Musician Profile: Andrew Muccitelli
Andrew Muccitelli was an X Factor contestant. Then he was a Vine star. And a YouTuber. Now he goes by Bonnie Parker, a stage name he adopted to leave his childhood reputation behind and embrace a gender-fluid identity as a more serious musician with a focused brand and fanbase.
Andrew, now 20 years old, laughs when he thinks back on his childhood career and untraditional rise to fame. “It was such a weird blip in my life,” he says.
His relationship with music started as young as age 3, when he first saw Cher perform on TV in his LA home. He remembers gawking at the display of dancers, lights, and confetti surrounding her. “As a three-year-old, I saw that, and I was like, ‘That needs to be me.’”
And so his career began. He has memories of printing out Hannah Montana lyrics to sing and rehearse in the car. By 8 years old, he was taking vocal lessons. At 10 he was already writing music.
Andrew’s dad encouraged him to audition for the first season of the US X Factor when he was 12—the youngest age eligible for auditions. Andrew succeeded through several rounds of auditions and performances, making it to the Top 19 of the 12-24 age group—something he says he’s still pretty proud of. “But that was me when I was 12 and not something that I talk about now,” he says. “Because that would be sad!”
By the time he was going into high school, he started experimenting with a different path to fame: He downloaded Vine.
“Vine was so random for me,” he says, thinking back. He downloaded it on a whim during a sleepover. Then he started networking with internet celebrities until he reached a period when he was gaining 1,000 new followers every day. Simultaneously, he was uploading covers to Youtube and going viral.
“It was all just me trying to get people to pay attention,” he says.
Throughout high school, Andrew remembers his music writing getting serious as his emotions were evolving. “I [was realizing] that I’m actually a gay man,” he says. “Which was important and groundbreaking in terms of my creative life.”
He recorded his first EP, a folk-pop collection called Bleach, on his iPhone Voice Memo app the night before leaving LA for his freshman year at Emerson College in Boston. And he immediately released it. “I hadn’t even finished [the songs] yet, but was thinking, maybe I want to make a name for myself at Emerson.”
It paid off. Shortly after arriving, he met his future music producer, Ryan McDowell, in a dorm elevator. Andrew told him about his new EP and they immediately hit it off as collaborators.
They would soon spend hours together in their double-sized dorm rooms recording some of the stockpiled songs Andrew had been writing. Using nothing but a laptop and a USB-plugged microphone and keyboard, Fear of Intimacy—his first full album—was born.
Then a metamorphosis happened.
Andrew’s writing style started to evolve from what he describes as Fear of Intimacy’s moody-pop vibe to a more intense indie-rock, reflecting what he was listening to at the time. This change in sound went hand-in-hand with a new desire to change his image.
“Given my career trajectory up until this point...My fan base was kind of scattered,” he says. “The summer before sophomore year I was like, ‘Fuck, I wish I just had a fresh start to re-introduce myself with a completely fresh artistic slate.’”
That’s when stage name Bonnie Parker came to mind. He was inspired after reading about the famed outlaw and learning that she left a life of poetry and art to commit crimes with the love of her life, Clyde Barrow. “Which in my delusional mind, I’m [thinking] ‘That’s so romantic!’” he says, laughing.
He’d been writing new songs since the release of his last album, secretly grateful to be inspired by emotional tragedies in his own life because they got his creative juices flowing. “Some weird masochist part of me loves the pain that love brings, because it allowed me to make music that I really connect to, and that others connect to,” he admits. “I’m kind of scared to fall in real love and be happy one day because then I’m gonna be fucked artistically.”
Luckily, he still had plenty to work with for his re-branding. A new name meant complete separation from his childhood reputation and a blank Spotify page to discover new fans.
“I was really scared,” he says, remembering the transition. He had never done serious drag outside of what he calls “playing dress-up” with his friends. He worried he would be judged as a cisgendered gay man with a feminine image. “It could’ve flopped like a fish out of water.”
Instead, Bonnie Parker took off. His first hit, “Jason” got over 100,000 streams in its first month, and people were deeply connecting with the message. He’d get DMs from queer high schoolers who heard “Jason” and really resonated with it. For Andrew, seeing this perspective gave his entire project a new sense of purpose.
“Up until recently, the songwriting process had been only about me,” he says. “Now, I’m really excited to make this [new] album with a fanbase in mind and consider what they want to hear.”
Last winter, he spent his entire school break barricaded in a home studio with new bandmates recording Bonnie Parker tracks. They released the tracks as singles rather than as an album, inspired by artist Kim Petras who uses the tactic to stay relevant in modern times.
“In the age of streaming, if you’re constantly releasing singles rather than full projects, then you’re staying on people’s minds more seriously,” he explains. “You [also] give each song the time to blossom and find its own fanbase.”
His plans for this upcoming winter break are the same: to hunker down with his bandmates in the studio and crank out the rest of the music he’s been writing for the upcoming album. Oh, and probably sell out at LA’s popular venue The Mint again.
For Andrew, everything is go, go, go—between his album production, his Sony Music internship, and his Media Studies degree—but that’s nothing new. And he doesn’t see it changing any time soon.
“Long-term, I will never stop writing music—whether that be under my name, Bonnie Parker, in a heavy metal band, or as a bar mitzvah DJ,” he says. “I will always be making music.”
