If you want to discuss my song “Travel as I wait” you can do this on this Danish forum thread.
Signature Peter Sony DK (I guess he works at Sony in Denmark but one never knows) says it’s a shame that I am about to release my music under my own name Tomas Halberstad instead of a band or project name and if I understand him right; he thinks that it is a shame because the song “Travel as I wait” is a good song but it’s bound to get lost amongst all other song since it’s not represented under a band or project name. (He could also mean that my future production will get more and more commercial, as a bad thing, and obsolete. I will however focus on the first understanding.)
First off: He might be right! All though I really don’t know what he is basing his knowledge on. Maybe intuition (which can be great for deciding things). I have tried to think about the artists, solo artists like myself, that we have here in Sweden and I have narrowed it down, as much as possible, to comply with the style of music that I myself consider that I play, namely (the grossly miss-used and over exposed term) Indie-Pop. When I do this I really can’t see were Peter is coming from. From the look of it it seems to be the other way around. Solo artists working under a group or project name seem to fall out of contention faster that the artist working under their own name. (The conclusion was reached by simple thought process no empirical investigation was launched). I have though found one advantage of working under a band or project name, but it’s a slim advantage if any; when your band or project goes down the drain just start another, start fresh. Why this also wouldn’t apply to the solo artist working under his or her own name whose music has fallen in shadow, deciding to start fresh with a band or project name, I don’t know.
Ok. But why do I work under my own name and not under some band or project name?
Well I thought a lot about this when I got going and I ended up here: my music, however it may sound at whichever instance in time is a direct reflection of me, it’s an extension of me. I do not write my songs to fit a band (as I use to do) nor do they have to fit a certain sound, I write what I write and even If I do not like what I write (all though those songs seem to fall away anyway) it comes from me; there is something in me creating this; for me and I embrace it. In a sense I guess I decided to work under my own name because I only wanted to be limited by one thing; myself.
So unless I myself become a band, a project, a sound or a certain period in my life becomes the limitation my music will become really varied over time. As we speak I am writing songs and lyrics for my second album. It’s not going to sound anything like the first… well that’s not true; It’s going to sound exactly like the first; It’s going to sound like me.
