For singer-songwriter and Euphoria actor Dominic Fike, jail is arguably worse than prison, even if the latter means longer inside (“jail” in the US is for those on remand or serving short sentences). “It’s more of a purgatory, it’s the holding [pen] between freedom and prison,” says Fike. “It sucks, dude.”
Fike was already under house arrest for assaulting a police officer in 2016 when he failed a drug test, breaking the terms of his probation and receiving a year’s jail sentence as a result. He could be forgiven for spending that time wallowing in his own misfortune – or stupidity – except Fike had something else going on.
Before he got himself busted, Fike made the smarter decision to record Don’t Forget About Me, Demos, a six-track showcase of his obvious ability as a singer, rapper and guitarist. The EP plays like a 15-minute indication of music’s genreless future, with individual tracks blending pop, rock and rap with heaps of dirtbag charm. Sure, it owed a debt to the Red Hot Chili Peppers (he has a tattoo of their guitarist John Frusciante on his hand) but his charisma – whether singing or rapping – was undeniable.
Fike’s first six months in prison were tough going. “I was not doing too well. I wanted to release music and I was sad about it,” he says. But when his manager dropped the EP on SoundCloud, the complexion of Fike’s time in jail changed completely. 3 Nights, the first song on the EP, went viral (it currently has 870 million Spotify streams) and spying gold, the major labels rushed for his signature.
No longer were his days empty. Meticulously planning what you’re going to say to salivating label executives is one way to get through a stretch, but for Fike it wasn’t so much the potential riches on offer as the sense of stardom as a lifeboat. “Idle hands are the devil’s work … the cool part about the label thing is that it helped me keep my shit together in jail.”
In the end, the demos resulted in a reported $3-4m deal. The huge figure has led to accusations that Fike was an “industry plant”: a manufactured blend of pop, rock, rap and cheekbones – except with added authenticity via his face tattoos, struggles with addiction and jail time. “All I know is I’m pushing forward regardless of expectation,” he says. “When you look at somebody like fucking Harry Styles, that’s just a well-oiled machine, they really just have perfected a formula that is fitting for this one guy or this one idea.”
The role of Dominic Fike: Pop Star is one he has attempted to play on songs with Brockhampton, Halsey and Justin Bieber. He even covered Paul McCartney’s The Kiss of Venus; the song was released as the lead single from the remix album McCartney III Imagined and drew lavish praise from the man himself. “I spent a couple of days taking a crack at it after it was confirmed to be a real opportunity,” Fike recalls. “You’ve got to factcheck things like that. It’s like [a pop-up] you’d see on your computer: ‘You’ve won a million dollars!’”
Fike, who is of Filipino, Haitian and African-American descent, grew up in the retirement town of Naples, Florida. Both his parents were heroin addicts, although his father was barely present. His mum was in and out of jail and her frequent absence meant he and his siblings had to take care of each other from a young age. Fike’s traumatic childhood was exacerbated by his own “overdoing it” with drugs and alcohol. “Whatever drug I would do, I’d do too much of it – to [the point of] a near-death, surreal experience. I just kind of thought that was how you did drugs – to go all the way there without dying,” he says.
If Fike’s music has not quite turned him into a household name, the same “it” that made him catnip to label executives also caught the attention of Hollywood casting agents. And in Euphoria, Fike hit the jackpot. The show is arguably the defining portrait of gen Z and in Elliot, the mysterious guitar-playing drug addict who comes between Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer), Fike has found a perfect fit – not least because the role had striking parallels with his own situation at the time. Was he at all worried about managing his problem on the set of a show about drug addicts?
“I was using at the time, but I wasn’t worried. I was more like … psyched!” he beams. “And then Sam [Levinson, creator and showrunner] was like: ‘We’ll get you a sober coach,’ and I was like: ‘Yeah dude, that’s fine: sober coach.’ I just did not care. I was pretty addicted to shit.”
Fike’s Euphoria co-star Angus Cloud died of a suspected overdose in July. Like Fike, Cloud was cast despite having no previous acting experience and also struggled with addiction issues on set. Despite being high during several of his scenes, and almost getting kicked off the show as a result, Fike remained, and received rave reviews. While his performance may owe something to method acting, it’s clear Euphoria’s impact has been life-changing for him.
If Fike’s music career to date has been less satisfying, it’s because his talent as a singer, rapper and guitarist only means so much when set against a three-headed Cerberus of limitations: his addiction issues; the imperatives of the pop “machine”; and expectations so lofty as to be more hindrance than hype. Press reaction to his music has, on occasion, been savage. Take, for instance, Pitchfork’s withering review of his 2020 debut album, What Could Possibly Go Wrong, which described it as sounding “exactly like a label executive’s idea of the future”.
The reception to his recent second album, Sunburn, has been similarly mixed. There are undoubtedly steps forward such as Dancing in the Courthouse, an appropriately hazy rumination on his traumatic youth that moves from introspective verses to a defiant chorus, and the Rivers Cuomo-assisted Think Fast, which showcases Fike’s vocal range between strains of Weezer’s Undone (The Sweater Song). Elsewhere, the record is littered with decent, if occasionally anaemic, guitar pop, perhaps the result of Fike’s desire to get a bunch of tunes off his hard drive, having given fans hardly any new music since his 2020 debut. “I had an unhealthy relationship with releasing music into the public, and I needed to get over it,” he says. If Sunburn feels casual, well, that’s because it is.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with releasing a loose, sunlit collection of radio-friendly pop, but it hasn’t shifted the units Fike would have hoped, peaking at No 30 in the US and No 56 in the UK. But the album’s underwhelming performance has not shaken confidence in Fike. There will be more music and another series of Euphoria to back up his undeniable talent. But what might genuine stardom mean for a young man with a history of addiction and a family background as complex and traumatic as Fike’s?
For now, he is in recovery but he is clearly conscious that sobriety holds the key to the smooth functioning of the “Dominic Fike machine”. “If I have some coke, everyone around me feels it,” he says. “I’ll stop saying thank you, I’ll just be hungover. It really has a domino effect.” He even contrasts his situation directly with stars in the highest tiers of the pop galaxy: “I’m looking at all my peers and even referring to addiction, I’ll be hanging with my boy Justin [Bieber] and he’ll have a glass of tequila in his hand and it’s funny. I’ll be like: I wish I could do that … be this huge pop star and have a drink and not have a bunch of anxiety. But I fucking can’t do it: I tried.”
There is an idea of Dominic Fike, one that so far has been defined by instability, addiction and the weight of other people’s expectations. To be that “well-oiled” machine as he calls it, he needs more time away from the spotlight: days in the studio, in the gym, or simply messing around at his computer, guitar in hand. The problem then is that between his origin story, his role on Euphoria and, quite frankly, the face tattoos, there’s a danger he has already been typecast in real life. He is the mysterious addict with the Florida drawl and the sexy thick mane, seemingly sent here to drive teenagers and their algorithms wild. Whether a permanent stint in that role will allow him the space to pursue sobriety remains to be seen. If he can, there’s a danger that genuine stardom is imminent.
Dominic Fike tours the UK from 18 to 24 September; tour starts Glasgow.
