MÉLOVIN Opens Up About Music and Artistry

Ukrainian artist MÉLOVIN is riding high on the wave of international interest in his career due to his participation in the Eurovision song contest. Despite only placing seventeenth in the finals, his performance videos boast an impressive amount of views, and the televotes he received in the finals were in the top 10 of highest received.

Following his time in Lisbon, MÉLOVIN embarked on a multi-city tour across his home country, Ukraine, and expresses a wish to expand his touring throughout Europe. Despite not knowing as much English, he is adamant that it's his preferred language to write in. The majority of his songs, particularly the recent ones, have been released in English. As he is from Odessa, a city further East in Ukraine, MÉLOVIN tends to use more Russian in his day-to-day conversations and media. However, he expresses an interest in improving his Ukrainian as well, and even released a song in Ukrainian on his last EP.

MÉLOVIN got his start in theatre school, where he mostly studied acting with less of a focus on music, though this where he first learned to play the piano. After winning the sixth season of Ukrainian X-Factor, he was under a great deal of control by various music industry executives. These dissatisfying circumstances lead to him breaking away from the more mainstream methods and sticking to his own tight-knit community of management/promotion, a team that has been dubbed "Big House MÉLOVIN".

We sat down to speak with MÉLOVIN before his Kyiv concert, the kick-off to his Ukrainian tour. In observing his demeanour during post-production as well as the reaction from his most avid fans, we're pleased to have brought something different to his promotional content. As a Ukrainian artist, and particularly as one that has participated in Eurovision, MÉLOVIN has received a significant amount of questions from both Ukrainian and international media regarding the ongoing political conflict between Ukraine and Russia (which conveniently ignores the fact that plenty of creatives from each country's industries both professionally collaborate with another and forge meaningful interpersonal relationships). We don't adhere to the philosophy many media outlets like to utilise -- such as exploiting controversial topics or relationship gossip for clickbait. If you give a creative public figure a comfortable environment to speak freely about themselves and their work, they will give you plenty of interesting information. It also helps if you show up prepared and having done a sufficient amount of research beforehand.

Watch our full interview with MÉLOVIN here: