Mikkel Solnado gained fame in Portugal with a song that took thirty minutes and 20 seconds to write, "We can do anything" opened the doors to the musical universe for a national and international career. A success that also attributes to his surname and he feels like being a blessing.
When you initiated your music career you played dark metal and hard rock, as you change from one register as heavy to another musical strand completely different?
Mikkel Solnado: I started by listening to metal, maybe it was my way of rebelling against the world. But when the band nirvana appeared I began to realize that there was also strength in melody and they opened my mind to other styles of music and now I listen to everything, I prefer to hear music that I do not write, I love electronic music, but not I have no way to do it.
You were living in Denmark when the theme "we can do anything" began to be played in the Portuguese radios, was a surprise for you to start your career in this manner in your fathers country?
MS: Yes, it was very intense, because my father died and I went back to Denmark. I was there living, suddenly my sister calls me and tells me: you are playing on commercial radio. I thought she was lying, I had no idea. But, someone had submitted the song to the radio, they liked was that feeling that nobody knew I existed, that Raúl Solnado had a son and I think all that helped push that too. It was a surprise to me, because it I was not even supposed to do an album, but as "we can do anything" was so successful, I thought I should make a record, also to honor my father, then fell in love with a Portuguese woman and this inspired me a lot to write music and suddenly after one year I had an album in hand done.
It's the album you craved to do?
MS: No, but that was because it was the album that could do at the time. Maybe it was a very chaotic for me, because the record was done at several sites in Denmark, Portugal and England. The sounds of the album and the songs are very different from each other, because it was recorded in different locations. I do not know if it was done in haste, but I hurried me a little, because "we can do anything" came out and I there was not an album, it is usually the opposite, you have a CD and throws up a single. This song came out and I had no more music's, it hurried me, I produced the album and was launched quickly.
What inspired "we can do anything" because it is a very positive song?
MS: Look by chance the story is not so romantic, but at the same time it is. The first 20 seconds were made to an advertisement of Volkswagen and without much thought on the letter, then the advertising agency liked the music, asked me to finish it and all musicians and composers know it is very difficult to start a song and after a few months to finish it, we are in another place in musical terms. The music comes from an encounter with a girl that did not happen, but I imagine otherwise and that way I could write music in 30 minutes, had a brutal inspiration. It was through this song that my wife met me; she heard it on radio and wrote me an email saying she liked it.
The surname weighs on you in Portugal? You feel that responsibility of being the son of Raúl Solnado?
MS: I do not feel it, but I highly respect the name and I know that people respect very much the Solnado surname and there is no doubt that it opened the door. Opened the interest to hear the music I make, but if people did not like it they did not listening. I have great respect for the name and I feel so blessed.
Are you already thinking about a second album?
MS: Yes, I am already preparing it, will be more organic, will be recorded with a band. On the first most are sounds recorded by me.
Instrumental?
MS: It will be recorded with multiple members of a band at the same time rather than one at a time.
Lyrically'll continue you continue to write in English or it will be in English and Portuguese?
MS: I will continue in English, because I already have them, but a third album, who knows, will be in Portuguese. When I lived in Portugal I was in English and American college, so I define English as my primary language.
How would you define this album?
MS: More organic, deep and I will not say more. (Laughs)
