Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: I was born and grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine. My first creative language was not music – it was words. I started writing stories and poetry as a child, and later published a poetry collection and several collections of short stories.
At the same time, I built — and still continue — a very different professional life. I am a lawyer, and for nearly two decades I have worked in international corporate law and cross-border business. Law is not something I left behind to become a musician; it is still a major part of my daily life and professional identity.
For years, those two worlds simply existed side by side: during the day, contracts, negotiations, structure and precision; at night, stories, images, emotions and words. The longer I work in both, the more similarities I see. In law and in songwriting, structure matters, meaning matters, and every word has to earn its place.
Music itself came later, after we moved to Spain. After work, I often walk along the seafront with headphones. One evening, I realised I had nothing I truly wanted to listen to. Podcasts felt like too much after a long day, and I wanted something new – something that matched that exact space between exhaustion and freedom.
Then I had a simple thought: if I wanted to hear something that felt truly mine, maybe I should write it myself. That was probably the moment this music project, as it exists today, really began. I grew up listening across rock, pop and hip-hop – from Queen, Scorpions, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and Bryan Adams to Sting and Elton John, alongside Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Britney Spears. And then there was Eminem, bringing a completely different kind of storytelling through hip-hop.
Those different influences – together with cinema – helped shape the way I write. That mix is probably why I never wanted my music to live inside one genre.
For me, the story comes first. The story decides what the song needs to become.
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover “Alex Shkudun”?
A: I do not want to build this project around one viral moment. I want to build a body of work people can gradually enter – songs, visualizers, music videos and stories that connect with each other. Because of the war in Ukraine, my family and I had to leave and eventually chose Spain as the place to live. But Ukraine is still my homeland. My roots are there, my family is there, and so much of who I am comes from Kyiv. That connection has already become music in songs such as KYIV AFTER MIDNIGHT and YA POVERNUVSIA, alongside its English version, I CAME BACK. So if someone is discovering Alex Shkudun for the first time, I would say: do not expect one fixed genre.
You may hear alternative pop, melodic rap, hip-hop or more intimate, lyrical pop songs. What should remain constant is the story and the emotion behind it. If you want a map into the project, start with SUPERHIT for the cost of ambition, MY STORY for the collision between dreams and reality, KYIV AFTER MIDNIGHT for home, and CRYING STARS for the bigger questions.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: It is hard for me to name one artist because inspiration comes to me from many different places. Over the years, I have taken a little from many different kinds of music – and from films. Cinema is a huge influence on the way I think about songs. I rarely imagine a song as just sound; I see colours, locations, movement, characters, sometimes even the silence before a chorus or the ending of a future video while I am still writing.
Eminem is especially interesting to me as a storyteller – the way language, rhythm and character can make a verse feel almost like a film scene. That kind of storytelling inspires me much more than simply copying somebody’s sound.
One of the best examples of how inspiration works for me happened with MY STORY. I had sent my lyrical pop song WITHOUT YOU to my friend John in London. He liked it and simply asked, “Can you do a hiphop song?” So I went online to listen to hip-hop more deliberately and see what might spark an idea. I came across a video featuring some of the best hip-hop tracks, and that’s where I heard “Mask Off Freestyle Ombre2Choc Remix”. Something clicked. Images started appearing in my head. Then lines. Then scenes.
I wrote John almost immediately: “This must be fate. You are a conduit.”
Very quickly, the rough draft of MY STORY was almost finished. When he heard it, he told me: “This is your best yet by far. You need to do a whole song of this. Keep going mate.” Later, after the release, he wrote again: “Have you had much traction with this song? It’s very good… could be a hit!!”
I love that sequence, because the whole song began with one simple question from him: “Can you do a hip hop song?”
CRYING STARS arrived differently. I was thinking about wars, injustice and how often ordinary people – especially children – pay the price. I opened the Notes app and began writing, and one image took over: what if the stars above us are watching humanity repeat the same mistakes again and again? Those notes became a song, and later a visual story and music video.
So inspiration can come from music, cinema, a conversation, a memory, a city, a news story or one sentence that refuses to leave my head. Sometimes I build a song consciously. And sometimes it honestly feels like the song finds me first.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the song, “Superhit.”?
A: The irony is that SUPERHIT is hardly about success at all. It is really about what happens before anybody ever calls something a hit.
From the outside, people usually see the result. The song is out. Someone adds it to a playlist. Someone writes, “Great track.” It can all look surprisingly simple.
But sometimes three minutes of music can carry several years of somebody’s life behind them. An empty fridge. A card that gets declined at the checkout. Debt. Rent. Clothes you keep wearing because buying new ones is not really an option. Taking work not because you love it, but because you need to make it to the next month.
That is the world behind SUPERHIT.
There is a line in the song that matters to me: “I wasn’t brave. I was broke. There’s a difference.”
Because afterwards, it is very easy to turn a difficult period into a beautiful story about courage and perseverance. You say you always believed, you had a plan, you knew where you were going.
But when you are actually living through it, there is often no grand plan.
Sometimes the plan is much simpler:
“I didn’t have a plan. I had rent.”
That, for me, is one of the most honest ideas in the song.
Then there is the 3 a.m. part.
During the day, you can talk to people, smile, answer the phone and say, “Everything is fine,” and almost believe yourself.
Then night comes.
Your mind brings everything back at once: money, debt, fear, the feeling that nothing is working and that nobody is coming to fix it for you.
And the character in the song opens the Notes app and writes one line. Then another. Deletes it. Starts again.
Not because he knows it will become a hit.
Simply because writing is one of the few things life has not taken away from him yet.
Musically, SUPERHIT is also one of the clearest examples of my approach. The verses lean toward narrative rap because the story needs detail. The chorus becomes melodic and pop-driven.
Rap tells the story. Pop makes you remember it.
And then, in the second half, the song changes.
One stranger connects with it. Then another does. A call comes. A door opens. A coincidence leads to another coincidence. After a long period where nothing happens, suddenly it feels as if someone has switched levels.
That is where the song becomes almost philosophical.
What if life sometimes works like a game?
What if something keeps taking things away from you just to see what remains?
Money? Gone.
Pride? Gone.
People around you? Some of them leave.
But the dream?
Not completely.
And that led me to the strangest thought in the song: What if somebody, somewhere, simply wanted to hear what I would write next?
Maybe it was a test.
Or maybe somebody up there was simply tired of the old hits and said: “Let’s hear what he writes now.”
Of course, I am not claiming that this is how the universe works. I just like leaving that door open.
That is also why the title SUPERHIT is intentionally ironic. There are no expensive cars, giant stages or glamorous stories about life after success.
The song is almost entirely about what happens before success has a name.
And maybe the line that explains it best is:
“They call it a SUPERHIT. I call it survival.”
There is another line near the end:
“You hear three minutes. I hear years of my life.”
I think that is what the whole song is really about.
The listener hears a few minutes of music.
The person who wrote it may hear rooms, people, nights, mistakes, fear, memories — an entire piece of life hidden inside those three minutes.
That is why the song finally comes down to this: “Everybody knows the chorus. Nobody knows the cost.”
And maybe even more personally: “They hear the hit. I hear the room.”
The room where it all began.
Q: How would you describe your sound in one word for potential listeners?
A: Cinematic.
I think in scenes and emotional arcs. Often the visual world of a song starts forming in my head before the final lyric is finished.
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “Superhit”?
A: Yes. One of the main challenges was finding the balance between honesty and accessibility.
The story is quite heavy and detailed, so I did not want to simplify it into a generic “struggle, believe, win” narrative. But at the same time, I wanted the song to be memorable — not just something people respect lyrically, but something they actually want to play again.
That is why the contrast between the verses and the chorus became so important. The verses carry the details and the weight of the story; the chorus has to open up and stay with you.
There was also the production challenge. My process combines human writing and creative direction with AI tools. I write the lyrics, concept, narrative and emotional architecture. I use Suno to explore musical and vocal possibilities, and then the selected material is professionally edited, mixed and mastered by a human engineer.
AI is not the reason the song exists. The story comes first. Technology simply gives me another way to explore how that story might sound.
The real challenge is still taste: knowing what feels true, what feels overdone, what should stay, and what should be removed.
Q: What is the message of your music? And what are your goals as an artist?
A: I want to write songs that stay with people after the music stops – not only because of the melody, but because something in the story makes them think about themselves, the world around them, and the things we usually keep hidden.
Most of my songs are stories, because everyone has one. Sometimes it is successful, sometimes painful, dark or hopeful. Sometimes it is about war, ambition, loneliness, love, survival or simply trying to understand why certain things happen to us at all.
SUPERHIT is about the price hidden behind a dream. MY STORY follows ambition colliding with reality in New York. KYIV AFTER MIDNIGHT is a love letter to a living city under constant uncertainty. CRYING STARS asks what the sky might think of humanity repeating the same violence generation after generation.
The common thread is simple: there is always more behind a person, a failure or a success than we can see from the outside.
My goal is to turn those hidden stories into songs people can recognize themselves in, and to build an international audience without losing the emotional truth of where I come from – Ukraine, Kyiv, family, displacement, ambition and the need to keep creating. If someone hears a song and thinks, “I know this feeling” or “This could be my story,” then the song has already done something important.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
A: Honestly, I do not have one fixed dream collaboration. What I would love is to write for another artist and hear my words sung from a big stage. Recently, I wrote a song called AWAKENING / ПРОБУЖДЕНИЕ, inspired by Morgenshtern’s public transformation. That showed me how much I enjoy turning someone else’s story into a song. Maybe the dream is simply hearing an artist say, “Yes. That is my story.”
Q: What is your advice for people interested in pursuing music as a career or for those trying to enter the industry?
A: Do not wait for permission. Today an independent artist can write the song, build the visual concept, distribute it, contact radio stations and editors, and speak directly to listeners around the world. That freedom is incredible, but it also means you have to learn much more than music.
Learn how rights work. Learn distribution. Learn how to present your work. Learn to hear criticism without allowing every opinion to rewrite who you are.
And do not assume that new technology makes everything easy. When possibilities become almost unlimited, taste and discipline become even more important. Knowing what to reject can matter as much as knowing what to create.
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: You know, sometimes I feel like I already do that.
Not literally, of course – but from time to time I mentally send messages back to the younger version of myself. I tell him: “You’re doing everything right. Keep going. You may not understand where all of this is leading yet, but trust me – you’re going to be okay.”
And honestly, I do not think I would change anything. There were mistakes, wrong turns and difficult years, but if I changed his path, I would also change everything that came after it. Without that younger version of me – his choices, fears, mistakes, the people he met and the things he survived – there would be no version of me sitting here now.
So I would not tell him how to avoid the difficult parts. I would just tell him: “I know you cannot see it yet, but all of this is becoming something.”
Actually, I am writing a song about this idea right now. It is called THE MAN I NEVER MET. Sometimes I mentally send messages back to the younger version of myself — telling him to keep going, that certain choices will make sense one day. And then I had this thought: if I can somehow speak to the person I used to be, what if an older version of me is doing the same thing to me now?
That is what the song is about — the man I have never met yet. Me, years from now. The version of myself who already knows which choices mattered, which people stayed, which doors were worth opening, and who sometimes seems to whisper just two words when I am ready to give up: “Not today.”
Maybe the most important thing you could tell him is not how to change his future, but simply: “Thank you.
Because if you had been someone else, I would not exist.”
That song will definitely come out.
