Words By Zach Collier
Photos By Blair Caldwell
One of the biggest challenges for Josh Levi's career has been having recognition and visibility while also feeling unseen. Now, he's ready to break free with his upcoming debut album.
When actor, dancer, and R&B artist Josh Levi and I met up to chat, he was still riding high from his performance at the BET Awards. The multifaceted entertainer almost couldn’t believe what he’d just experienced.
“It happened so fast,” he says happily. “But it was pretty epic. The energy was crazy. I didn't quite know what to expect but we’re all really happy and it was a vibe.” Being a part of BET in some way has been a dream of Josh’s for a long, long time. His team knew it was really important to him, and had been working hard to develop a relationship with the network. BET had Josh on their radar, having shared viral clips of his TikTok hit “Birthday Dance” and having left comments on his profile. He even went to the office to meet everyone.
@joshleviworld IT’S FINALLY HERE !!!! BIRTHDAY DANCE MUSIC VIDEO OUT NOW 🕺🏽🎥🎂 link in bioooo
♬ BIRTHDAY DANCE - Josh Levi
When he finally got the opportunity to do a performance with them in an official capacity, it didn’t matter that it was last minute. “I had started to become homies with BET just this year,” he tells me. “There was not much rehearsal time. It was very much, ‘We’re moving. We’re doing it!’ It was so fire, man. The energy was really electric as soon as I walked out, which is all that I could ever pray or ask for, so I was happy.”
The performance went well. Josh was trending on Twitter the day after, which was a new experience for him. You wouldn’t expect that to be a new experience given his resume.
You see, Josh initially gained recognition for his role as Darius Merriweather on the NBC series Friday Night Lights as a kid, and later as a finalist on the third season of The X Factor USA as a 9th grader. Following these milestones, he made guest appearances on Nickelodeon shows, had a short stint in an indie boy band, and voiced the character Aaron Z from the fictional boy band 4*Town in Pixar’s Turning Red. His involvement in the film led to his first Billboard Hot 100 hit with "Nobody Like U," a song co-written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell, which peaked at number 49.
While these are all incredible achievements, I get the feeling that Josh is craving to stand on his own two feet. He’s shown obvious talent from a young age, and has had the blessing of growing up in entertainment and finding consistent work. But it’s been a double-edged sword. I get the feeling he doesn’t want to be recognized as “the guy from X Factor.” As “the guy from TV.” As “the guy from a Pixar movie.”
While incredibly grateful for all these opportunities – and I want to make it clear that he never once said a negative thing about any of these experiences – it’s clear to me that his next career move is stepping out from under the long shadow of his own talent; to stop lending his talent entirely to the projects of others and to finally make a name for himself with a daring project of his own.
So to be trending for something he did? His original music? His live performance? Josh Levi as a standalone artist? On a network he’s always dreamed of working with? That was a huge win for him.
“It seems like everything is always a fight. It seems like everything is always a challenge. It seems like I'm constantly proving myself,” Josh explains.
“I guess that's probably one of the biggest challenges for me that can get really tiring: it's the resistance of having recognition and visibility and then also just feeling unseen. I think that's due to the path that I've chosen.”
Josh is a really interesting person. Here he is, seeking to establish a firm foothold and a reputation as a world-class entertainer. He has a sexy persona as a frontman, as well as a penchant for forward-thinking fashion and well-curated style. Usually, when I interview people, they’re dressed super casually. I can’t tell you the number of times it’s just been sweatpants, baseball caps, and grubby T-shirts after a long tour or a late show the night before. Josh was “casual” – but in a studied, faux-effortless kind of way. I certainly don’t wake up looking like he does.
All of that attention to fashion and image and seeking success and visibility could easily come across as self-serving. But with Josh? Not at all. I try to avoid hyperbole, but he just might be the most humble person I’ve interviewed. And I’ve met some really great people.
He’s deeply religious and carries himself with a calm humility and a quiet tranquility. It feels paradoxical. He dresses incredibly well, but he doesn’t dress to impress or to outdo others. Rather, it feels like he dresses with gratitude – like he genuinely enjoys fashion as an artform. You can tell it brings him joy, and that joy is contagious. Frankly, being around him inspired me to reconsider how I present myself through my own clothing choices – but in an inspired way instead of a covetous one.
“You have a great smile,” was a compliment he lobbed my way after a lot of laughter and discussion. In an interview all about him, he made time to make it briefly about me. His meticulous love of style and his meticulous pursuit of excellence in his craft were never at odds with his generosity and humility.
“I’m actually a soft spoken guy. I think everything in life is a balance.”
“I always say that my real middle name is ‘Balance’ because I think that that's the key to life,” Josh shares. “If you're too much of one thing, then you'll tip over. But if you're well balanced, you can maintain a bunch of things and for me, that's kind of my strategy on navigating life and navigating my career.”
As we talk, I learn that being meticulous is part of his personality.
“I am an analytical, strategic crazy person,” he laughs. “I definitely am constantly always thinking, always meditating, always praying, and just trying to seek discernment to know when to do the right thing. It’s constant decision making.” Josh is the creative director and oversees most of his projects. “I am usually designing a lot of the things that people see from me.”
As one who wears a lot of hats behind the scenes, he tries to build times into his life where he comes home and shuts off his brain. “When I turn my TV on in my room at 11 PM, that’s when I try to communicate to my brain that now’s a good time to not think,” Josh laughs. “That’s what I have to do psychologically. Let my brain know that this is a good time to turn off the office hours.”
I open up to him and let him know that I feel the same way. Tuesday nights are my night to go to the movies alone like a weirdo so I don’t have to talk to anybody. In the dark theater, I can’t take my phone out due to theater etiquette, so I can’t be reached during those two hours. And I can just sit and listen and eat pretzel bites and an ungodly amount of nacho cheese and find some mental rest.
“I do the exact same thing,” Josh laughs. “I love going to the movies at the latest hours. The very last showtime that’s available. 10:25 or 11, whatever. I don’t look at my phone at all. I just did that with Inside Out 2.” Turns out, he’s a nachos guy. “Since day one I’ve been like a nachos guy, and that’s not me trying to be quirky or whatever. My family was always like, ‘You want popcorn?’ and popcorn is cool, but I never really got popcorn. I always got the nachos for some reason.”
In a strange metaphor, Josh rejecting popcorn and choosing his favorite snack over the one that’s traditionally appealing pretty much sums him up as an artist.
“I think if I took an easier path of just being a little bit more straight down the line artistically, or maybe what people would want me to be, maybe I could already be more famous or have more clout,” he says thoughtfully.
“But I've always wanted to push music forward and I've always wanted to just honor my point of view and not necessarily compromise or resort to an idea of who I am. So I think the biggest challenge, definitely, has been having the metabolism to continue to prove myself and then doubling down. I see it working. People are rooting for me, which is the most energizing thing that helps me so much. That goes a long way for me internally and mentally.”
Josh Levi is entering a new phase of his career: one in which the child acting, the X Factor stage, the fashion work, and now adulthood all coalesce around a holistic Josh Levi story. With the introduction of his new single “SOMETHING MORE,” he wants people to see that he’s always been shamelessly trying to create in whatever space he’s in. And that creativity is a core part of him as a person.
We are on an Inside Out 2 kick throughout the conversation, and I ask Josh what his “core memory” from making his upcoming album is.
He laughs and takes a bit to think. You only have one debut album – and they say you spend your whole life making your first album – so Josh sifts through a lot of memories: “It feels like just the last six months and then sometimes it feels like the last two years.”
Finally, he settles on a memory: the time he went to London. “It was around my first show there,” he recalls. The show was sold out, which was insane to him. He didn’t know he had fans on another continent that knew the words to his songs. But it was raining a lot. A little gloomy even. Even the day of his show, it was pouring as he walked into the venue. “I hadn’t had any shows like that,” he remembers. “It was just pouring rain.”
After the show, he decided to stick around to enjoy London – rain and all. And then the thought came to him to record while he was there. “I didn't really know if anything good would come out of it, but I stayed anyway,” he smiles. “I left with some music that really inspired me – that I feel helped to inspire the album – and that's something that I'll definitely have a core memory from. Up until then, I’d only recorded in the US. There hadn't been any other place that I had recorded. A few things in Atlanta, maybe Houston, but always the US. This album was my first time seeing what Josh Levi would sound like somewhere else in the world. I was really satisfied with what came about.”
Josh Levi likes the rain. It helped him tap into a deeper emotional place during those sessions. That emotion is present throughout his new material. It’s an exciting time for Josh. As a multifaceted entertainer, he’s finally figured out how to unite his eclectic life experiences and project his vision into a cohesive listening experience. It’s been a long journey so far. But really, it’s only just begun.
“Life is not really linear,” he says about finding his path as an artist. “It’s just about using every gift that God gave me.”
You can follow Josh Levi on Instagram here. Stream his latest single, “SOMETHING MORE,” below.