KESHI’S GABRIEL LANDS #1 NEW ARTIST DEBUT ALBUM OF 2022
Keshi’s debut studio GABRIEL earns the Top New Artist Debut of 2022 with the highest first-week sales for a debut album — landing GABRIEL a Top 20 slot on the Billboard 200 and Top 5 on the Billboard Top Album Sales charts. Out via Island Records, keshi’s magnum opus received praise from MTV, “GABRIEL is a raw and revealing portrait of the man behind the artist,” while NPR described it as, “On his debut album GABRIEL, keshi showcases a newfound confidence..” GABRIEL also received critical acclaim from Allure, Consequence, CLASH, Rolling Stone, and more.
The album, for the first time, finds the 27-year-old singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist as the main character of his sonically articulated world. “GABRIEL is a record that turned out much more personal than I intended from the beginning,” keshi shared. “It ended up being a means for me to process the experience of having transitioned from a much less public life to another I’m having a little more trouble navigating recently. I thought about success, purpose, family, pressure, and failure; how time is my only commodity and how sex is just skin; how little I care for what people have to say and how important it is at the same time. I was reminded how fun making music is supposed to feel, and that it’s just as much listened to as its lyrics are heard. It’s an album that I hope is candid, varied, and one you can come back to again and again.” With over 1.8 billion global streams, keshi’s rising success has been astonishing. He commands a large and loyal fanbase without ever releasing a full-length project prior. The North American and European leg of his upcoming, headlining tour, HELL/HEAVEN, sold out during presale, resulting in the addition of dates and larger rooms. GABRIEL release, captures the nuances that makes keshi beloved and a household name in the making.
Monikered as keshi (stylized), a phonetic play on his name, Casey Luong is an artist's artist, whose ways with connectivity have titled him as a force to be reckoned with. With over a 1.6 billion listens worldwide, keshi has gone on to become a streaming force with his acclaimed trilogy of EPs —skeletons (2019), bandaids (2020) and always (2020). Until GABRIEL, keshi has been a self-reliant artist, who wrote, produced, engineered and played all the instrumentation on his projects. His initial success includes making his Billboard debut when skeletons hit #59 on the Top Album Sales chart. Since then, keshi has grown to accumulate nearly 5.5 million monthly Spotify listeners, on top of making his mark on Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: The Album with his song “War With Heaven,” getting BTS’ co-signs and collaborating with brands like YSL, Fender and Microsoft. A fan-favorite, his “beside you” collaboration with producer Madeon has also become one of keshi’s most popular songs. With today’s release of GABRIEL and the HELL/HEAVEN tour in the pipeline, there’s no signs of winding down for keshi. But even as his starpower continues to grow, keshi remains present and thankful, knowing that even if GABRIEL withstands the test of time, this debut will forever be a cherished moment in time.
