Moncrieff

"Music has always been a lens through which I look at the world ... to sort out my feelings. "It's actually hard to believe that there was a point in of Chris Breheny's life when music didn't play the main role. That it was more in the background and merely a soundtrack for the young Irishman - not yet the center of his life and his most important outlet. But it's true: Up until the age of 15, music was not yet a matter of course, not a meaningful element for the young artist, who has been calling himself Moncrieff for a few years now. So if you had told him back then that at some point even Elton John and Avicii would be listening to his songs, he would probably have acknowledged it with a tap on the forehead - and not believed a word of it. "I grew up in the country, and in that part of of Ireland, music was something that was looked down on in some circles. Instead, as a teenager, you played sports to fit in," says Moncrieff, whose sound transforms classic soul/R&B influences into contemporary-electrified pop with a lot of depth.Chris' musical journey began at the age of of sixteen - with the tragic loss of his sister: "I skipped school all the time after that, rode my brother's moped to the loneliest place I could find and listened to music alone for hours on end." Although he hadn't written a single song at that point, music became a constant source of comfort and encouragement, an increasingly important outlet. After all, "at 16, you don't really have the channels to express your feelings," he says.

Two years later, life pushed him even deeper into a hole - and even further into songwriting: his older brother was suddenly no longer there either. "At that point, I did have a band that we played with in the pubs in our area." Cover songs and compromises. Different musical tastes and adopted poses. "We were also pretty bad - but I guess that's part of life. It was still fun." "Music gradually became essential for survival. At first, however, I wasn't really aware of this fact."

The emotional chaos of that phase also had its good side: it finally turned Chris into a songwriter. The tragedy and the disintegration of his family made him realize that music was more to him, "that it was something I couldn't live without." Even the law degree he had started in the meantime, the vision of a classical career and a rather ordinary life: suddenly it all seemed so wrong, because it was just as fragile and volatile, that it was no longer an option. He wanted to live his dream - at all costs. "At that point, I made the decision to go down this path. I just had to go to London and make music: as much as I could, around the clock. From that point on, I just wrote songs: I was fully focused on trying to figure out who I was, what I wanted to express.""Even those bad early songs were kind of important because I could let out feelings in them that otherwise threatened to overwhelm me."

Even though he worked flat out on his songwriting skills from this point on, he initially had difficulties getting started in London: The first gigs at open mic nights went okay, but his job in a bar was barely enough to pay the rent. After a few months, when the initial euphoria had fizzled out, he realized more and more clearly "that people in London are not all as friendly as people in Ireland," he says with a laugh.

One of these Londoners, however, unwittingly turned out to be an important catalyst: a "guy who looked more like a banker" bought him a beer (and then another...) one evening after a rather messed-up open mic performance, because Moncrieff's extremely personal song about the death of his siblings had caught him cold as a fellow sufferer. "That was one of those moments when the universe spoke to me," he says looking back and has to laugh himself; after all, the of voice of the universe flanked by a fiancée in a flirtatious mood was by no means sober that night. "This guy's encouragement kept me going. It was exactly what I needed to hear. It came at the crucial moment." So decisive that Chris adopted the surname of that "banker guy" as his stage name: Moncrieff. "After that night, I had a smile on my face for the first time - and that was in London!" As far as the music itself was concerned, the metropolis on the Thames turned out to be the perfect influence: "I came into contact with so many things through London, so many styles and sounds, it was really amazing," says the songwriter, who loved the music of of Ray Charles, Otis Redding and Etta James at the age of 16 because their "voices are so incredibly big and they can convey so much emotion in them."By chance, luck, coincidence, fate, who knows: someone or something had big plans for him and made sure that his gradually more mature and sophisticated sounding songs were heard even of by the greatest of the greats: "At some point I got a call asking if I could sing backing vocals for Adele at a BBC performance," he recalls, "yes, and now there are still recordings somewhere of me standing behind her in the studio with Babyface." When his first single "Symptoms" was released in spring 2018, even Sir Elton John pricked up his ears and celebrated the song in his Show. A short time later, a flight to L.A. and a date with Avicii (1989-2018) was on the agenda to work on a song together - but unfortunately, further painful proof of the fleeting nature of life intervened ... "Honesty is honesty in every genre. Vulnerability is vulnerability - in every genre."

After releasing his debut EP "The Early Hurts" in 2019, Moncrieff has used the last few years to continue honing his sound, which, for him, doesn't fit into any genre category at best: "I've always found it pointless to pick a category that your music should always fit into afterwards. After all, honesty is honesty in every genre. Vulnerability is vulnerability - in every genre."

Terms such as honesty and sincerity are much better suited to describing his most recent songs, such as the single "Warm", which he was able to present on ARD breakfast television in spring 2022, shortly after it had already shaken up the top 10 of the Irish airplay charts: "Having been writing intensively for a few years now, I now have the tools to create really personal, simple, direct songs that are completely without effects, that simply tell a little story." He repeats this "no frills" phrase once again, adding: "It's important to me that people know that when I open my mouth, it's real. It doesn't matter whether it's a love song or a song that deals of with another aspect of my life. It's always about stories that people can ideally identify with."

This stunning intimacy, which not only characterizes "Warm", but also the other songs (such as "Ruin") from the debut EP of the same name, released in September 2022 for the new label energie, is probably also due to the fact that he does everything in a very small circle. "You have to be able to count the people on one hand so that an emotional thread runs through the songs afterwards. These people know everything about my life. They know when I'm feeling bad, when I'm happy. That's another thing that makes the music so intimate. "Back after an extensive and thoroughly acclaimed tour, during which he was finally able to present the emotionally explosive compositions from his latest EP live in front of an audience - the "craziest month" ever for him with 25 concerts in 12 countries in just 33 days - Moncrieff is opening the next chapter at the turn of the year: With the new single "What Am I Here For", he transforms the really big questions into a rousing declaration of love.

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