a-ha’s Paul Waaktaar starts new project featuring Zoe Gnecco
a-ha’s Paul Waaktaar has several music projects outside a-ha, including but not limited to Savoy, Waaktaar but also Weathervane. Weathervane is a project he did with Ours vocalist Jimmy Gnecco in June 2011. Their self-titled single “Weathervane” appears on the soundtrack for the movie “Headhunters” (based on the book “Hodejegerne” by Jo Nesbø).
As it happens, Waktaar has now joined up with Zoe Gnecco, the daughter of Jimmy Gnecco for project. A first snippet for a song called “Beautiful Burnout” has now popped up online, you can hear it below. The song and music video will premiere during the international a-ha fan convention in Oslo on April 30.
The collaboration started when a-ha did its big goodbye tour in 2010, that turned out to be not their goodbye tour after all. Says Waktaar: “I thought I would make a batch of songs that I could present for other artists to sing. I wrote about 13, 14 songs and sketched them out and asked Jimmy Gnecco if his daughter Zoe would be interested in singing a guide vocal on the demoes. During the previous tour he had played me a snippet of her singing from his phone and I thought she had an absolute killer voice. The second I heard her voice on the tracks I felt she owned them. Her raw and natural talent just added a whole new dimension to the material, and I suddenly didn’t want to send them out anywhere. I’m hoping we can release this album in the next few months.”
Here are a few screen shots from the video:
For more on a-ha, see The end of a-ha – again on Side-Line.
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Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
