Pauli – Sunshine
ARTIST NAME: Pauli
SONG TITLE: Sunshine
EP TITLE: Isolation Station
RELEASE DATE: 30th April 2021
GENRE: Folk, Country
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Galway musician PAULI released his debut single ‘Cocoon’ in June 2020 as part of his three-song, Isolation Station EP, which was self-produced in Ireland during the COVID19 pandemic. ‘Cocoon’ received widespread radio play in Ireland and featured in international music shows in the UK, Canada, USA, South Africa, and Australia. The song has amassed over 50,000 streams on Spotify and was awarded Best New Song 2020 by The Independent Wave.
PAULI’s follow-up single, released in May 2021, featured on the ‘RTE Radio 1 Recommends’ list and received widespread music play in Ireland.
With an ear for melodic, catchy music, PAULI’s influences include anything from The Frames and The Strokes to Paul Simon and Billie Eilish.
“Once he’s able to get out there and tour, you sense there’ll be no stopping Pauli” – Stuart Clarke – Hot Press
“SPOILER: the *very* aptly-named ‘Sunshine’ from PAULI is so summery it should have a hay fever warning sticker on it. You have been duly advised” – Tony Clayton-Lea – Pop Culture Critic
“Cocoon… will leave you humming beautifully melodic guitar licks that will ooze through your mind for hours after first listening.” – Mike Gilmore – Buzz.ie
LYRICS:
Sunshine won’t you shine on me
The brightest thing that I see
I would never be as bright as you
You see
Unless you let me be
Sunshine won’t you stick around
You’re the greatest thing that I’ve found
I can hear the honeybees, the leafy trees
The buttercups and daisies making sounds
Then I saw her on the shore
Gold dust in her hair
A gentle gaze that helped
Erase my worries and my cares
She smiled at me
Then turned around
The sunset on the sea
Another summer day in Galway Bay
No place I’d rather be
Throwing my back into the waves again
Throwing my feet into the air
Sunshine won’t you shine on down
Brighten up this town
Come chase away the dark old days
With your bright rays
Come and spread your golden crown
Oh sunshine, sunshine, I love you
And all the little things that you do
I love the way you warm my skin, deep within
And you make me think that I’m as warm as you
Then I saw her on the shore
Gold dust in her hair
A gentle gaze that helped
Erase my worries and my cares
She smiled at me, then turned around
The sunset on the sea
Another summer day in Galway Bay
No place I’d rather be
Throwing my back into the waves again
Throwing my feet into the air
Melody: Melody is the aspect of songwriting, which comes most naturally to me. Everything starts with finding a chord progression, which I like. Once I have that and find a mood, the melody seems to just flash into existence. Usually, I just trust in the melody that appears, but lately, I’ve started to examine my melodies a little closer and try to expand the melodic range a bit since modern music has become more and more narrow in range, which is not really a good thing.
Inspiration: Music is an incredibly personal experience for me. It is how I relax, how I de-stress. There is rarely a day, which goes past without me picking up a guitar or sitting at the piano for at least a few minutes. That escape from reality is the inspiration, which drives me to create new music myself.
Experience: My career has been short, having only released my first single in June 2020, but the biggest highlight so far was when my latest single ‘Sunshine’ was featured on the RTE Radio 1 Recommends List here in Ireland. RTE is the national broadcaster here in Ireland and Radio 1 has the highest listenership. It was an incredible and unexpected delight when the song was featured on their list and got rotated among some of the biggest shows in the country.
Songwriting: It usually starts with playing around with an acoustic guitar until I find a chord progression I like. If I play that for long enough, the mood and the melody seem to just appear. The lyrics always take me the longest as I’m more inspired by creating melodies than by writing stories. That process, from the chord progression to the lyrics can take either an hour or a year. But once I have it written, I’m usually pretty confident about how I want it produced, which I often work on with a great producer called Stephen Lovatt.
Impact: That’s a tough one! As I’ve often heard, the best way is to just make music you enjoy listening to yourself! You can never please everyone, so I try to make music for myself and not to please other people.
Promotion: What I’ve learned most since releasing music is how important, and how much work goes into promoting it. It’s not just going to catch fire and become a global hit by itself – you have to work hard to promote it by contacting radios, playlisters, Twitter-folk, magazines, bloggers, and – don’t forget – your friends and family are the ones who can get you off to a good start, so use them!
Activities: I work full time in financial services (I know, I know – boring!) but aside from that, I’ve really enjoyed working on the videos for my two singles. I work with an incredible Irish animation artist named Marc Corrigan, who has worked on videos for other artists like The Academic, Futureheads and I’m From Barcelona. It has been really fun coming up with the concepts and stories for those videos and is something I’d like to continue doing.
Instruments: I play the guitar and piano well. I can also play the bass guitar, drums, and trumpet – but less well. :)
Music Background: I played trumpet in a brass band for a few years when I was younger and completed all grades of the piano. Other than that, I’ve been self-teaching myself guitar, percussion, and music production for the past few years.
Melody: Melody is joy and rhythm is life!
Goals: I would love to have my music published in media – film, advertisements, games, etc.
Recording Experience: Although I have experienced music studio recording with sound engineers and producers a few times (in Dublin, Ireland), all of the music I have released to date has been recorded at home. Technological advances mean that artists today can achieve really good results with budget home studios.
Recording: Being mostly self-recorded and self-produced, I can find it hard to overcome certain blips during the recording process. Whether it is a lack of motivation or an annoying tech issue, sometimes it’s hard to overcome the hump! I think working with others can eliminate that issue, and that’s why I intend to collaborate with others more often for future releases.
Mistake: The greatest mistake I made was underpromoting my EP when it came out. I had stupidly assumed that the thousands of listeners of my debut single would somehow search for and find my EP. Seeing how my other releases have done so much better than those songs is a lesson that you always need to put in the hard work!
Composition: Once I’d written the song, I usually have a good idea of how I want the full composition/production to sound. The best way to tackle that task is to have fun with it and to pick up different instruments to try to find small little parts, which complement the basic song melody.
Music: Music is within us all. We may not all be good at singing or creating music, but it will still make us dance or bop our heads, or tap our feet. For me, it’s an incredibly personal experience and allows me to escape from the world around me for a while.
Song: ‘Sunshine’ is a love song for the summer months, and my hometown Galway. An upbeat mix of folk and country that’ll put a spring in your step during the summer days… The song was written as I looked out at a particularly warm and bright April evening from the window in my small Dublin apartment. Having only recently returned to the country after three years in Australia, the evidence that we were finally escaping the prolonged Irish winter provided me with real and genuine optimism for the twelve-and-a-half days of summer we were about to receive that year and the song is the product of such giddy optimism. I prescribe at least one play, each day, for your healthy dose of positivity this summer.
Artist’s Name and Album’s Title: PAULI is a name that a lot of people have called me since I was younger, so no prizes for guessing my real name. The EP name, Isolation Station, came from the fact that I wrote, recorded, and produced it at home during the first lockdown of the COVID19 pandemic in April 2020.