2020 started well and seemed promising. I released my debut EP, signed with a lawyer and started to talk with managers and live agents. I was about to play my biggest headline show to date at The Grace in London. I was so excited! You all know what happened next.
Lockdown 1 started on the week of my show and I had to postpone it to a new date to keep everyone safe. I felt so bad. The first few days I was confused, like everybody else, didn’t fully understood what was going on. When I finally realized we were in the middle of an unprecedented situation, I felt like everything that I was working hard on was slipping away from me, and this time it wasn’t my fault. It was hard – I lost money and time. I knew that I was never going to have this time back. I spent March and April hoping for something to change within days, my mind didn’t want to accept this situation.
I always suffered anxiety, since I was a teenager and lockdown didn’t make it easier at all. Luckily, I lived and still live with my girlfriend and we helped each other go through these difficult times. It took me a few weeks to ‘get in the mood’ and come up with a new plan. I decided to take a step back and make 5 steps forward instead. I asked myself what I was doing wrong that was holding me back having the career I wanted. I spent my time working on myself watching Netflix (I think I watched all series lol), practising, producing demos, writing, spending more time on social media and most importantly spending time with myself to understand my limits and my fears. It was time to overcome it! I tried to stick to a routine every day. Honestly, this has helped me so much to maintain my mind sane and don’t go nuts.
My family lives in another country and it has been so hard to stay away from them for so long. I started to question myself as I never did before and found the courage to do things I always waited to do because I kept telling myself ‘it wasn’t the right time’. I found a new home right where it was, in our little studio flat with my girlfriend. I asked her to marry me and I even learned how to cook something other than pasta haha!
I wrote a song about this, ‘Feels Like Heaven’ (I will release it this year so a bit of self-promo here haha). Lockdown hasn’t been easy for a lot of people but at the end of the day, it had its pros as well! I expressed my lockdown feelings into this song. For example, I’m singing: ‘some days I feel alone, some others you’re the only one I rely on’ … I loved spending time with my girlfriend 24/7 but this hasn’t been easy all the time, I needed my own space to keep a healthy mental state but at the same time I enjoyed this ‘new life’ and started to miss living with her 24/7 when she had to go back to work.
Final thoughts, this pandemic taught me to appreciate the things that I always gave for granted: all small things in life, my family, my girlfriend, my health, my priorities. 2020 has made me wiser, tougher and more ambitious than ever. Music played a huge role in helping me going through all of this. I couldn’t play live shows but luckily we live in the Internet Era and it has been super cool to be able to stay in touch with my audience through social media and play virtual shows. As an artist, I feel that it’s our job to bring joy to people’s homes and hearts, in these difficult times, more than ever.