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Photo by Lucy Gates

Rising star Canadian native Adam Klobi has released his latest single, "FICTION," and with it, he's solidified his place in our nostalgia-seeking hearts. With a discography dappled in early 2000s influences, there's a timelessness to his folk-pop earworms. We sat down with Adam to hear the latest on his exciting year ahead, as well as comic book illustrators, songs that sound like they were played in your mom's garage, and Klobi's very own musical Cinderella story. 

OnesToWatch: Why are you an artist? 


Adam Klobi: Don't think there was – whether I knew it or not – ever really an option not to be. I found music relatively recently, and I think once I did, I could never see myself doing anything else. There's just no feeling like expressing myself through music, that be writing lyrics or composing something on the guitar. It's unmatched and I've never felt a pull like when I latched onto music a few years back. 

That said, was there anything else that competed for your attention growing up? 

Yeah, growing up, I did visual arts quite a bit. As a young kid, I wanted to be a comic illustrator and very quickly I realized the small percentage of actual people that make money doing that. My dad sort of steered me clear of that. But I spent hours and hours and hours drawing in high school. It's all I did – every assignment page was just filled with doodles. 
And funnily enough, what accompanied that was me locking myself in my headphones. I've always had such a kinship with music. I take offense when someone's like, “I don't like that song,” 
and it's my favorite song. There've been creative outlets throughout my life, but I think the second I found music, it was a different story altogether. 

I love that you had the visual medium going on. Do you have a favorite comic or graphic novel illustrator?

There's a series called American Vampire and it's the coolest art you'll ever see. And another one by the same illustrator, called Punk Rock Jesus. That one's crazy. It’s in the future and they find a way to clone Jesus and it's a reality show on his life. He’s obviously an outcast and a rebel, he's in a punk rock band. It's pretty cool. 

I pulled it up. I was curious immediately, so I'll take a look at that. Diving back into the music, how long have you been comfortable with the idea of putting music out into the world? 

I mean, a couple of years back, I got the inkling that I was able to sing. I always loved singing in the shower, singing in the car, but I'm the youngest of three so I was getting told to shut up anytime I opened my mouth. I never quite thought, hey, I'm going to make this a career. It's a crazy thing to think. But when I attached myself to it, there was just a turning point where I was like, I have to try. It was last September, a year and a half ago. I quit my retail job cold turkey. I had maybe eight months worth of rent saved up. Month five, I was out of money. I quite literally did not stop playing guitar, like six hours a day, my fingers would quite literally bleed. I lost my voice seven, eight times, because all I was doing was trial and error, just trying my best posting on TikTok. I had no followers anywhere either. So this was just a crazy thing to do, especially with no backup plan. But I figured there's one chance that you got to take. And within eight months, I was dead broke. But then, literally in orientation for a job that I finally found, just to try and get by, the guy leading the orientation goes, “If you guys are trying to pay rent with this job, you might want to try and find another job.” I'm defeated. This is the only job I could possibly find. I'm defeated, but when I pulled out my phone, my manager had called me like 20 times. I called him back and he's like, hey, go look at TikTok. There were like 10,000 videos made with the sound that I posted three days before.
It was a very crazy Cinderella story, but I'm very fortunate that it worked out the way that it did and I'm able to do this full time. I really threw myself into it without a plan and without a backup plan, and now that I'm able to do this full time, as my dream career, it's absurd to think that it's a possibility. I'm so, so, so blessed and fortunate. 

That's a great story.
Let's get into your writing process. Do you have a process? Is there something you lean on consistently – melodies, thoughts, topline first? 
Do you approach it based on moments in time, moods?

The way I approach writing is similar to the way a screenwriter would approach a script.
It's not necessarily always about me. It's just a culmination of things I've seen and movies I've watched and books I've read. Also, I always wonder how I can tell a story that's going to be received and applicable to as many people as possible. And also as authentic to me at the same time. I try not to be hyperspecific with everything that I'm writing, but sometimes it makes sense. With “Dinner,” the main topic is eating disorders. That’s something I personally struggle with now. The artist's lifestyle makes it very, very hard to maintain a healthy eating schedule. And it may not have applied to me back then when I wrote the song, but somehow it's kind of applying to me now. When I wrote “Dinner,” it was actually a look inward at my skin. I had really, really bad acne in high school, and I didn't want to write about that, per se, but I still wanted to write using that feeling and the emotion that I was going through at the time, so I just wrote it through a different lens. The fact that it connected with that many people is crazy to me, I'm still astonished to this day. 

There’s a lot of people struggling that need a voice. Pivoting to your more recent work – let's talk about “WE WERE NEVER JUST FRIENDS.” How did that song come about? 

I took a trip out to LA over the summer, and I was very intentional going into sessions with what I wanted to write, how I wanted to write it, what I wanted each song to feel like. Over the next few months, I'm going to be releasing a bunch of songs that live in the world of “WE WERE NEVER JUST FRIENDS” and that feeling of nostalgia. I'm a victim to it. I love nostalgia. I romanticize it. You forget all the bad things that were in that time and space in your life, and only remember the good. It's just that feeling of big, open space and emotional blanket, and with a lot of these songs, I just wanted to portray more of that. I feel like a lot of music right now is like, what's the most clippable lyric that I can put and then throw onto TikTok. I really wanted to avoid that. Especially going into a project mindset of wanting to pick up instruments with a band and play like it’s my mom's garage. It's just such a fun feeling, that early 2000s nostalgia. And it’s interesting, because of the internet, I can feel nostalgic for that even though I didn’t experience it. It's this weird effect and I've noticed it and I kind of enjoy it because it's surreal to see people that are way too young to have experienced that have nostalgia for it. 

Your songs and projects, do they have a plot throughline, or are they separate stories? If we’re talking screenwriting, are they a part of the same world, or different ones? 

Going forward, with these songs that are coming in the next few months, they're all tied into each other and telling a broader story. I think my first couple of releases were definitely a look inward and they were very self-critical. They make you think about yourself. These next few are more experimental, with both really fun and really heartbreaking stuff. But they do ultimately tie together, yeah. 


I love that. What are your ambitions for the future releases? How do you hope these next few songs affect listeners? 

That's a great question. I wasn't as content as I’d like to be with some of my last few releases, just because I wanted something that I love and I would listen to. I think, “If I went on Spotify and clicked on this, would I listen to it?” Going into these next few songs, I want to make sure that I am super, super proud of everything. And that is for the benefit of the listener and me. No matter what, I’ll be more comfortable and getting settled into a space that I want to live in. 

Amazing. What is your biggest creative crime and why was it worth it? 

Oof. Posting not even close to finished songs and just seeing what stuck. And then the second one of them stuck, I’d finish it. 

I think people respond to the rawness of things, so that’s a great method. If you're in a celebratory mood, what do you do to celebrate? And who do you take with you? 

I would just want to eat some real good food. I love food. Food's the best thing other than music. 

Do you cook? 

I love to cook, but I don't know if you can see my kitchen, but it’s about the size of a fridge. But I do like to cook. 

If you could go back into time, any time, any place, anywhere, would you want to? And if so, where would you go? 

Loaded question. Anywhere where there's not disease and scurvy. But actually, I’d like to be a fly on the wall while watching Paul and John and George in the Get Back session, just hashing songs out. It's the craziest thing that we even get to see that recorded at all, but to be there would be the greatest thing ever. 

If you're having some writer's block or you just need a mental break, what do you do to regroup and ground yourself? 

I love concerts. That's number one. If there's a concert in my two mile radius, I'm there. But other than music, it’s TV. Finding a good show that's quality… I’m not into Real Housewives or anything like that. But some True Detective or something, that’s good. 

Do you binge it out? 

Oh, I'll binge it until I realize my responsibilities exist, you know? 

I'm going to ask a two-part question. I would love a recommendation that's non-musical, so it'd be an activity, a place to visit, something to eat, anything. And then, of course, the second part is a music recommendation. 


Non-musical… if you're in Toronto, there's this really sick Japanese barbecue spot that I like, Gyubee, I've made a fool of myself there plenty of times by eating way too much. You cook the meat in front of you and you get crazy flavors. It’s the best food ever, I love it. 


That's a good one. I love that it's local, too. 


Oh, it's so, so good. And then musically, my favorite album is an album by an Australian band called Gang of Youths and it's called Go Farther in Lightness. It's probably the best thing you can ever listen to. It's just rock and there's strings and fiddle and it's just so good. Every song's dynamic in the lyricism. You'll never remember a single lyric because it's just all over the place and so extra, but it's so good. 

I was alive and loving that album when it came out. 

It's special. 

Lastly, the floor is yours. If you have anything you want to end on – advice, anecdotes, promo, shout outs, “Hi mom” – it’s all you. 

I'm super, super excited about the next few months. Keep an eye out on my socials and see what's coming, because there's a lot of good things coming. We've been working really hard. But also, if you're 25, if you're 35, just try to do whatever that thing is you’ve been wanting to do. I was 22 when I figured out I wanted to do music, and it's a testament to the fact that if you really, really, truly want something, it doesn't matter how old you are when you find it, you can do it if you really, really, truly want it. You just have to work and make sacrifices. 

Awesome.