Exclusive Interview with 'SOFI MERONE'

“Homemade pop” mixes honesty and creativity with popstar extras. Nothing is glossy or photoshopped. Sofi Merone describes her music and creative process this way. Her work combines ambition and authenticity. She grew up in Vantaa, home to Finland’s largest airport, and her family’s cabin in the countryside. Being surrounded by nature and the forest’s beauty and isolation inspired a love of nature and a fierce diary-keeping habit that inform her songwriting today.

A few years later, Sofi gained international attention as a songwriter and as the frontwoman of melancholic electronica band feelswithcaps. In fall 2019, she attended the Song Hotel songwriting camp, where she met her new friend and collaborator, St£fan (Selena Gomez, push baby) and began her solo career. On the first day they met, they wrote Sofi’s first single, Save Me, and quickly realized they had a similar background, aesthetic, and sense of humor. Songs kept coming after that.

Sofi’s songs are deeply personal, often sad but always optimistic. She says her debut began with a douche. A boy who wasn’t interested in human relationships, just being a hero.’ This anger and frustration blends perfectly with Sofi’s playful melodies and quirky production. Sofi Merone is an ex-boyfriend-baiting, diary-exposing, emo-loving, nature-sampling future popstar. Check out her latest single and the exclusive interview below:

1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how you got started?

SOFI MERONE: I’m from Helsinki, which is the capital of Finland, but I’ve always been dividing my time between the city and nature – my family has a cabin in the countryside by the sea and it’s an important place for my wellbeing and creativity. Maybe the most important! Two years ago my father and my sister’s husband built a little cabin for me there, so now I even have my own little place in the forest. One time I spent a year travelling (6 months in Australia) and 2017-2018 I lived in London, studying and making music. Travelling has also been very inspiring for me and has made me grow. This solo project of mine, Sofi Merone, I think it had been slowly brewing below the surface, I had started writing more songs and ideas and not all of them were fit for my band feelswithcaps. Then in 2019 I was at this song camp in Helsinki where I met ST£FAN and we immediately clicked, kept working together after the camp, and decided to start working on my solo project! That’s when things started rolling. First I went to London a couple of times but then covid made us work over Zoom for like a year and a half before we were able to see each other face-to-face again. So I’d say we pretty much wrote my debut EP over Zoom! Stef even directed my first music video, which was filmed in Helsinki, from London over Zoom.

2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?

SOFI MERONE: Ah, I started piano lessons when I was four, with a local guy who worked as a cantor (is that the word? Person playing the organ in a church?). I think I studied with him for about ten years! It was quite relaxed, and sometimes we’d use the end of the class to play board hockey. Then I went into a more formal music school because for some reason I fell in love with the violin when I was five. But I didn’t like all the other stuff that came with it – music theory classes, orchestra… So I ended up quitting violin as a teenager. I did pick up the violin for a bit more in uni and did a year of classes, but at the end I sold my violin – it sitting in my closet unplayed made me sad. I also studied singing in a pop&jazz conservatory, and did my uni degree on music education. But I feel like I’ve always had a difficult relationship with studying music, I believe there’s so much that can’t be taught and it’s often too focused on rules. However, I’m grateful for what I’ve learned and couldn’t do what I do without it.

3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name ‘SOFI MERONE’?

SOFI MERONE: As I kid my first favourite band was Hanson. And actually this summer I saw them live for the first time, they played in Helsinki! It was so lovely and nostalgic and they were so humble and talented. So I guess you could still call me a Hanson fan. Also Backstreet Boys, they just have such ace songs and I keep listening to their albums. As a teen I discovered Incubus and dove deep into emo. I think me and Stefan used to love all the same bands as teenagers and that also makes us understand each other musically. When he came to Finland to visit and work on my project we’d blast out The Used and Story Of The Year in the car on the way to the cabin. Today I mostly listen to my own Spotify playlists where I collect all the songs I hear and like. Robyn is also a long-term favourite and I admire her career.

The name got started, I think, in high school. My friend Kaisa and me had some sort of a joke where we’d pronounce my last name, which is actually Meronen, in an international-sounding way where it sounded like ‘Merone’.

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?

SOFI MERONE: We had just worked on a song that had emo vibes, and soon after Stefan described my music as ‘’emo dance pop’’ – I love it! I love emo and I love dance. And pop, obviously. So I think that’d be a pretty cool description of my sound. I also think it’s slightly melancholic but has humour in it, it’s quirky, uplifting and sometimes euphoric. And what should resonate with listeners I’d say is the honesty of my lyrics and in a way the honesty of the melodies and chords as well – I’d never intentionally copy someone else but only write music that I love. If I think a song isn’t good and honest enough, I won’t put it out.

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?
**SOFI MERONE**:
As I said, I studied music for a long time. Studying and listening, I’d always pick up things that somehow made me feel the most. I started writing songs when I was 12 or 13, and I’m sure at the time I was copying a lot of things from the music I listened to. But it was never intentional, I just found things to play on the piano that I thought sounded good and wrote lyrics that came out. The lyrics were pretty cringe though… And now that I listen to my teenage favourite bands I can see some similarities! Maybe you just need to gather enough information both musically and on life, before you have a big-enough palette to paint with?

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?

SOFI MERONE:

Hmmm… At the moment, I don’t think I could write music that was intentionally political, commenting on social issues and so on. Obviously if something makes me feel a lot I will probably write about it, but it’ll be about my experience, not to share a message. I’m not sure why but somehow it doesn’t seem inspiring or honest for me to write a song that, in a way, has a ‘goal’. Also because you never know how people will hear it, maybe they’ll hear something totally different in it than what you meant.

But, talking about issues, the one that makes me the most worried and that I keep thinking about is the environmental crisis. It makes me sad and hopeless at times. I only have a humble following at the moment but I share things I find important about how to protect the nature. If some day I have millions I’ll invest on nature safe havens. Especially in the sea, since I love the ocean the most.

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?

SOFI MERONE:

Writing a song you love is always fulfilling. But career-wise, I think the feeling of fulfilment comes from moving forward. That could be many things – reaching more audience, playing somewhere new, collaborating with new people… So I just wish I can keep moving forward! Also, worrying about money takes away from my creative energy, so I hope one day that’ll be history.

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?

SOFI MERONE:

I often do ten minutes of writing in the morning, straight out of bed. Someone said it takes 30 minutes for your inner critic to wake up, and that’s why you write more honest in the mornings. I believe that’s true. Also, I’m so foggy for a long time after waking up that I don’t even remember what I’ve written. It’s interesting to go back and find some ideas!

For this project, some of the songs were more finished before we worked on them together with Stefan, and some we wrote together from scratch. It varies. Some of my best songs seem to just come out of nowhere, but I need to stay creatively active for them to appear. Another saying – you need to put a lot of crap in the ground for one tree to grow. Also, I think I need a topic that makes me feel enough to be able to write something good.

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

SOFI MERONE: In 2018, I moved back to Helsinki after studying in London for a year. I studied music business and management, and my class mates were getting cool internships and jobs in music companies in London. I half-heartedly applied for some too, but didn’t get anything. I wasn’t sure whether to stay in London or come back to Finland. The night before moving back I ended a relationship with someone I’d been dating during my year in London, and it was horrible. I cried throughout the flight to Helsinki and it didn’t seem to stop. I didn’t know what I should do, for some reason everything seemed like a mess. Apart from that relationship ending nothing that drastic had happened, but I just felt completely lost and it took a long time for me to figure out what I want to do. But at the end I realised that writing songs is what I love doing and what makes me feel the most excited, and decided to focus my efforts on writing. And that’s what I’ve kept doing!

Another one was when I was 21 and studying music in Uni. I had my first important vocal exam, where I also played a couple of my own songs with a band, it was a big thing for me. When the jury was giving me feedback, one of them said that my vocal technique was so bad that I should go back to practicing simple folk tunes only. I felt horrible. After that I went travelling and it took nearly a year for me to start writing and singing again. The first song I wrote was called Weightless and it ended up being the first song my band feelswithcaps released.

10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?

SOFI MERONE: For this project, the most significant point was meeting Stefan back in 2019. He has helped me so much and I keep learning from him. He saw something in my way of doing music that I had been wishing someone would see, and has helped me polish it and bring it out to the world! Stefan is always positive, has stellar work ethic and we always have the best time writing songs together.