David Kushner became a TikTok sensation upon releasing his popular breakout single, “Miserable Man,” in 2022. Since then, the musician has been hard at work in honing his craft and building a fan base. The Los Angeles resident has amassed a large following outside of America, as his music hit the charts in multiple countries over the past year. This year, he is performing at the iHeart Radio Jingle Ball.
Keep reading to learn more about David, his career beginnings, his musical inspiration and more!
David Is From Chicago
Although he moved to California to build his music career, David was raised in the suburbs of Chicago.
He Is a Self-Taught Musician
Upon graduating from high school, David started writing songs with a friend while he temporarily lived in Florida. He then taught himself how to make music and eventually worked with a vocal coach to improve.
“TikTok has played the biggest role in my music career. It started as a fun thing,” David explained to Paper magazine in 2023. “I definitely had not planned to market my music. I did encouraging-type content at first and after writing ‘Miserable Man,’ I decided to just leak the song on the platform. I didn’t expect that the next day I’d wake up to a couple hundred thousand likes. Many people told me it would just be a one-hit wonder. But not even a few weeks later “Mr. Forgettable” did the same thing. At that point, I knew that TikTok would be a powerful tool to be able to connect with new people.”
David’s Music Is Inspired By His Faith in Christianity
While speaking with Poptized in 2023, David opened up about how his faith influenced his songwriting.
“I have an amazing girlfriend, and me and her are both Christian, and she’s like a big rock in my life and foundation, and I have my parents who believe and, yeah, a lot of people in my close family,” he explained. “I do have a lot of artist friends, I mean, not a lot. Most of my artist friends do not share my faith with me, but I have a lot of friends, one of my roommates because I’m moving to L.A. this year, and he’s my best friend in the industry and a strong Christian. It’s really hard because there is a lot you can attain by kind of putting that down and kind of stop believing, as straightforward to make it, but it’s very, very hard, and it’s only going to get harder.”
His Song ‘Mr. Forgettable’ Is From an Alzheimer’s Patient’s Perspective
David also told Poptized how he crafted his song “Mr. Forgettable,” noting, “I would just try and write something significant, and when that does happen, I kind of come up with the storyline from that one little thing. Like ‘Mr. Forgettable’ — I wrote the chorus for it and I automatically knew it was going to be about Alzheimer’s.”
David’s Music Is Famous in Several Countries
After going viral on TikTok, David’s music reached No. 11 on the charts in Norway and No. 19 in Ireland. He then hit No. 40 on the charts in New Zealand, Australia and the U.K.