Musicology # 1 - With Greta Zazza

It was a pleasure to sit down last week with an aspiring pop-star to chat some music stuff. This column is gonna be different to a gig review in that it gives a chance to dig deeper than just describing a musical performance. In-Vilnius recently has been tracking the Lithuanian Eurovision heats to step out of our comfort zone in order to understand a mainstream world we previously weren't well-acquainted with.

Greta Zazza has had a good run so far in 2018, in Eurovision terms, by reaching the semis - the seventh of a blockbusting eight heats - and though the journey has ended there this time, her second effort "Broken Shadows" has all the elements of a crystalline pop song that should, in our eyes, have gone all the way.

Greta explained succinctly that having pure pop goals often gets dismissed, compared to someone that takes a more avant-garde approach in the competition and that being a soprano-singer travelling Europe-wide in a choir also shouldn't be shunted into a separate bracket to pop music. We couldn't agree more at this juncture.

Though there is an element of bubblegum to Eurovision, the roster nowadays is more all-encompassing, compared to the bland days of the early 2000's when the most fun part to Eurovision was the drinking games played at the voting stage - if you got Ireland or Denmark, you were usually on your way to getting wasted by 9pm. Speaking from experience here, just for the record.

We also chatted about geography and how Vilnius is a great place to become classically trained, but that cities like Warsaw, or Stockholm - where Greta is based now - offer a bit more in terms of scenes. On a Tuesday night for example, you are probably more likely to find something popping off in the 'holm - this is gonna have to be something to be witnessed in the flesh - Zazza nicely put it that it's more of a cosmopolitan place than introvert-central like the stereotypes would suggest.

The elements that stuck out the most from this hour, was that dipping celery and peppers into hummus while running an interview isn't the smoothest thing - but more importantly that a musical past and future doesn't have to be mapped, or hash-tagged - that in a world of sheer musical hype and massive output - finding someone that clearly stays true to themselves is deeper than any glitter that covers the surface.