VCATION is the musical love child of lifelong friends John Martin and Michel Zitron. Although they have featured on some iconic singles as solo acts, coming together as a pair has certainly brought the best out of each artist. Bringing a super fresh and exciting brand of dance music to our new music feeds, VCATION was launched in 2018 with ‘Lay Low’ and now 6 releases later, the pair of artists have crossed the 7 million streams mark on their catalog. We had the pleasure of speaking with VCATION about their brand new single, the creation of the duo, how they work together, and much more.
Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, how are you doing today?
We’re doing very well, thanks. We’re in the studio writing music and drinking a few beers.
Let’s kick things off with your brand new single, ‘Miss U’, how happy are you with the finished product and its release?
We’re super happy that it’s finally out! It’s been a long time coming making this track and the track itself is a blueprint for the whole sound of VCATION that we’ve been working on for a while, it feels fantastic that we’re finally able to share it.
This single is your second release of the year, equally 2018. Will this year be your most productive under the VCATION name and will be hearing more new music soon?
This year has definitely been the most productive year for VCATION so far and we have so much more music coming out in 2022 and 2023.
Can you give me a little insight into the creation of VCATION?
VCATION started out as a side project at first as we, by time, realized that we needed an outlet to create more music alongside our many other projects that we were working on. After many years of writing music to other artists and dj’s we felt like we needed our own haven where we could create straight from the heart and not think about writing hits or writing in a specific genre.
Having worked as solo artists, what aspects of being in this duo do you bring out in each other?
This music is not hit based but more based on pure feelings. The biggest difference from our other ‘John Martin’ project were John is doing the vocals, this is a project where Michel leads with the vocals instead. This is a more free based project with no rules.
How was it to work alongside artists such as Swedish House Mafia and Martin Garrix on anthems such as ‘Don’t You Worry Child’ and ‘Higher Ground’.
Martin Garrix is a very good friend of ours and we’ve become family over the years. So, working with him is like working with a brother. We spend time together maybe for a week or so doing fun stuff and during that week we just also happen to write songs together. Swedish House Mafia is basically apart of our legacy that made it possible to have our big break into the music industry. So obviously that time is a big mark for us in our careers. It was a beautiful time and we will cherish that forever.
As VCATION, who would be your dream collab?
We have a couple! The Blaze would be amazing to work with. Also, some people that we’ve already worked with but as songwriters, that being the group Bob Moses. It would be amazing to work together with them as VCATION and not only as songwriters. It would also be super sick to work together with the Swedish artist Kite.
Under the VCATION alias and during your solo careers, you’ve worked with a number of styles and genres, always excelling with each one. What do you think is the reason behind your diversity?
We think one of the reasons is that both of us have slightly different music backgrounds. Working together has allowed us to merge our different backgrounds together and work from there. Many people don’t know that we didn’t really make ‘dance music’ before we had our big break with Swedish House Mafia. John Martin comes from an indie background and Michel comes from a background of more urban and pop music. We think people would be surprised to know how many different genres we have in our music archive on our computer. Also, we have music schools to thank for our diversity. Generally, music schools in Sweden are very good these days and they allow you to explore and learn about the different genres and subcultures.
Do you have any genres or styles that you haven’t worked with but you’d like to try?
Country Music! We haven’t been to Nashville yet but it’s a place we’d love to visit. It would be supercool to go there and get inspired by the music culture over there.
Thanks once again to you both for taking the time to speak with me! Do you have anything you’d like to reveal with our readers as we close this chat out?
There’s so much more music coming soon! And we can’t wait to share it with you, so please stay tuned for more music coming straight from the heart.
Check out their latest single below.
