VI TALLI TALKS RUNNING

Behind the Coastline

You are reading an independently published interview-series published and carefully curated by Swedish pop-culture journalist Daniel John. Ever since its start in 2015, the core curiosity remains the same, surfing the creative currents of music, film, fashion and everything else on the pop-radar, catching the waves of culture as creative

Culture Coast TalksDaniel John

If your previous single felt like it came from a more uncertain, wandering place, 'Running' comes off as a more decisive step in a direction you want to go. Where did this song come from?

Joanna Alford wrote this song in her twenties and when she sang it to me for the first time I felt chills down my spine. I have been literally on the run for four years and the reflection was undeniable.

Ambition often keeps us focused on what’s ahead, what is next, and it can really be a conscious decision to stay and appreciate today. How do you make sure you’re moving in the present and not just to or away from something?

That may be the deepest question I have ever received. I am still young. I have great days and often very bad days. You’re right about ambition. I do not know how I have been able to make sure I am growing, but when I cry I sure feel it. So I hope it’s happening. It must be right? I really hope so. Every day I am trying to give up the pains of the past that my identity has been built on so far, I want to grow more and I know I have to give up childhood pains but not necessarily forget the past.

You were raised in a family of musicians, how long did it take for you to pick up a guitar and start singing too?

I started singing long before the guitar, and started the piano before the guitar. My earliest memory at the piano is six or seven, we found an old piano in a community center and just started playing. My parents later recognized we were learning the piano and then got one too. As for guitars, we always had guitars at home because of my dad, but I did not pick one up myself until I was seventeen. It was very easy for me to learn, the first song I ever learned to play on the guitar was 'Work' by Rihanna and Drake.

Do you, creatively, think running into things can be a good thing, rather than to plan everything out. Can overthinking become an obstacle?

I definitely overthink and it sometimes leads me right off a cliff. I’m not sure honestly how I feel about it because I do believe in thinking. I want to know things and learn things, but if I take it too far it can hurt. I also have this need for structure and knowing everything will be okay, which I think comes a lot from how I, and everyone else, was raised in the Ukraine and I am working on that, to not be so afraid of the unknow ahead. As for running into things, yes I love that, doesn’t everyone? I think it is called serendipity.

How do you recognize when a song is done, is it driven by the process, a feeling, or how do you know?

I play it to everyone and then know. But I will listen to it for myself hundred thousand times, and when my team is ready to pick it up, I release it.

You're more widely known in Ukraine, where you are from and lived before the war, but over the past four years you’ve seemingly been moving around a lot. Has music itself been a refuge for you. A way to find some kind of structure and control and community?

It is all I have had, and my sister who I wish was with me every day. Music has always led me to something great and it’s why I keep doing this. It is why I am still on this path.

This is the second single off your upcoming debut-album. At what running pace are we moving toward the full release?

I can’t say I know. A lot has to do with the numbers and if a big label wants to take over before it is all done, which is my dream. Putting 'No Time for Perfection' together just happened without real intention. Out of nowhere, Dell, one of my producers, just started making songs with me for free when my English was still quite broken. Then I met Joanna in Ohio from a friend and we started creating more music and about three months later we had a full-album and everyone was like, this is very good. It is funny we were originally planning to go to LA, but then the week we were meant to drive there the Palisades fire happened and we diverted to Nashville, a city I had never heard of. I know we will release at least one more song and push those as hard as we can. A stool takes three legs.

Before having to leave Ukraine you were also on the verge of releasing an album. Are there threads from that still remaining, or is this an entirely different album from the one we were about to get?

This is an entirely new album. It is like I walked into some sort of portal and teleported to a different world in fact I think that’s exactly what has happened. I still sometimes break down over cultural things I don’t understand, or how people in the US, so many of them, live in this unstructured way from their work lives to their romantic lives, I am often left wondering can I do this too or when will I find my balance. The music I have been making here in America has been changing me as much as I am making it. If I had stayed in the Ukraine, which I miss all the time, I’d probably had released something by now, most likely in Ukrainian, but I know one day I will make music in the Ukraine again. And all I am going through now will make even more sense.

Maybe one day you will come here?

I’d love to do a residence in Sweden! Who are you people?!