Two Grand Prix at age 12, a music producer and artist whose mini-album “Inside” became №1 in the charts, a compliment from the Eurovision winner on live broadcast, relocations and endless hours of work – all of this fits into one person’s biography. Michael Soul has been writing songs since the age of nine, and today her hits gather millions of streams. Michael’s career is a mix of classical education with honors and bold experiments: working as a music producer on TV, headlining major concerts in Poland. About what hides behind the artist’s confident smile, what it’s like to turn pain into music, and the new mixtape – in our exclusive interview with Michael Soul.
Hello, Mikhail! Glad, to meet you. You passed incredible path – childhood and youth in Belarus, twice holder of Grand Prix of competition “Young Talents of Belarus”, participations in “The Voice” and “Eurovision” in Ukraine, move to London, then to Los Angeles, and now here sharing with world your new mixtape “Late Night Talkings”. When you look back at all this path – do you feel that finally found your home in Los Angeles, or are you from those people, for whom home – is music, and not place on map?
First of all, hello — and just to clarify, Mikhail is my government name, but everyone calls me Michael. Yes, I’ve come a long way and have lived in more than ten countries, and I’ve come to one simple conclusion: home is where you feel that you belong, where you are wanted and expected. In the country where I was born, despite knowing many people, I never truly felt needed. That was the moment I understood that home is not necessarily the place where you’re from. At this stage of my life, America gives me that feeling. And just a small correction — the mixtape is called “late night conversations.” not talkings.
You were born in musical family – mom choirmaster, dad composer. What most early musical moment from childhood do you remember?
My mom has always been a huge fan of Mariah Carey — she still is. One of my earliest musical memories is singing “My All” together when I was four years old. At the time, she was obsessed with that song and genuinely believed that starting vocal training with Mariah Carey made perfect sense. That moment had a real impact on me. It’s probably no coincidence that I’ve been a Mariah Carey fan ever since.
At nine years you already wrote songs! What was that song. Do you still remember it?
Unfortunately, I do. And let me surprise you — kids from my school are still singing that song at random school events. We had a music studio at my school, and the engineer who worked there did an arrangement for it. Since then, kids have kept singing my very first song. Isn’t that cool?
Let’s talk about new mixtape! How appeared idea of “Late Night Talkings”?
Well, “late night conversations” is a mixtape because it’s a collection of stories that I kept inside for a very long time. Usually, I work more in the dark-pop and R&B field, so these songs were very unusual material for me and didn’t fit into any of my EPs or previous projects. So I thought maybe it would be interesting to tie them together and make a mixtape. It was an opportunity to show another side of my artistic personality, tell more personal stories, and explore something absolutely new in my music journey. I remember that after hearing all five songs together in the studio, the idea for the name came up immediately. I thought about what kind of experience a person has with this music — it’s something you usually share with close ones while drinking wine at night, sitting on the kitchen floor. late night conversations.
Internal dialogues – foundation of mixtape. You listen to it and it seems that you’re eavesdropping very personal. With whom or with what are you talking in these songs?
Well, it’s definitely something you can admit only to your close ones, so by sharing this material with my listeners, I’m making each and every person who listens to this mixtape my close one. Everyone now has an opportunity to become my friend and sit with me at night and hear me spilling my guts. It’s personal, and I wanted it to be personal. It’s my way of saying thank you to everyone who supports me.
In one of reviews on mixtape met phrase: “Vulnerability becomes creative force”. Right on point! But tell – when you recorded these tracks, wasn’t it scary to be so open?
It was. Talking about my self-perception issues and admitting that after years of bullying I don’t know who I am anymore was scary. Being called ugly and a monster because of my unusual appearance made me ask myself, “Am I the monster?” Telling the story about my father’s death was also extremely challenging. I remember recording the song “daddy” at home – I was sobbing on the floor after singing it for the first time. We decided to keep the first take because it was raw and honest. And I can’t imagine singing this song more than once – it’s traumatic and painful.
Identity, loss, longing – main themes of mixtape, agree heavy themes. Why exactly now was it important to talk about them?
I guess every artist is inspired by the environment and events we live in. Dark times make people more vulnerable and honest, more open and fearless. I remember sitting in a history class at school when I was ten, listening about yet another war in the Middle Ages, and thinking how amazing it was that we lived in a world where war was never going to happen again. God was i wrong. There are a lot of very scary things happening in the world right now, so maybe my artistic side was triggered and I felt it was time to share this. Maybe there is someone who needs to hear it.
Mixtape completely created by you. Tell about process – how was it, to work alone on whole project?
Well, yes, I wrote the lyrics and melodies and produced the music, but I wasn’t completely alone. My guitarist Jaysset worked with me — he recorded acoustic and electric guitar for almost every track on the album. My very close friend and talented musician Sasha Makarovska mixed and mastered some of the tracks. I also worked with Goldy1love and Nick Niker on mixing and mastering for some of the tracks. I wasn’t alone. At the same time, this experience was completely different — it was both a challenge and a blessing to produce an entire album by yourself. It’s definitely worth trying at least once in your life. I usually prefer working with people on my music; I love to collaborate and learn from others. But this specific material was so personal that I decided I should at least try to do it myself. And I did it! And I’m so proud that I did.
Considering your theatrical background and how cinematographically sounds mixtape, interesting – are you planning visual accompaniment for “Late Night Talkings”: clips, performances, art-projects?
For the track “gloom”, which was released as a single in August 2025, I did a tribute to Brigitte Bardot, who recently passed away. Now this video feels ten times more special because she’s no longer with us. It was a beautiful homage to the 40s–50s aesthetic and the golden era of French cinema. The music video, filmed in Warsaw by a Ukrainian crew, is a single-take dolly-in shot. For the single “am i the monster”, I created a black-and-white, very old-Hollywood-inspired video, which you can also check out on my YouTube channel. It was very spontaneous — we filmed it during the photoshoot for this mixtape.
“Late Night Talkings” already went out into free floating, and now most interesting – what next?
I’m coming back to my dark-pop nature. I’ve already planned to release at least three new singles by the summer, and I hope to finish the album by the end of 2026. So I’m pretty busy this year! But I also really want to explore the world of cinema and maybe appear in a film or series in 2026. I’ll hope that saying this out loud will become my manifesto and a way to attract this opportunity to me.
Voxwave Magazine: Music, Culture, Interview, Fashion 