The 2022 BMI Pop Awards were held Tuesday night in Beverly Hills, California. By the end, Omer Fedi embodied songwriting’s pinnacle.
Maybe you’ve never seen Omer Fedi, though his bright-red hair makes him impossible to miss. Either way, you have definitely heard the smash singles that he’s written or produced. Fedi is 22 years old, but he already wields a veteran’s presence with a genre-melding, guitar-heavy style contorting mainstream music.
Fedi was rewarded for this at the 2022 BMI Pop Awards, which he attended alongside his manager, Conor Ambrose, and girlfriend Addison Rae.
Fedi bagged song of the year for 24kGoldn’s “Mood” featuring Iann Dior and tied for songwriter of the year alongside Michael Pollack. He served as a co-producer and co-writer on “Mood,” the alt-pop/R&B revelation orbiting a Fedi guitar riff that topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight non-consecutive weeks from August 2020 to January 2021.
In April 2021, Billboard relayed that Fedi had become the only producer with multiple No. 1s to his name that year when Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” hit No. 1. That was before Fedi co-produced last summer’s gift that keeps on giving in “Stay” by The Kid LAROI featuring Justin Bieber — and before Lil Nas X dropped his debut studio album MONTERO last September. The hotly anticipated project housed radio darling “That’s What I Want,” co-produced and co-written by Fedi, that peaked at No. 8 on the Hot 100 by October. (Fedi has credits on seven of MONTERO‘s 15 tracks.)
“Stay” is still charting in the Hot 100 top-10 almost exactly 10 months after its July 9, 2021 release. The frenetic single has spent 43 weeks on the chart, including a multiple-week run at No. 1. Prior to “Stay,” Fedi co-produced/wrote LAROI’s melancholy acoustic breakout “Without You” that was later remixed with Miley Cyrus.
“Mood,” “Montero,” “Stay” and “Without You” were four of the 50 most-performed pop songs of 2021 recognized at the ceremony, per BMI.
“I don’t understand how you can make music with someone that isn’t your friend, or someone random,” Fedi told Variety last spring. “If you don’t vibe together as a human, even if both of you are incredible musicians, you just can’t make good music.”
Safe to say Fedi has the formula down pat.
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