MIKA ROSE TALKS VAMPIRE
"There is part of me that’s drawn to the dark"
Daniel John
You've done dark pop from the start but here you channel the dark in a more overtly gothic way, what was it like to go even darker than before in 'Vampire'. Are you quite fearless, when it comes to nightmare-ish things, or are you actually a bit of a scaredy-cat?
I am definitely a scaredy-cat. I never watch scary movies because I have far too vivid an imagination and get nightmares very easily. I always sleep with a night light (laughs). When it comes to music though, there is a part of me that’s drawn to the dark and “spooky”, partly because I simply enjoy listening to it and when it comes to writing and heavier things I have experienced, it can be very close at hand to find fitting similes or metaphors there.
Your Twitch community was part of creating the song?
Yes, that’s right. I create music together with the community every week. Most often I ask the community for words that can inspire the storyline. The song was started during Halloween 2023, which explains the theme we landed in this time. I found a chord progression that I thought fit, and then it went quite quickly as I recall, it was finished a few months later, and I reached out to Nadja Hjelt, a producer I hadn’t worked with before, but who had made some darker, more mysterious music, so I was curious about her take on the song. After quite a bit of emailing the song back and forth, and bouncing ideas around, the final result exceeded expectations.
Creatives often feel lonely in their creating, what does it mean to have a present community to share both the smaller and the bigger moments with?
They mean everything. I don’t know if I would have dared to take the step and release music if it weren’t for them. It was also through Twitch that I found my producer, Josef Wiktorsson, who has produced most of my songs. As many who create probably recognize, it’s easy to be very self-critical. It can be hard to separate what you create from yourself as a person, so having voices that encourage you and constantly remind you of your strengths is incredibly beautiful. I still find it so hard to understand that there are people out there who spend so much time watching, listening to, and engaging with what I do, and I am so incredibly grateful for every single one of them.
If one were to make a kind of analogy between vampires and the way the greyness of everyday life can sometimes suck the blood out of dreams, has it always been obvious and easy for you to embrace your artistry, to dare to stand up and live your life exactly the way you want to live with?
It has rarely felt obvious or easy. But my strength is probably that my curiosity and self-discipline have mostly outweighed everything else. I’ve struggled with a fear of being scrutinized, but at the same time I’ve had an even greater longing, a longing to take up space and to feel free in some way. In some periods I’ve been able to experience that feeling, while in other periods I’ve barely been able to get through singing a song because I’ve been balancing on the edge of panic anxiety. I’ve started to find a better balance now. And even though it’s been challenging, it’s been worth it.
How long had you already known pop was your “do what you want” by the time your first song came out now nearly four years ago?
Already as a child I had a dream of becoming an artist and I often sang at home, you might have many dreams as a child. But this was something I always came back to. I tried writing music when I was younger, but I got tired of it when I couldn’t get anything to the level of a hit (laughs). That 'do what you want'-song, was the first one I wrote in connection with setting myself the goal of writing one song a week. When I realized that I had to write many not-so-good songs to get a good one the threshold to get started was not so high anymore. I managed to remove some of the pressure, and it became more playful. I kept that up for about three years, before taking a break, but now I’ve started to return to that routine again.
Maybe this answer already exists among all your live covers over the years, but which artists have meant most for you on your path?
There is so much great music that has inspired me and it’s varied a lot, one artist I’ve always come back to and drawn a lot of inspiration from is Madison Beer. Both her older songs and the more recent ones. I love that there are both dark pop-elements as well as songs that lean more romantic and retro. Many times I’ve gone to her songs and looked at chord progressions to find something melancholic that I can draw inspiration from.
Not to say “you better hurry” but it was a whole year between this and the EP in late 2023 and not all of us have a vampire’s patience. At least not when it comes to great music. Will blood-pressures be rising with even more singles this year?
After the EP was released, I chose to take a break from writing. I wrote a little now and then, but not as regularly as before. I started getting more gigs around that time, which was quite new, and I wanted to give myself space to grow into that. My time mainly went into preparations, bookings, and livestreaming. Toward the end of last year I started getting going again, so new music is being worked on now and hopefully there will be some releases starting this year.
