Remember me
Signed to Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger's 604 Record label back in 2006, pop-punk quartet Faber Drive have enjoyed reasonable success in their native Canada across their 20 year career. Fronted by Dave Faber, the band from British Columbia have landed five Top 40 singles, toured with the likes of Simple Plan and Metro Station, and were nominated for a Juno Award (Canada's equivalent of a Grammy) for New Group of the Year back in 2008.
Not bad at all, but their achievements have been rather dwarfed by the achievements of Dave Faber's son, Isaiah Faber, aka Powfu, with lo-fi home recordings made in his bedroom.
Powfu's best-known song, Death Bed (Coffee For Your Head) has been streamed a remarkable 1, 976, 55, 125 times on Spotify alone, its video been watched 825 million times on his YouTube page, and the song has been used as the soundtrack to billions of TikTok videos, receiving four billion TikTok plays in March 2020 alone. Serious numbers for a young man who became a star by accident, and all without leaving his bedroom.
Having learned to play drums aged two, in his teens Isaiah Faber would borrow a microphone from his father, and lie in his bedroom, sharing his thoughts and worries in raps over beats he found online, then upload his DIY lo-fi songs to Soundcloud to share with an online community of like-minded souls.
"I was pretty lonely when I started making music," he told The Guardian in 2021. "I'd just stay at home, I didn't really hang out with friends, so I feel like a lot of people that listened to it were in the same boat."
In 2019, while scrolling through Soundcloud for inspiration, Faber came upon a producer's upload of the drum track from a song by Philippines-born, London-raised singer/songwriter Beabadoobee (Beatrice Laus). The song was Coffee, the first song Beabadoobee ever wrote on guitar, and her first single. After investigating further, Faber decided to sample the song's chorus - "Don't stay awake for too long / Don't go to bed / I'll make a cup of coffee for your head / I'll get you up and going out of bed" - for a new song he was working on inspired by Nicholas Sparks films The Notebook and Dear John.
"I was just watching a lot of those romantic movies around that time, so I was feeling emotional, I guess, and wanted to write some deep, deep stories," he told ABC Audio. "“Whenever I write a rap to a sample, I listen to the lyrics of what they’re saying in that sample and I try and, like, go off of it. In the sample, she’s talking about sleeping and making coffee for your head and stuff. And I wasn’t really feeling, like, talking about actually sleeping… so I decided to go from the standpoint of somebody who’s on their deathbed."
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Faber wrote his lyrics from the perspective of a young man saying his final goodbye to his girlfriend - beginning his first verse with the words "I don't wanna fall asleep / I don't wanna pass away / I've been thinking of our future / 'Cause I'll never see those days" - and uploaded Death Bed to Soundcloud, YouTube and TikTok. It was on the latter platform that the song exploded, and Faber was besieged with requests to put the song on other streaming platforms.
"I literally have people ask me everyday why ‘death bed’ isn’t on Spotify," he posted on Twitter as Powfu on April 29, 2019, "and it’s cuz I’m scared I’ll get in trouble from the sample I use in it. But screw it I guess I’ll upload it."
As the sample hadn't been cleared for use, the song was quickly removed from Spotify. It took a year before the necessary legal paperwork was approved, at which point the song was uploaded once more, this time with the title Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head) acknowledging Beabadoobee's contribution. And from there, its popularity soared, peaking at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, much to the bemusement and delight of the two young artists.
“Beabadoobee’s chorus definitely helped it out," Powfu told NME. "It’s super catchy and it goes through the whole song so that people can sing along the whole time. I also think it sounds different than your average radio hit, because it is lo-fi, which is a lot different and not many people have heard it. And then on top of that, the story; like I’ve never heard a song with a story like that – I feel like it hit a lot of people emotionally.”
Asked in 2020 how his unwitting songwriting partner felt about the song's success, the rapper replied, "I think she’s enjoying it quite a bit. It’s helped us both out a lot so, it’s pretty awesome."
In September 2020, Beabadoobee was asked about the song in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Asked if she and Powfu were friends, she replied, "I've never met him."
"It's very weird," she admitted. "At first the attention was overwhelming because I had no involvement in the song; it's very much his song. But it's cool - it's gotten people to discover my other music."
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