Mélia Meijer: "Love Wasted" (Exclusive Interview)
What is the most important thing you want your fans to know about you?
Well, if there are any of those I’d like them to know that I’m staying true to myself. I’m doing what I have to do so that I can write songs and play music. This is just how I want to live my life.
For me it’s not that important to have ”fans”. Of course it’d be cool if someone out there resonates with my music. But it’s not a necessity for me to keep doing what I’m doing.
For me, to make music or art of any kind is about exploration. I’d like to live a life where I never stop exploring. And music is a big part of that. Music has helped me find so many great people along the way. It’s given me a reason to get up from bed and try again. It’s given me life-lessons from songwriters who’s lived a little more than me.
What is your recording process like for this song?
I wrote it by the dawn, after a party near a Northern port. The lyrid-meteors fell that night as I was walking home hand in hand with a friend. The sky was pitch-black and the stars were brighter than ever. At that time I was madly in love with someone who didn’t love me back and this feeling of ominous nostalgia rushed over me. It was almost like a ”deja-vu”. That’s when the melody came to me, and the words followed: ”I feel immortal with you by my side even if you don’t love me at all”.
The rest of the song was made from a collaboration between me and Roy Hamilton III. The first thing we put into the mix was a Canadian pianist I still haven’t met called Kurtis Kennedy-Singer. He did a great job capturing the ”pianola”-sound we were looking for to sort of be the anchor of the song. That, to me, captured the songs essense. After that we brought in some people I know here in Stockholm. The jazz-drums are played by Theodor ”Kronis” Kronvall and the counter-bass is played by Samuel Tillberg. I recorded so many stems of violin in my old apartment with music-collegue and friend Filip ”Fiolip” Vari. He’s a Swedish folk-musician and his particular style of playing added a lot to the atmospheric sound I was looking for.
Through this process I had a lot of help from my studio-musician and friend John Tracy with the recordings.
In the end I sang some stems in my room and thought to myself that it would be cool to add some trumpet to the mix. So I dusted it off and played some (to my neighbors delight).
Writing the song and finishing it took more than a year. But during this time feelings were processed and words rephrased themselfes, as I lived through life with my music more than ever.
What do you want your audience to feel when they listen to your music?
I want them to feel like they’re almost home, but that they still have a long way to go. Or you know, whatever they wanna feel.
How would you describe your genre and sound?
It’s jazzish-poetry.
What are your goals and aspirations for 2023?
The same as ever. There’s no goal other than to live a little bit more truer than before.
