Rotem Shafran Charts His Path from TikTok Hit to Live Stage Success
Twenty-two-year-old Israeli musician Rotem Shafran discusses his musical journey, his breakthrough TikTok hit, and the successful release concert for his second album amidst wartime challenges.
When "Kotev Shirei Prida" began playing at the Martz 2 club in Tel Aviv, 22-year-old Rotem Shafran took out his earplug. It was the final song at the release concert for his second album, "Yoter Madai BeAchat," and the first time he performed it with a full band in front of hundreds of people. Shafran wanted to hear the crowd, and what he heard were his own lyrics chanted by voices of strangers. "It is a somewhat strange experience," he says. "It is a bit weird when people shout back the words you wrote about your heart breaking. But it is amazing, this is what it is all about."
Before knowing how his music sounded when screamed by an ecstatic crowd, Shafran had to discover how his music sounded at all. In first grade, he began studying classical piano inspired by his mother, though the lessons felt too rigid and he admits he did not always enjoy them. His attitude toward playing shifted when he joined a jazz ensemble and learned to improvise. Music had accompanied him from a young age, but it was only in the eleventh grade, when he began writing his own songs, that he felt the puzzle was complete. The lyrics were the missing piece to the melodies he already knew how to play.
"I was in a very dramatic relationship, and toward the end, I wrote seven songs in two months," Shafran recounts. These were the first seven songs he ever wrote. "I did not know if I would ever manage to write songs again, so I had to put these out. That was my first album." Already in these initial tracks, one can hear the sincerity, melancholy, and vulnerability that would return in his next album. Following his military service in an army band, while his peers discussed big post-army trips, Shafran found it easier to envision himself continuing to work on music, dedicating this post-discharge period to his second album.
Then came "Kotev Shirei Prida." The second single from the album became a hit on TikTok and later received radio airplay. Shafran speaks about the success as someone who prepared for this exact moment. Ticket sales for the release concert, held in the shadow of war with Iran, were initially slow, but every last ticket eventually sold. Dreaming of conquering major stages in Israel and looking toward the international arena, the 22-year-old artist has already given his audience a reason to believe in him.
