INTERVIEW: Benjamin Ingrosso

Photo Credit: Jonathan Perlmann

Benjamin Ingrosso is a Swedish singer, songwriter, and producer from Stockholm, Sweden. He represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 with his song ‘Dance You Off,’ finishing in 7th place. After releasing his latest album, “Pink Velvet Theatre,” this past October, he has now embarked on his first-ever North American tour, making a stop at Boston’s own Big Night Live on February 12th.

Ingrosso joined our DJs Gwyneth Moe, Nayelise Santiago Garcia, and Holly Gustavsen on WTBU’s flagship show, Fenway Frequencies, to discuss the tour and his new album.

Gwyneth Moe (GM):  With us today from the studio, we’ve got Benjamin Ingrosso! First off, how are you doing today? 

Benjamin Ingrosso (BI): I’m doing great. I had an awesome day in Boston yesterday. We had tons of food, so I’m pretty full. 

GM: Amazing. What food did you check out? Get some good seafood?

BI: Yes, we had clam chowder. We had lobster roll. We had some burgers, some steaks with mac and cheese. We had some desserts, like, we basically had, every single meal that you can have yesterday. We’re on this thing called Food Safari, which I invented myself. If I say so. 

GM: And this is your first tour out. Out for the US, isn’t it?

BI: It is. Yeah, exactly. 

GM: Have you been experiencing a lot of fun new food here? 

BI:I mean, I’ve been to the States a lot of times. I’ve been going back and forth to Angeles for a few years. So I’m very like familiar with the food here. So, it’s just, you know, it’s my first time in Boston, so I thought I might have, you know, a lobster roll in clams. So it’s it’s more like I’m trying to find, this special items that you have and the certain, like, you know, places that, and, like, we were in, we were in Toronto two days ago in Canada, and, I think in Toronto, they’re famous for their, like, like, fries with gravy and cheese, like poutine or something. I tried that. And then, you know, just try and find the, the, the more famous food stuff. 

GM: Yeah. I can’t say I’ve ever, ever had poutine, which is funny. Being from Minnesota, I feel like I live in Canada sometimes.

Nayelise Santiago Garcia (NG): I will say, if you’re trying to find all the Boston food, I think a really kind of iconic spot that has a lot of little, like food places and food stops, I don’t know if you’ve already visited is Quincy Market downtown, and they basically just have a lot of little food stands, and they have lobster rolls and clam chowder and just a bunch of Boston foods. I feel like that’s what if you only have, you know, you only have a short amount of time in Boston, might be a good time to stop and check out. 

BI: That’s a very good recommendation. I mean, yesterday we went to Neptune Oyster Bar and we went to, like, Heinz Chicken. We went to this crazy food kitchen. We went to order something like a steakhouse or what was it called, Abe & Louie’s.

GM:  I mean, I can’t say I’ve been there. It’s a little bit out of my college student budget at the moment. I think the whole. You’re enjoying the food here. 

BI: No, we’re enjoying it a lot. A lot, I have to say.

GM: And then on the note of just being in the US and your first US tour, how does it feel to bring your performance over here? Is it what you expected or is anything surprising to you?

BI: I mean, it’s definitely like something else compared to what I’m doing in Europe, and in Sweden and stuff like that. I’m from Stockholm, Sweden, by the way. If you didn’t know. So, it’s a long travel but it’s, it’s always been a dream of mine to come here and perform and, you know, get recognition here and have more fans and stuff. You know, finding my music, basically. It’s definitely, I would say, the audience here is very energetic and very, like loud, which I love.

They’re also, of course, smaller. It’s a smaller venues than what I’m used to back home. But it also gets very personal and private. And in a very nice way, I would say. 

GM: How has the fan response been to your new album? Is there a song on the album that has resonated with fans more than you expected?

BI:I would say maybe the Look Who’s Laughing Now song, has like, the people love that song. And I’ve loved performing live every single time. I think that song is my favorite song to perform here. But it’s also, I don’t know, the whole album. It’s like, for me, it’s pretty crazy to come to the States and hear people sing along to your songs.That you wrote across the world, basically, and then finding out that people have been discovering my music lately. It’s also pretty, you know, insane. And, makes me want to do this even more

GM: When you were creating and writing this album, how was that creative process? Was it any different than the previous albums that you’ve worked on?

BI:I would say it was, because I had a long time to write and produce this album. I had almost two years and for the first year I was writing a lot around the world. I went to Amsterdam and the US, London and like, like a lot of places to just try to find what I wanted to write about music-wise and, we had like a playlist that I was listening to a lot that was not music that I was that I used to listen to. It was more like, I was trying to find something that felt fresh and new for me, but also had a lot of inspiration from the music that I grew up listening to. And then after that, I started my tour 2023, and I started actually performing some of the songs, before they were even released. So a lot of my fans knew basically all the songs from my album before I released it. So it also helped me to produce the songs when I came back from the tour and like, tweaked the songs and I rewrote some parts because I could see how the audience reacts to the songs. So I was like, oh, we need to tweak the chorus here, or we need to make a better verse. Or maybe this song should be faster or slower, you know? So it kept on changing throughout the time because I performed the songs live, which was pretty sick. 

GM: Getting that kind of live feedback from a crowd has to be just such a cool thing to experience. 

BI: Definitely, definitely. And like on this tour I’m performing four new songs and we’ve already changed a lot of stuff on those songs as well. So it’s a good thing. I learned a lot during this process making this album. 

GM: “Pink Velvet Theatre”, your album, is so theatrical. And with your background in both theater and acting, I have kind of a fun question here. So, yeah, if  “Pink Velvet Theatre” was a movie playing in theaters. What sort or like genre of movie would it be?

BI:  I mean, I would say it would be like a mix between La La Land and like, a sci fi movie. 

GM: Okay, okay, I like it. I like it, I like the energy there. 

BI: And it’s a lot of like, like an alternative universe where he disappears, like the whole, like, protagonist in the story. I would think the theater is a guy who kind of, like, opens up a portal to, to see this girl, the fantasy girl, Angela. And you don’t really know if it’s real or not. And, if you listen to this, to the album from start to finish, you’ll get that it’s a story of, like, a hallucination kind of. And, so I kind of love it because I watch a lot of, like, Marvel movies and, and, sci-fi movies in general, like Interstellar and stuff like that. So I was inspired by that, making this album and also, of course, a lot of like, old-school musicals. So I would say a mix between La La Land and Interstellar, maybe.

GM: Nice, and then back in, like creating the album, you worked with producers Vincent Ponte here, and Salem Al Fakir on this album. How did that collaboration come about and what was it like working with them?

BI: I mean, these two guys, these are two Swedish guys that are extremely talented, and they’ve been writing like, you know, you have probably heard 10 or 15 other songs that they’ve been writing because they’ve been writing so many big hits for other artists. They basically wrote like a whole, 2 or 3 first albums with him and a lot of songs for, like, Katy Perry and Pharrell Williams and stuff. So as a young kid, I was a huge fan of them. And I remember going to the Swedish Grammys like five years ago and I was so nervous when I walked past them because I was like, fuck, shit.

I, you know, those guys were my heroes, my idols. And so getting the chance to work with them for like two years on an entire album, was like a dream come true. And it felt so natural. And, also Vincent, he was his father used to work with my mom. So my mom knows Vincent since he was, like five years old, which is also, you know, something like that. Like, you know, our families were friends, and it was like working with your two big brothers, I would say. And now actually, yesterday I got, one of the nominations I got for a Swedish Grammy was, composer of the year together with Vincent Asylum, which is like, you know, pretty cool for the young Benjamin, who dreamed of working with him.

GM: Yeah. No, that’s such an interesting way for that to come about. And then moving on to kind of like your past in performances. You represented Sweden in the 2018 Eurovision with Dancing Off what was, and then recently you returned to perform a medley. What was that like? Was it kind of a full circle moment? 

BI: Definitely, definitely full circle moment. Also, when I was a kid, I won the, you know, here in Sweden, or not here in Sweden, but in Sweden we have this like pre-festival, pre-contest. Before you go to Eurovision. And when I was nine I won the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. So like that festival or contest has like constantly been in my life I would say. So it was more like, you know, full circle moment even from when I was a nine year-old kid and being like, back into that kind of world, didn’t go so well when I was in Eurovision 2018. So it was very nice to come back and be, like, also very comfortable in myself as a performer, an artist. And, it sounds like it was meant to be last year and also very nice to not compete and just perform for like, like all of the people, the journalists and stuff. They kept asking me like when you were coming back, I was like, I am back. I just performed a medley of my songs, and they were like, yeah, but when you come back and compete and I was like, I don’t have to compete because I just performed, you know, three songs with my whole band, and, I don’t have to win or lose.

GM: Yeah. That’s nice not to have to have so much pressure on you and to just go and perform. Speaking of performances. So you and it’s been announced recently that you’re set to join Keanu Reeves and Kirsten Dunst in a new film called The Entertainment System.

Are you excited to get it? Has that been filmed already? 

BI: No, straight after the tour, I’m going to do Budapest and record for three days with Kirsten and, and the whole crew, I guess, and that’s, you know, it’s my first acting role, I would say. So it’s going to be interesting. And Ruben, the director, he called me, it was like, I, I really see you in this part. And, so of course I had to do an audition. Like, anyways, but it was, it was fun. And I think it’s going to be, you know, I think it’s a very like, small role, I think, but it’s still very fun to just try that. And it’s pretty sick to have my first acting role. The acting against, like, Mary Jane, it’s a very, like, also a full circle moment from the little Benji who loved Spider-Man and Marvel and stuff.

GM: Do you see yourself potentially getting more into acting after this, or do you think? Oh yeah, kind of more.

BI: Yeah. No, definitely. I’ve also always been, you know, dreaming of writing and producing music for like film scores and writing scripts and, I’m actually kind of working on, on a movie right now that I’m like, you know, not directing anything. But I was the founder of the idea of the movie. And so I think I have ADHD, so I have a lot of ideas all the time. And I, I always want to make sure that they become reality kind of. So movies 100% will be something that I will keep on working with in the future. 

GM: And then in terms of music, I mean, you just released your album, but what can fans kind of look forward to seeing from you musically in the next few years?

BI: They can definitely, you know, hope I will release a lot of music in the future. And, and, I saw “Pink Velvet Theatre” as my first album personally. Like, it was that album that kind of wrapped my five first albums together. It’s something like all of the years that I’ve been working as a performer and an artist and a songwriter, kind of like that guy who made his first real album.

You know, if I would have shown someone, what was your first album? Like, in the future I would probably just give them “Pink Velvet Theatre.” So the next album is about a 27 year old Benjamin, who has all of these, like, experiences and, and also, you know, much more, knowledge about the world and how I feel about love and stuff like that.

Now it’s more about finding what to write and, even exploring my musicality and listening to weird music just to find to tweak the stuff and hopefully also collaborating with, with tons of more different artists around the world. And, you know, keep on being inspired. I guess. 

GM:Yeah. I’m so excited to see what is to come. And thank you guys so much for joining us today! It was lovely to have you on the show. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Check out more from Benjamin Ingrosso here– https://bio.to/BenjaminIngrosso