Danilo Santana: "On My Mind"

With his new single, Danilo Santana played around with some tunes from
the ’80s, synth-pop, disco, and very (very) funky guitars rhythmic
patterns “On My Mind” will invite you to wear your dancing shoes and
join the super catchy chorus (that’s promised to stay “on your mind”).
Accompanied by a cinematic video-clip filmed in city Zurich/Switzerland
that’s worth watching with popcorn.

Check out the interview below and get your dancing shoes ready.

Welcome, Danilo! Congrats on your new single. Tell us, who are you?
I’m a Brazilian guy that didn’t have much to do with soccer. It didn’t
take long so I realize that actually, my passion was actually with
music. I was born in the city of Salvador-Bahia, which is where I grew
up and spend most of my time so far. When you grow up in the city of
Salvador is impossible to not be involved with music, basically, in
every corner, someone will be singing around or you will find a very
loud sound-system on, it’s a city full of rhythms. So, very rapidly I
connected with many other musicians and learned how to play some chords
on the guitar. During high-school I had my first band, with some friends
we decided to make a Beatles cover band, it was a lot of fun and
learning. I think you can still find on YouTube my first
live-performance (which was awful!!!). Not so long ago I moved to
Switzerland (which is a quieter country compared to Brasil), where now I
try to make more sense of life and of course, use all those new
experiences as inspirations for songs.

“On My Mind” – what was it inspired by?
It’s a “boy meets girl” kind of story, but telling you upfront, it’s not
a story only about love or passion. While my trip last summer around
Portugal I was already scribbling around in my notebook and after
writing “And I had dreams about you last night...” I let my mind flow to
see where this story would go. Then the story started coming out and
suddenly it was my vision of how I would deal when I would feel an
intense passion for someone (and of course telling this person all about
it). It’s like a story of opening up your heart to someone and then
suddenly, you are there, and what happens next? I mean, if you are in
this state right now, why not write a song about it.

80’s, synth-pop, and disco. Why?
I guess I’m listening too much to it lately, singing The Smiths and The
Cure in the shower it’s impossible to not get inspired. I use to say to
all my friends that I’m born at the wrong time, I should have been born
around the ’50s to enjoy the Beatles and so on… But yeah most of the
music I listen to is rather from that time. It’s quite interesting to
try to recreate the sound from the 80’s today with all the fancy gear we
have available, and super thanks to Kashoo, a long-dated friend of mine
that helped me organizing all those ideas together.

The video clip has this cool “short movie feeling” on it, how did you
come up with the idea for it?
To be honest the video clip was quite fun but also challenging to
produce. While the song was almost finished with all the mixing and
master details (produced by Kashoo), my mind started to wonder “hey what
if there is a video clip as well?” And then it started… I took some
ideas and made a very fast mood-board to what it could become a video
clip. Then I approached Manuela Wenger which is a cool friend and also a
professional Actress if she would be in for this, luckily she had some
free time and said she would love to help me out. As I’m also a
hobby-photographer I tried to scan around my network if I could find a
Film-maker, then (also luckily) I found Kevin Nyvek, which is an amazing
Film-maker here from Switzerland. So, after iterating a bit on the idea,
I decided to really treat this as a short-movie kind of thing. The song
quite offers a good space for it, if you listen with attention, it has a
very nice character development on it. Writing all the details for all
the scenes was quite easy, to be honest, but acting on it was another
story… I remember having one or two drinks while we recorded it all in
one day around Zurich. But it was a lot of fun!

Do you have any upcoming releases?
In fact yes, I have other two songs cooking in my oven. I think I quite
enjoyed myself playing around with synth-pop, indie dance, and some
tunes from the ’80s. I will probably do something in that direction
again. I really also want to mix some percussion from Brasil into this,
might be crazy but I will try.

Have a listen and connect with Danilo Santana on social media:

Watch the video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RloRAXIoViQ
Listen to “On My Mind”:
https://open.spotify.com/track/4TzmRtUvNA4temelHNONWm?si=BSNNSJNQR0avVKUMsmXnkQ
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danilosantana/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danilosantanamusic/