ONE ON ONE: AN INTERVIEW WITH TEYA!

FIRST OF ALL, CONGRATS ON THE EP! HOW LONG DID THE PRODUCTION PROCESS TAKE?

Thank you! I started writing during the summer of 2023, and I wrote the rest of the songs in autumn in Berlin and Vienna. The visualisers were done by the beginning of the year and we’re in the promo phase now. But I’m already thinking about my next projects.

YOU PARTICIPATE IN A LOT OF SONGWRITING CAMPS WHERE YOU’RE BASICALLY WRITING 24/7. IS IT DIFFICULT TO BE CREATIVE ON DEMAND?

I’ve been thinking a lot about that question, actually. Sometimes I have five to six sessions per week where I write for other people as well as for myself. There have been times where I was afraid that one day, I might walk into a session and find that I’ve run out of ideas. But what I’ve realised is that creativity isn’t in me; it’s around me and I catch it and put it on paper. Creativity is always there, you just have to be open to it. That’s why I’m not afraid of it ever stopping, although I have had moments where I was overworked, which makes me less open to ideas. Then I have to take a break and recharge, and the ideas start flowing again.

DOES IT HELP THAT THE SONGWRITING CAMPS ARE IN DIFFERENT PLACES AND COUNTRIES?

For sure. Plus, there’s different people, too. You enter a room with complete strangers, and you’d think it’d be super awkward, to start writing about personal topics with people you have never met before. Within the first few minutes of getting to know these strangers, they tell you that they struggle with depression or that their grandmother just died. It gets incredibly personal very fast and when you’re open to this, it’s not awkward at all, it’s inspiring – you immediately get ideas. It’s so important to meet other songwriters; that’s how I learn the most. One of those people is DANA. She knows exactly which questions to ask to get people talking. As a songwriter, 80% of your work is empathy and understanding people. DANA is brilliant at that. I wrote half of my EP with her.

DIVING A LITTLE DEEPER INTO YOUR EP, HOW DID YOU PICK THE TITLE ‘GRANDMA ON THE DANCEFLOOR’?

I’ve been asking that myself. Somehow no one stopped me when I pitched it (laughs). See, 2023 was the year of TEYA and SALENA because we went to Eurovision together and released two more collaborations after that. Both our joined work and my solo work have this bad bitch vibe to it; it’s usually funny lyrics about serious topics. In an interview, I explained that despite this bad bitch vibe, I’m actually a bit of a grandma – I never liked going to parties and I usually spend my Friday nights playing rummy cub with my friends while drinking tea. My fans ran with this idea and dubbed me grandma. Then, when DANA came to visit me in Vienna, we saw a film about a woman who spoke about what it means to be and age as a woman, which inspired me immensely. I knew I wanted to write a song called ‘Not Scared Of Growing Old’ and we penned it down the next day. In the track, there’s a line including the EP title ‘Grandma On The Dancefloor’ and I thought, that makes complete sense: All of the songs on the EP are very danceable, they could be played in a club but I wouldn’t be in that club. And if I were, I’d be a grandma on the dancefloor. That’s how the title came about, followed by the idea of my band wearing a grandma wig. I suggested it to my team and my label and they encouraged me; no one asked me to rethink it. Suddenly I found myself shooting a music video in a grandma wig, in the middle of a retirement home, looking like a complete idiot (laughs). It escalated and now I’m stuck. Oh well, last year we had the TEYA-SALENA era and now I’m in my grandma era!

HOW COME THAT YOU WRITE ABOUT SUCH UNUSUAL TOPICS LIKE INGROWN HAIR ON TWEEZERS, BEING A HOE IN THE OLD PEOPLE’S HOME AND LYING ABOUT BEING IN JAIL TO AVOID GOING ON A SECOND DATE?

Before our participation in Eurovision, I mostly wrote songs that I thought would cater to the masses instead of songs that actually came from my heart. I released songs about heartbreak even though I hadn’t experienced it yet. That changed with ‘Who The Hell Is Edgar?’, which is a song about the poor treatment of songwriters, because I realised that people can relate more to topics that are close to my heart. It was the Eurovision community that showed me that. I understood that, if it’s important to me, it’s important to others, too. When ‘Who The Hell Is Edgar?’ came out, we had a little release party, we were eating pizza and watching reaction videos on YouTube. There were so many people analysing the lyrics down to the tiniest details, even though it’s such a niche topic. I started crying because I couldn’t believe that people would care so much about words I had written. As a songwriter, that was insanely satisfying and I was so grateful. That’s when I decided to no longer cater to the masses and write from the heart instead.

ON YOUR EP THERE’S A TRACK CALLED ‘BEFORE JAIL’ FOLLOWED BY ‘JAIL’, AND A SONG CALLED ‘TO-DO LIST’ FOLLOWED BY ‘TO-DO LIST COMPLETED’. DID YOU PLAN ON THESE TRACKS GOING TOGETHER OR DID THAT HAPPEN NATURALLY?

‘Before Jail’ and ‘To-Do List Completed’ are interludes, an introduction and an afterword. Both used to be bridges in ‘Jail’ and ‘To-Do List’, respectively, but they just didn’t really fit into the songs. ‘To-Do List’ is a fun song, but its message is serious. It’s about me being completely overworked after having a tough year where I neglected myself. That was the intention of the song, but it became dance-y and funny. However, I didn’t want to miss the part where it gets real and serious, so I used it as an outro. With ‘Before Jail’ and ‘Jail’, it was pretty much the same thing, only I used it as an intro instead. And it’s similar with ‘Immigrant Child’, too: The song is fast paced but the end is more sombre. We were discussing whether to take that part out, however, eventually I decided it was important for me to keep it in.

SPEAKING OF ‘IMMIGRANT CHILD’, WAS IT DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO WRITE SUCH A PERSONAL SONG?

It’s definitely a personal, intense song. I wrote the song together with DANA and my roommate Thomas who are two of my closest friends. First, we made DANA’s track ‘Mama Aren’t You Angry’, that’s quite an emotional song, too. The next day, we decided to write a TEYA song, which is to say, bouncy, fast paced and not exactly heartbreaking. However, I always wanted to write a song called ‘Immigrant Child’ and I’d been carrying the chorus around in my notebook for years. So, I started telling DANA and Thomas about what it was like to grow up in Austria as a person with an immigration background. The things that happened to me, the things that were said to me, are something that are with me still. It’s anchored inside me; always making myself small, always being quiet so as not to be perceived as the ‘difficult immigrant’. I told them about specific experiences I had. When I was a kid, for example, I was friends with my Austrian neighbour, and one day, we were playing in her pool. Her grandmother came, pulled me out of the water and yelled at my friend not to hang out with ‘dirty Serbians’. When I was selected together with SALENA to participate in Eurovision, I received so much hate, too. People were asking why I’m representing Austria if I’m not even Austrian. The sad thing about this is that I was not surprised at all. I had already expected that to happen because I am so used to it. As I was telling DANA and Thomas about it, we were all bawling our eyes out. I thought, there’s no way we can write a TEYA song now! But DANA insisted and so we turned the pain into anger. Because the writing session was so emotional, I decided to keep the emotional part at the end where I sing the last line in Serbian.

WHEN YOU WENT ON TOUR WITH LUKE BLACK YOU DEBUTED SOME OF THE SONGS FROM THE EP. HOW WERE THEY RECIEVED? WERE YOU SURPRISED ABOUT SOME OF THE REACTIONS?

‘To-Do List‘ was definitely the most popular because I taught the audience a sing-along part, which they loved. Vienna was a bit different: There, ‘Immigrant Child‘ got the longest applause and afterwards, a lot of people came up to me and talked to me about the song. That surprised me.

WHICH SONG ON YOUR EP ARE YOU PROUDEST OF?

I like all the songs for different reasons. I love performing ‘To-Do List’ live, but I think I’m proudest of ‘Behind The Scenes’ because it was the first solo song I released after Eurovision. Plus, it’s a bit of an unusual genre and I wasn’t sure whether people would be down for it.

YOU’LL EMBARK ON A SUPPORT TOUR WITH AIKO SOON, WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE AFTER THAT?

My goal for next year is to do some headline shows. Playing live is the focus, a second EP would be great, too. I just wrote a new song with 2000s hip hop vibes and I want to revisit an older song I wrote. ‘Grandma On The Dancefloor’ is a cool intro to everything that’s about to happen and I have lots of new ideas in my head. I’m excited and happy.

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