Exclusive Interview with '7000apart'

Amelie Eiding and Jon Kresin, the core members of 7000apart, have been hailed by the Green Bay Press-Gazette as “a husband-wife pop duo with a high school love story, inspiring presence, and an international following.” Amelie left her hometown of Stockholm, Sweden in 2012 to enroll in high school as an exchange student in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This is how their story began. She met Jon there, and their budding romance began. After she left for Sweden, the couple began a creative endeavor they called 7000apart, which alludes to the 7,000 kilometers that separated them. The couple got engaged in 2016 after three years of overcoming the challenges of a long-distance relationship and numerous transcontinental journeys. At this point, 7000apart evolved into a significant creative project. The relationship between Amelie and Jon is irrelevant to the music of the duo. The awareness of mental illness is a tenet of their songwriting, and they frequently discuss personal struggles in their lyrics that convey a general message. On their second album, Feel Your Feelings, the couple is currently collaborating with GRAMMY-winning Nashville producer and songwriter FEMKE. The project is a dynamic journey that details the highs and lows they have experienced while also embracing creative expression and remembering the value of self-care. The band’s song “Blank Check” was recently played on MTV’s The Hills: New Beginnings, and they are currently working on their upcoming album, Feel Your Feelings, with GRAMMY-winning Nashville producer FEMKE.
The second single from 7000apart’s successfully crowdfunded album Feel Your Feelings, “Player 2,” is being released today. This ballad with video game influences has heartfelt vocals and lyrics that will make you cry. “Player 2,” was released on May 27 of 2022, check out the single and the exclusive interview below:

1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how you got started?
7000APART: Jon is from Green Bay Wisconsin and Amelie is from Stockholm, Sweden. We decided to start 7000apart because we were in a long-distance relationship for 3 years. We decided to start a project while we were in different countries to still make music together and have something in common to talk about. We started as a YouTube channel to make covers & originals. Once we got married in 2016, we wanted to keep going with 7000apart and it ended up becoming our full-time job.
2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?
7000APART: We both have a mixture of both formal training and being self taught. Neither went specifically to a “music university”, but we have studied music in high school and gotten lessons for our respective instruments and music theory. Jon went to university for audio production and producing music, although we enjoy working with producers whose sound we really enjoy to get an extra opinion.
3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name ‘7000APART’?
7000APART: Our first music influences that really shaped our desires to write music were Switchfoot (for Jon) and Paramore/Evanescence (for Amelie). Our name “7000apart” came from starting a project on YouTube while we were 7000 kilometers apart from each other from Lexington, Kentucky where Jon was going to University to Stockholm, Sweden where Amelie was going to school and working.
4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?

7000APART: The main element that we hope would resonate with listeners is the lyrics and the vocals. We work incredibly hard on every word and the way we sing the lyrics to make sure that the emotion really comes through that we were feeling when we wrote the songs. Our sound is definitely alternative pop. We’ve had a hard time putting ourselves into one specific ‘pop’ box largely because we love so many styles of music, but we’ve definitely got some rock, funk, and folk influences mixed in with a ‘pop’ production style.

5. For most artists, originality is first preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you? How would you describe your own development as an artist and music maker, and the transition towards your own style, which is known as POP?

7000APART:
Before 2018 we were writing and producing songs that were completely different styles similar to artists that we loved and had no real red thread. We met an artist coach in 2018 who helped us to really put ourselves in a box and have a place to grow from for our first album, We Are More, which came out in 2019. Once we had that album complete we used it as a foundation and vocabulary for the songs and sounds on our upcoming second album. Since we had a foundation to go off of we also felt like we could expand and experiment with our sound a little, which has really accumulated to being what our music is now.

6. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative and entertainment?
7000APART:

That’s the point of art and music in general, isn’t it? Whether, or not artists know it, their work shapes culture. For us, we’ve been on a mission with our second album to help remove the stigma around mental health by sharing our own experiences and struggles through the last 3 years. We absolutely want it to be an entertaining experience too, but as long as it’s an honest and vulnerable expression of ourselves that we can be proud of putting out into the world that is the most important thing. We can only hope that other people might relate to it and it might help people feel like they can be themselves and give them permission to take care of their own mental health.
7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfilment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more, or different in the future?
7000APART:

It really depends on the day. Some days we are on top of the world and other days we question if it’s really worth doing everything we are doing. When you’re putting so much of yourself out into the world it can definitely be a little heartbreaking when you haven’t found your “people” yet who connect with what you’re doing. That is largely because we are independent artists who have no idea what we are doing, haha. Also, the internet is a huge place and it’s hard to get a sense of connection through numbers on a screen. We hope that once we learn how to find our people and hear from them directly that it’ll make us feel a bit more connected. In the meantime, we’ve been grinding over 100 shows a year and “paying our dues”.
8. Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you collaborate with others in this process?
7000APART:

We definitely have done all of those things. Sometimes we co-write with others, sometimes Jon starts a song off of a lyric/melody/track, and sometimes we work together on a song largely from its inception. We love creating in all those different ways and it really keeps it interesting and inspiring changing up the process.

9. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?

7000APART: For our life the hardest thing has been being in our long-distance relationship for 3 years where we had a 7 hour time difference between us. That definitely shaped our personal relationship and life quite a lot. Being in an international relationship also caused a lot of challenges with immigration, but that’s a whole other thing, haha.
For our career the biggest challenge was definitely the world pandemic in 2020. We had just been on Sweden’s Got Talent, did our first regional tour to 18 cities and 8 states in the U.S. to promote our first album “We Are More”, and were starting to talk with record labels about releasing music together for 2020 and 2021. The pandemic really blindsided us and stopped most of the momentum that we had spent 2 years building up. But, no matter how many times we fall down we “Get Back Up Again” (that’s a deep cut).
10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?
7000APART: Even though we’ve had some challenges there’s definitely been so many more wins. Sweden’s Got Talent, hearing our song “Blank Check” on an MTV show, winning an award from Björn Skifs (singer of ‘Hooked on a Feeling’), and winning best new artist in Wisconsin were all highlights. Self-releasing our first album in 2019, which now has over 125,000 streams on Spotify alone and working to self-release our second album coming up in 2023. Honestly, getting married at 21 and figuring out immigration to the U.S. for Amelie and to Sweden for Jon was another huge win. There’s definitely so many proud moments and we are so thankful to even get to do this job on a daily basis.