At 40, a Dubai musician turns a long-shelved riff into a hit

DUBAI — For years, a driving, 1980s-inspired rock riff sat unfinished on Johnny Bassadi's hard drive, no lyrics, no title, no story. Last week, on his 40th birthday, the Dubai-based Syrian Canadian singer-songwriter premiered the finished result: The Dream, an independently produced single that has surpassed 95,000 Spotify streams, accompanied by a cinematic music video shot entirely in the emirate.

The song found its story by accident. Scrolling through his phone, Bassadi came across a film clip in which a young man confesses his feelings to an older woman and is gently turned down, replying quietly: “There goes that dream.” The line lodged itself in his mind.

“It wasn't just about heartbreak,” he said. “Most people fall in love with a dream, not a reality. You build a whole vision of someone in your head, and when it falls apart, that is the dream you are actually grieving.”
The track grew out of a difficult chapter following the end of a turbulent relationship, when Bassadi realised he was mourning not just the relationship but the future he had pictured — marriage, children, a family. Rather than settling into heartbreak, the song turns towards hope, following someone at a crossroads who chooses a new future over the past.

That arc carries into the video, which Bassadi describes as closer to a short film. Directed by RJay Javier and co-edited by Javier, Bassadi and Miltiadis Kyvernitis, it pairs crisp 4K images with grainy, 1980s-style film sequences and twice pauses the music for fully acted scenes with dialogue, tracing a man caught between the present and memories of a lost love.
The entire project was made in the UAE. Bassadi wrote the song in Dubai and worked with producer Miltiadis “Milton” Kyvernitis at MNK Studios, shooting the video across the city with a local cast and crew and funding it himself. “I am a Dubai musician and this is a Dubai video,” he said. “It is homegrown, through and through.”

The birthday premiere doubled as a concert at Oak Live Bar in Al Barsha, where around 90 guests watched a behind-the-scenes interview, a retro-style countdown, the video itself and a reel of bloopers before Bassadi took the stage with his band. The set ran to six original songs, among them Another You, which featured in Hicham Hajji's 2025 film The Lost Princess, the unreleased I Don't Know Who You Are, and Runnin', the title track of his 2018 EP, closing with Bon Jovi covers after an encore.

With the single already out for four months, much of the room knew the words. “On paper the ending of that song looks like defeat,” Bassadi said. “Live, with a room chanting it with you, it becomes an anthem.”
Turning 40, he said, gave him the confidence to pursue a creative path he had long deferred while building a corporate career. “I spent my whole life building stability for a family that does not exist yet,” he said. “At 40, I decided to actually live, and to do the thing that is closest to who I really am.”

With The Dream nearing 100,000 Spotify streams and the video now on YouTube, Bassadi sees the project less as a culmination than a starting point.