Pigeon Opinion Featuring an Interview with Stefan Celosia

Stefan Celosia’s "Something Real” lands as polished electro-pop with a warm live feel and a clear emotional center. Built from groove-led instrumentation and modern production, the track sits somewhere between the soul-infused bounce of Silk Sonic, the sleek pulse of Parcels, and the sharp pop instincts of Childish Gambino.The song treats love, ambition, and creative persistence as cycles, which makes its bittersweet tone feel earned.

Interview with Stefan Celosia

What was the first idea or feeling that led you to write "Something Real”?

I have an old Les Paul guitar, my first one actually, and it had been gathering dust for the last 10 years or so. I recently got into the idea that I wanted a baritone guitar, and after a bit of research I thought, “hey, why not convert this one?”. It was a fun, simple project, and it felt good to bring the instrument I started on all those years ago back to life. Once I had it set up, I had to play it.

When I was experimenting on it and getting used to it, I found myself thinking about where it all started. How I first fell in love with music, and the long bumpy road since. I think that’s where the song really started, I just wanted to put music to that feeling. You can actually hear that guitar on the track, the baritone plays throughout but is particularly in focus during the intro, guitar solo and outro.

The song explores the idea that real connection takes time and repetition, what made you want to focus on patience rather than instant connection?

So the song started out as a sort of reflection on my relationship with music, but I think quickly went beyond that. I’m 35 and a dad now, I’m engaged and I work full-time in music. I’m very lucky and grateful for all of these things, but like anything they come with their fair share of challenges,

you have to put in the work.

With any connection, be it romantic, passion, arts, music, etc, you have to seize that first spark of connection and build on it. Sometimes it’ll be so hard you’ll want to give up, other times the sailing is so plain it seems inconceivable that it could ever be hard at all. It’s all part of the journey, worthwhile things tend to be hard, that’s what makes them worthwhile.

How do the cycles of relationships and ambition show up in your own life, and how much of that made its way into the track?

So many ways! Being a musician is like being married, it’s a relationship with music and your instrument(s) that you have to nurture. If you don’t, it withers and dies, and there’s no rulebook so you have to keep trying until you find what works for you. But the perseverance pays off, it is worth it, that’s the key to the whole story really.

Musically I’ve always been more of a producer first, songwriter second, so a lot of that stuff I like

to convey through the production of the track, with the instrumentation, music and soundscapes. I like to make it colourful, like a caricature. As though a visitor from outer space tried to replicate human music, having read about it but never heard it.

The visual world I built for the track reflects that. I made a series of six short animated clips that tell the story of an alien crash landing on a planet to find love. I feel that sums up my experience as a human fairly accurately, and a lot of that has gone into this project.

You blend live instrumentation with modern electronic production, how do you decide where the line sits between the two in a song?

I write most of my stuff on the baritone guitar now, and I’ll hum or sing ideas for melodies and lines, so it’s always a simple, human start to things. The electronic production side of it I think of as colours I can add to the core idea of a song to enhance the meaning or feeling of the music and

lyrics.

I think I’m also learning to hold back more. My tracks are still pretty busy sonically but much less than before. I’m slowly but surely aiming towards “less is more”, which definitely helps because the production can easily feel overburdened. I try to set out a rough template when I start to keep the ideas on track. For example, I might decide to have one drum or percussion, one bass, one guitar, one keyboard and one lead sound in a track, and that’s my world for a bit. What can I build with that? Then once that’s done you can think about filling anything missing for a final polish.

The track sits between electro-pop, funk and soul influences.

What draws you to combining so many genres instead of staying in one lane?

I think that mostly happened the other way around. I’ve been writing my own stuff for a while, but it’s largely been very experimental, multi genre-blending music until now. I’ve played bass, guitar, drums, percussion and sung professionally in bands and acts of so many styles over the years, including rock, pop, soul, funk, reggae, jazz, country, tribal and trad, so there’s a part of me that wants to put a bit of everything in there.

Obviously that can get a bit chaotic, but I’ve always tried to let the writing process flow naturally rather than force it into a specific lane. Over time, the sound started refining itself into something

that almost fits a genre or two. Something Real is the current result of that process, still evolving, but feeling more focused and direct than before. To be honest it’s probably the closest I’ve come to fitting a specific genre at all, so I’m really excited to explore this style more and develop and refine it. It feels like I’ve finally found my voice, I just had to try every style to get there.

The song has a bittersweet but hopeful tone. How do you balance those two emotions without one overpowering the other?

Probably luck... I think structuring the parts of the song helps a lot too. I’m still new to writing lyrics overall, it’s not something I’m as experienced with compared to other musical skills, but I try to think of the different sections of a song having different roles.

Verse one sets the scene and introduces the protagonist, then verse two introduces a challenge. The chorus tells you the point of the story, it’s almost a summary, and in well written songs the chorus can take on new meanings as the story evolves.

Then the bridge is the reveal, it’s the healing, where you finally face the truth and accept it. The final chorus is where it all comes together one last time, but now with the wisdom gained from the bridge. These aren’t hard rules I apply or anything, but I find this approach can help keep the topic moving.

You get emotional tension and release which helps the track and themes feel balanced. Musically I try to paint around the vocals, using the sounds themselves to balance out the emotions carried by the lyrics and melodies. The project uses a conceptual outsider narrative searching for connection.

How important is storytelling beyond the music itself for you?

I love world building! The artists I admire most tend to build little worlds and stories with their art. The subtle ways they present things conjure up images in our heads of the world the piece of art

exists in.

As a producer I’ve often felt my job is to do the music and soundscape side of that for my clients. They have the lyrics, themes and melodies, and my job is to paint the colours in with the production to match their vision.

It doesn’t have to be flashy or complicated, in fact sometimes the best art is where we can’t quite tell what the story is, but we can feel it under the surface somehow. Art without story can still be beautiful, but it tends to be more forgettable, like there’s less mystery for us to solve.

Artists like Silk Sonic, Parcels and Childish Gambino are mentioned as influences. What do you take from those artists and what do you consciously avoid copying?

I don’t really consciously study artists for ideas or anything like that, I just listen to them as I go,

and when I’m working on stuff the ideas that come to me will tend to be influenced by what I’m

exposing myself to at that time.

Because of my work, I’m always around lots of different sources of inspiration, which helps keep the ideas fresh. It’s such a melting pot of ideas that whatever comes out is usually fairly unique. I’ll often use a track I like as a mixing or mastering reference, but usually more at the end of the project when all the music is done and I’m just checking things like “are the drums too loud” or “how bright should the guitar be”.

When I’m writing I tend to work on my own in a quiet room, so a lot of the ideas start out with things I know how to play on the instrument I’ve got. That gets the ball rolling and will inherently feel like me.

You work completely independently from your home studio in Glasgow’s South Side. What does that freedom allow you to do that a traditional setup might not?

Honestly I love it! I work closely with my good friend Geoff Angus, we work under Jef’n’Stef, and

we looked into getting a studio space at one point, but we both came to the conclusion that we

prefer the home setup.

I’m lucky to have a dedicated workspace at home, fully soundproofed and acoustically treated, which makes things really flexible. Creatively it’s very freeing, I don’t need to go anywhere when the ideas strike.

My partner is a full-time musician as well, she plays classical piano, and especially with the little one in the mix it means we can both work from home. That helps a lot with scheduling around our daughter and spending time together as a family.

What do you hope listeners who feel like outsiders take away from “Something Real” after hearing it?

I actually haven’t really thought about that. I think storytelling is important, but I also think it’s for the listener to decide what the true meaning of the story is, I don’t even really know. I’m a simple man, I make music that I like because I enjoy doing it and I like how it sounds. I enjoy listening to it and hope people enjoy listening to it too. The rest is up to them and what it means to them.

Maybe they’ll enjoy the tune, maybe they’ll find the little videos funny, and that’s all I can ask for. Maybe it’s made the day a little lighter, then I’m happy.

(•)> That's all, Folks! Check out Stefan Celosia on the Pigeon Opinion Playlist