Nikhil Bagga has his feelings trampled by friends who Never Meant It in his latest single and video — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Even a 15-year-old guitar god-in-waiting occasionally has to deal with normal, everyday high-school angst. For Canadian-born, Seattle-based Bagga, that means having to sit home with his trusty axe while everybody else is out having a good time:
“You don’t invite me to the party but you play my song
I know I should be happy but I feel so wrong
While everyone is having fun and shooting for the stars
I’m just a kid who’s strumming his guitar.
And you say you never meant to make me cry
And you say you feel so sorry but you can’t deny.”
“The song was inspired by a time when I saw a bunch of my friends having fun at a party online and I wasn’t invited,” Bagga explains, matter-of-factly. “Even though they didn’t mean to hurt me, it did.”
But the fretboard prodigy resists the temptation to blast them with a blaze of fretboard pyrotechnics. Instead, Never Meant It airs its grievances via chugging, percussive rhythm guitar and chord slashes that mesh perfectly with the outcast vibe of the lyrics — and Bagga’s raspy-yet-cherubic vocals — to create an aural effect that’s pure ’90s grunge. Which is not entirely inappropriate for a Seattle kid who’s already made quite a name for himself in his adoptive home.
The throwback vibe notwithstanding, Bagga’s target audience is teenagers like him: Ones who are passionate about music, and particularly those who gravitate towards the gritty authenticity of rock. As the new single so ably demonstrates, his music is awash in the earnestness and frustration of being young and searching for meaning in a world that feels chaotic and uncertain.
Never Meant It was recorded at London Bridge Studios with producer Eric Lilavois, whom Bagga calls a vital collaborator on more than one front. “We orchestrated the whole thing and really made it come to life,” he enthuses. Accompanying him on the record are drummer Ben Smith and bassist Andy Stoller, the former rhythm section of the legendary Heart. And thus one generation of Seattle music meets the next.
Rites of passage are second nature by now to Bagga, who learned guitar at age 9 by playing along to records by AC/DC, Ed Sheeran, Nirvana and Queen. By his 10th birthday, he was making his public debut, busking in San Diego. When the pandemic hit, he kept himself in the public eye by sharing a song a day online, attracting an ever-growing legion of fans with his takes on pop and rock classics. Before long, his repertoire had swollen to 350 songs.
The next step in his musical evolution saw him moving from covers to originals — the better to document his daily reality in song. He collected the cream of the crop on his debut album Leap of Faith, which he recorded at London Bridge with Lilavois and released in 2022. Since then, he’s made more than 40 appearances at marquee Seattle venues. He took a road trip to perform at the famed Bluebird Café in Nashville. Bagga has also appeared on Voice of America and made numerous TV appearances in Toronto and Seattle.
And then there’s that high-profile cottage industry he’s forged for himself as pregame entertainment. Bagga has become a familiar face at Seattle’s professional sports stadiums, having played the national anthem multiple times for the Mariners and Kraken. He even busted out an electric-guitar version of O Canada for the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs.
Bagga’s goal going forward is to continue to fuse the diverse influences of Seattle’s musical landscape — the electrifying riffs of Jimi Hendrix, the raw authenticity of Kurt Cobain and the soulful melodies of Pearl Jam — into a singular, powerful voice. He has a new EP coming soon that’ll take that agenda to the next level.
Watch the lyric video for Never Meant It above, hear more from Nikhil Bagga below, and find him at his website, Facebook and TikTok.
