5. Could you tell us more about the creative process behind ‘Only Young Once’?
I prepared digital synthesizers in my DAW that I thought sounded nice together. Then, using a MIDI controller, I started arranging the sounds. I looped a vocal and played in the synth chords. I thought it would sound really nice to have a deep bassline and a bouncy kick drum like those summer hits in the 2000s did.
6. Was this track inspired by a particular person, event or situation?
As I was gathering the lyrics, I tried to think about how far I have come from where I was. For my journey in music, I moved to Belgium and now to London, leaving my things behind and following my passion. I think the music industry today is extremely tough, and there is a lot of pressure on artists to survive in the fast-paced media environment, so it can feel really overwhelming at times. It used to be so nice to just sing and express how I feel for the sake of doing it, and getting heard without the worry of being consumed by the overflow of media. That’s why I wrote this song to remind myself that there’s more to life than what we overlook. If we get stuck in what we don’t yet have, we’re going to miss the present moment.
7. Music tends to have memories attached to it. Could you give us a fond memory of one track?
Since I grew up in the 2000s, when MP3 players had just become a thing and streaming services didn’t exist yet, my friend’s dad put the Grease musical album on all of our MP3 players, and we used to listen to it over and over again doing performances for our parents, and sometimes even at school.
I remember a teacher allowing us to perform our Grease act one morning at the start of class. That turned into what we thought was an epic life hack to start class later, so we would try to perform a new act every day. After a few days, though, we got lazy with our rehearsals, so the teacher caught on and stopped us from wasting the start of class. It was fun while it lasted!
8. What was the first record/tape/CD you bought for yourself? It can be a single or album.
I don’t actually remember the very first record I bought because music was always around me growing up, especially driving to school every morning with the radio on. What I do remember is becoming fascinated by artists who blended iconic vocals with electronic production and good basslines. I remember hearing Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Nelly Furtado, and Timbaland’s drums that got me moving. In my room, I would even unplug my speakers and listen only to the subwoofer at times I guess that shows my early love for basslines. Those 2000s radio hits had a huge influence on the direction I eventually took as an artist.