don’t want to be political,” adds rapper Farah. “We just want to be humanitarian.”
From left: Sadik Dogosh, Ohad Attia, Niv Lin, Nadav Philips, Aseel Farah and Neta Rozenblat of as1one.
Austin Hargrave
They also don’t want to be inextricably linked to the conflict that, like it or not, has defined their formation. “One of the things we’ve told them,” Levitan says, “especially with everything going on now, [is that these events] can be an influence [on the music] but just can’t be directly related, because [the music] has got to be broad enough where everybody can relate to it.”
Right now, though, the inherent message of an Israeli-Palestinian group named as1one may give the act a greater meaning than Diener and Levitan could have ever imagined, regardless of what the guys are singing about. Conversations now aren’t just about being the biggest band in the world, but about the Nobel Peace Prize.
“You may say it’s a pie-in-the-sky kind of goal,” says Levitan. “But what this has become is that important.”
This story originally appeared in the Nov. 18, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Macklemore said he didn’t expect to give a speech at the pro-Palestine demonstration on Saturday (Nov. 4) in Washington, D.C. But he found himself at a podium in front of the thousands of protesters who showed up to call for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the militant terror group Hamas.
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“First and foremost, this is absolutely beautiful to observe today,” the rapper said of the crowd in front of him.
“I didn’t expect to be on a microphone,” said Macklemore. “There are thousands of people here more qualified to speak on the issue of a free Palestine than myself.”
“But I will say this,” Macklemore continued. “They told me to be quiet. They told me to do my research, to go back, that it’s too complex to say something, right? To be silent in this moment. In the last three weeks I’ve gone back and I’ve done some research … I’m teachable. I don’t know enough. But I know enough that this is a genocide.”
Saturday’s protest was in response to Israel’s retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, which killed more than 1,400 people. Since then, the Israeli military’s response has killed more than 9,000 people in Gaza, according to reports from CNN, with a large percentage of fatalities that have included children, women and the elderly.
Macklemore, who released a statement on the conflict via Instagram on Oct. 19, also shared a video from the crowd of Saturday’s rally in an Instagram Story.
In his Oct. 19 post, he wrote: “I have been in fear. I have felt a literal lump in my throat and I cannot stay silent any longer. I condemn the murder of any human. The bombings, kidnappings and murder of the Israeli people carried out by Hamas was horrific in every way imaginable. My heart deeply hurts for the Israelis that lost loved ones to such an abomination. As a father I cannot imagine if one my kids was at that festival, or was still missing after being kidnapped. It is absolutely unfathomable. But killing innocent humans in retaliation as collective punishment is not the answer. That is why I am supporting the people around the world who are calling for a ceasefire.”
Watch a clip of his speech from Saturday in D.C. below.
Macklemore speaks at the “Free Palestine” rally in DC: “They told me to do my research, that it’s too complex, to be silent … In the last 3 weeks, I’ve gone back & I have done some research, I don’t know everything, but I know enough to know that this is a genocide.” pic.twitter.com/QQcjZQcSFQ— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) November 4, 2023
There is no subtle way to say this: Lil Nas X managed to outdo himself, and just about everyone else with his Halloween costume this year. The “Industry Baby” rapper loves to push our buttons with outrageous stage outfits and sets, but on Tuesday (Oct. 31) Montero took things to a whole new level with […]
Israel has reported that Shani Louk, a 23-year-old German-Israeli woman kidnapped by Hamas at the Nova Music Festival, has been found dead.
The ministry confirmed Louk’s death in a Monday (Oct. 30) statement on X, formerly Twitter. “We are devastated to share that [Louk’s] body,” it read, “was found and identified.”
The statement alleged that the young woman, prior to her death, was “tortured and paraded around Gaza by Hamas terrorists.”
Louk was one of thousands of festival-goers attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, when the terrorist group surrounded and gunned down Nova attendants that morning and throughout the day. Earlier this month, Louk’s mother, Ricarda, told CNN that she last spoke to her daughter after hearing rockets and alarms sounding in southern Israel. Shani told her mother she was at the festival, but there were few places to hide.
“She was going to her car and they had military people standing by the cars and were shooting so people couldn’t reach their cars, even to go away,” Ricarda said at the time. “And that’s when they took her.”
Per CNN, Louk’s body was captured on video prior to her death, seemingly unconscious in the back of a Hamas truck after the festival attack.
Hundreds of bodies were found onsite after the massacre, which was part of a wider Hamas attack on Israel that claimed approximately 1,400 lives. Around 200 people remain hostages of Hamas.
In retaliation, Israel has since declared war against the terrorist group, launching airstrikes on Hamas-controlled Gaza in Palestine. As of Monday (Oct. 30), the estimated death toll in Gaza stands at more than 8,000, with civilians constituting most of the dead.
As citizens across the world have called for a ceasefire in the Middle East, 120 countries voted last week for a United Nations resolution and “sustained humanitarian truce” in Gaza; meanwhile, Israel’s military announced plans to expand ground operations. On Friday (Oct. 27), two survivors of the festival attack — 27-year-old Maya Parizer and 28-year-old Jonathan Diller — spoke about their experiences to a crowd of mostly students at New York University, with Diller describing how “the missiles kept coming and coming.”
On Friday (Oct. 27), less than three weeks after Hamas terrorists killed more than 260 attendees at an electronic music festival in Re’im, Israel, two survivors spoke about their experiences to a crowd of mostly students at New York University.
The festival massacre was part of a wider Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that claimed approximately 1,400 lives, most of them civilians, and set off a war between Hamas and Israel that continues to escalate as Israel bombs Gaza and conducts limited sorties into the area. Officials in Hamas-controlled Gaza have listed the Palestinian death toll at more than 6,000, although President Biden has said he has “no confidence” in that number. As the festival survivors spoke Friday, hundreds of protesters gathered further uptown in New York’s Grand Central Terminal calling for a ceasefire. Around 200 people remain hostages of Hamas.
Maya Parizer, a 27-year-old Israeli American, and Jonathan Diller, a 28-year-old Israeli-Italian American, shared their stories to a room of less than 100 people on a Friday afternoon, with both staying around afterward to speak one-on-one to students. Pictures and descriptions of festival attendees who were kidnapped and remain hostages were laid out on chairs.
Parizer began to tear up almost immediately, sharing that she had attended the Nova Festival prior to 2023 and encouraged many of her friends to attend this year.
The attack began around 6:30 in the morning on Oct. 7, which Parizer said is a normal hour for Nova attendees to be up and dancing. “Sunrise is when the best dancing happens,” she said. “Instead of amazing DJs, I saw what looked like a thousand rockets within seconds… I didn’t imagine what happened next would be exponentially worse.”
“[I’m the] type of the person who tells everyone to wake up and start dancing,” Diller recalls of the morning of Oct. 7. “So we go to the stage and start dancing. At 6:30, we start seeing the rockets. And, uh, it’s kind of interesting. You see all these dozens of rockets in the air coming toward you, from the side, and the music keeps going. You can’t hear the alarm – it’s loud music…. Everyone didn’t panic because there was still music going on. People were drunk, didn’t know what’s going on.”
Not long after, the music was shut off and a police officer told attendees the situation was code red, referring to the Red Color early-warning system that warns Israeli towns around the Gaza Strip that missiles are incoming. “The missiles kept coming and coming,” Diller said between many heavy sighs. “I’m talking about a hundred missiles in the air and people just panicking.”
Despite the rocket attack, Parizer notes that no one seemed to understand the full gravity of the situation; many of the 3,000 attendees were preparing to leave but taking time to pack up their belongings, not aware that Hamas terrorists were headed their way.
Both Parizer and Diller, who attended the festival separately and left in separate vehicles around 7 a.m., said it was a decision to drive away via the road less traveled – a move based on luck as much as logic – that ultimately saved their lives. It was only as they attempted to drive away from the Re’im event amidst heavy traffic that the extent of the attack became apparent. Diller said he stopped to help a woman out of her bullet-riddled car: “We open the door and she slides out, just bleeding. We didn’t understand where this poor girl, 23…. got shot from,” he said. At that point he realized “something’s not right.”
At that point, Diller and his friends began to flee on foot, moving away from the sound of “heavy gunshots.” They walked for more than four hours before finding shelter in a distant town. “People were so tired, people were still drunk,” Diller says. “[It was] just keep your head down, don’t panic, keep going forward.”
Parizer became aware how serious the situation was after driving past a bloody body on the side of the road, calling the police and receiving no answer. After she and her fiancé drove past terrorists who shot at them (“by some miracle [we survived]” she said), an Israeli soldier stopped their car and instructed them to stop driving. “We were a minute or so from turning left and not being here to tell our story,” she said.
While squatting in a nearby shelter, Parizer said she decided to “call my parents and say my goodbyes.” Her mother didn’t pick up, and her father “didn’t comprehend the situation. He tried to reassure me and said IDF [Israel Defense Forces] would handle it and I should stay in the shelter.” But with no door on the shelter, Parizer and her fiancé decided to flee, a decision she believes saved their lives. They found a family who let them hide in a nearby kibbutz, and for the next 24 hours, they laid low, listening to the sound of automatic gunshots while clutching kitchen knives.
Parizer also shared the story of her friend, a woman who “didn’t have the luxury” of getting out physically unscathed. Terrorists found her friend and several others inside a shelter and began throwing grenades inside. “These are not people that are experienced,” Parizer said of those hiding in the shelter. “It’s drunk people with survival instincts who were brave. They decided to throw the grenades back…. In the beginning, they were successful, but they started losing their body parts. Hands, feet.”
Despite suffering extensive bruising and hearing loss in one ear, her friend survived, though she initially didn’t realize why. When footage of the attack was later reviewed and translated, her friend learned the reason she was set aside. “They said, ‘she is the one for rape, so let’s put her back inside for rape.’ My best friend,” Parizer said through tears. “By some miracle she survived because they had to leave. I don’t know why. Something happened and they left.”
Parizer said she’s still “traumatized” and “petrified”; when a building alarm went off in the distance during their NYU visit, she was visibly uncomfortable until it stopped.
“It’s just people that went to rave,” she said. “It’s like going to Coachella and not coming back. Most of us did not even comprehend what was going on when it started.”
“I would say it’s like Burning Man with Coachella – just people loving life,” Diller said. He recalled convincing his resistant friend to go with him to the festival in the first place. “I said, ‘Come on, it’s the Nova Peace Festival. It’s once a year, it’s 3000 nice people, beautiful people.’”
Diller summed up what the festival turned into: “[They were] coming with machine guns and spraying whoever they could see just because they’re Jewish. [The dead] didn’t do anything to anyone. Two of my friends were murdered and three of them got kidnapped.”
“I condemn all deaths. I don’t want to see any people hurt. I advocate peace – I always have,” Parizer said. “I know it’s not the entire nation [of Palestine]. I don’t want to talk politics – I just want the kidnapped back home. And I want the terrorists to stop. Thank you for listening.”
