Even after three decades, Eric Bazilian feels a deep connection to the 1995 hit “One of Us,” the song he wrote for Joan Osborne. The track launched Osborne’s career, skyrocketed on the Billboard charts, and earned multiple Grammy nominations.
For Bazilian, the song’s creation remains vivid and alive. Speaking about the track, he says, “Even after 30 years, it’s still brand new and alive for me.”
Bazilian’s career was already full of highs and lows by the time he wrote “One of Us.” As a co-founder of the American rock band The Hooters, he had seen mainstream success in the 1980s, but as grunge rose to prominence, their fame began to fade. By 1994, Bazilian and his bandmate, Rob Hyman, were recruited by their friend and producer Rick Chertoff to write songs for Joan Osborne’s debut album, Relish.
It was during a writing session at Hyman’s home in Philadelphia that Bazilian came up with the song’s distinctive guitar riff. “It just came to me,” he recalls. “Rob came in and said, ‘Wow, that’s a cool riff. Let me get my Walkman and record that.’ ”
The following day, Bazilian couldn’t recall the riff, and it took hours for Hyman to track down the tape, which had been mislabeled. Finally, the three listened to the recording. Joan Osborne liked the riff and began playing around with it. But there was no immediate push to develop it further.
Later that evening, Bazilian had an idea while watching a Beatles documentary about the making of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with his girlfriend (now wife), Sarah. Bazilian decided to give her a demonstration of four-track recording, using a Tascam Portastudio and a keyboard sampler.
“Before long, I had a sketch of a song recorded,” he says. “I looked at Sarah like, ‘Hey, who’s the man?’ And she said, ‘Okay, sing it.’ ”
Bazilian responded to her challenge by freestyling the lyrics in an unexpectedly low voice, mimicking Brad Roberts from the Crash Test Dummies. “It just came to me like that,” Bazilian says. “One might call it spiritual, but I’ll call it otherworldly.”
While Bazilian insists that the song wasn’t inspired by religion, he explains, “It’s more about the stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.” He credits Sarah for coming up with the final part of the lyrics.
Bazilian briefly considered sending the demo to the Crash Test Dummies but chose to share it with Osborne, Hyman, and Chertoff. Hyman wasn’t immediately impressed, but Chertoff saw potential. “Do you think you can sing that?” he asked Osborne, almost as a challenge.
Osborne, with characteristic confidence, responded, “I can sing the phone book,” and proceeded to try out the demo. “I immediately started writing my Grammy speech,” Bazilian jokes.
The song almost didn’t make it onto the album. During recording sessions at Big Blue Studios in Katonah, New York, several attempts to finalize the track with drummer Andy Kravitz fell flat. But then Hyman, who was not a drummer, gave it a try, and the result was magic.
Bazilian then recorded a wild guitar solo, “completely spontaneous,” with his 1954 Les Paul goldtop through a Vox AC30 combo amplifier.
The album Relish was released in 1995 with modest initial sales. But once “One of Us” hit the airwaves and MTV that fall, everything changed. The song shot to number four on the Billboard Hot 100, topped charts globally, and helped push album sales past the three-million mark.
Though Bazilian never got to deliver his Grammy speech—”One of Us” lost both Record of the Year and Song of the Year to Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose”—he still considers the success a major validation after years of ups and downs in the music business.
“It was really good for my dynamic with Rob,” Bazilian reflects. “We each had hit songs that were very much us. The redemption felt really good.”
The emotional connection to “One of Us” endures for Bazilian, who says, “Sometimes I’ll stumble on a song on the radio, and it’ll bring me back to the moment of creation. ‘One of Us’ still feels vital to me. It’s a timeless message that just came to me one night. It was one of those rare moments when I captured what I didn’t know I wanted to say.”
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