Zoe Wees grew up in Hamburg with her single mother. She didn’t meet her father until she was sixteen. As a child of the noughties, at a time when Nintendo game consoles, cell phones and iPods flooded the market, Zoe always had less than other children. She also started making music late in life. Growing up, she didn’t even listen to the radio, let alone any albums – mostly music from artists like Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber: “I only ever listened to songs that were on TV somewhere. I rarely turned on music myself. I only had at most one iPod.”
Wees now deals with the fact that she often directed her frustration at her mother in the song “Sorry For The Drama”, the first on her debut album, “Therapy”. “The song is an apology to my mother. Because I used to be very cheeky and always wanted more. Or at least the same as the other kids.”
“I just want people to see me as easy!”
Today Zoe is a different, more grateful person: “Because now, especially when I can make something happen with my own hard-earned money or help my mother, I feel deep gratitude.” Zoe believes that many children cannot understand why they not getting certain things. “Kids often don’t see how much their parents work and strive to give them everything their friends have and what they want. As a child, you don’t always realize that your parents only want the best for you.”
Music really began for Wees in 2017, when she took part in the fifth season of the music talent show “The Voice Kids”. During the show she met Ed Sheeran, who was impressed by her. Ultimately, Wees used social networks to further build her career independently and drew attention to herself with cover versions by Lewis Capaldi, James Bay and Leonard Cohen. With success: A year later, in 2018, she began working in Hamburg with the producer team Patrick Pyke Salmy and Ricardo Muñoz as well as the songwriters Emma Rosen and René Miller. At the end of March 2020 she released her debut single, “Control”.
A success. But despite the hype that followed, which hasn’t died down much to this day, Zoe seems grounded: “I just want people to see me as easy. Simply cool. With me you can relax.” Wees has the talent to use her words and her music to build a bridge between her own experiences and the feelings of her listeners. How does she manage that? Their music, which always has a somewhat melancholic touch, conveys something like authenticity.
“I feel like if I listen to happy music while I’m sad, I’m just stopping my sadness. I’d rather go through the entire process. Listen to sad music. Maybe I’ll even get scared, okay, but I’ll feel better afterwards! This way I get much more long-term benefit from it – instead of the short moment of dancing to happy music.”
Zoe Wees also focuses on sustainability when it comes to love. “Love should be easy,” she is sure of that, and that’s what she calls a song on her album. “What belongs to me should actually find its way to me quite naturally and easily. Of course there are arguments, but it’s easy to find each other. If that doesn’t happen and you have to constantly fight, then something is wrong. I don’t like being alone, but I’m not desperate to find someone either. I prefer to chill with my friends.”
“Therapy” is the album of a 21-year-old who processes her world: love and heartbreak, the absence of her father, self-assertion. Mental and physical health and solidarity among women are also important topics for her. “All of that had to come out of me. For me, for my generation and also for older people – especially for them. When they say about my generation that we don’t have any real problems, I have to reply: Yes! People kill themselves every day because of seemingly not so serious problems!”