MNEK on making ‘Midnight Sun,’ “Stateside” remix, and his clubby solo album

“We be on that phone!”

MNEK laughs as he explains the dynamic between him and his frequent collaborator Zara Larsson, whose mega-hit album Midnight Sun he executive produced and co-wrote.

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Larsson and MNEK have been working together since 2015, when they wrote the EDM-crooner "Never Forget You,” and have since “become adults together.” Recently, they both leveraged their online sensibilities to viral-making effect on Larsson’s remix of PinkPantheress’s “Stateside,” penning a verse that was heavy on her recent lore (“Who knew that opening up would make me a headline”) and the queer internet (“Boots, that’s my ego boost”), turning the song into a global sensation.

But MNEK (pronounced “M-N-E-K”) is not new to any of this. The British artist, producer, and songwriter has been in the industry since he was 14, uploading demos on MySpace that caught the ears of big-shot A&Rs. “It was genuinely me, a child, going into an adult world,” he recalls of the time. “But I was capable of doing very adult things as far as the music goes.” He since parlayed his prodigious talent into a sustained music career that’s lasted more than half his life, working with the likes of Beyoncé ("Hold Up"), FLO ("Cardboard Box," "Immature"), Little Mix ("Touch," "Sweet Melody"), and more.

Now, following a banner few years of co-writing credits and glimmering chart positions, MNEK is returning with his first solo studio album since 2018’s Language. BULLDOZER!!, out September 18, is heavily influenced by MNEK’s parlays into nightlife and dance music and balances a club record’s kinetic hedonism with introspective lyrics about identity, body image, gender, and his general scorpio-esque inner world.

Ahead, read our conversation with MNEK about his long journey with Zara Larsson, the changing music industry, and finally releasing solo music after an eight-year hiatus.

The FADER: A big story of your past few years has been everything you've worked on with Zara, but you guys have been locked in for over a decade, right?

MNEK: We wrote "Never Forget You" [in] 2015, and that was our first time meeting each other. And [then] we did "Ain't My Fault" and "Can't Tame Her.” I love working with Zara. So when she'd asked me to do the Midnight Sun album with her, it made a lot of sense. We wrote all the songs together — me, her, Margo XS, Helena Gao, and Zhone.

There's a trust that [Zara] has with me, which is very affirming and very nice. We just vibe. I really love communicating music with her, and she's grown so much since the first time I met her, as far as what she wants and how she wants to communicate her music. I'm glad to be on the winning team, because it's fun to make music that people dig. Especially with someone like her, who isn't just hype, she's actually talented. She's here for a reason.

What do you think is the main thing that clicked and changed for you both as you were developing Midnight Sun?

We were teenagers when we first met, so I think a lot of things can happen when you become an adult … there's a strong sense of self that is able to develop in that time, especially for Zara. One of the things that I was afraid of with executive-producing this album was the fact that there’s not one thing that we were honing in on: she's so versatile and so competent, when you're that competent, it's about finding that one thing you do.

She was like, I love summer, I love having that everlasting feeling, I want the music to emit joy, I want it to be sexy, I want it to be fun, I want it to be young. It was us collating all these keywords and making music to go alongside it.

Was the song "Midnight Sun" the initial key into that world you're describing?

I'd say so. We'd written songs in and around it, but it was the anchor. It's really nice that people have grown to love it over time, because I think if we based it off of the first week that it came out, anything could have happened. But it's been a year since it came out, and it's absolutely bigger than it's ever been.

Do you think it really was that dolphin meme that made it pop?

So much of it is a chain reaction. It's very attractive [for] publications to have the tagline, "Zara Larsson's career was saved by a dolphin meme." Like, please. This is a grown woman who can sing, dance, write, and perform. There are countless appearances that she's been doing over the past year. You mean to tell me that all of this is because of a dolphin meme?

I definitely think it helped to identify [her], because so much of Zara's thing was not a debate about her talent. It was so much more about, What's her thing? What is the thing that differentiates her from [everyone]? She's found it with this era.

You announced a new solo album. This is not your first rodeo with a full-length, but what was it like to step into your own project?

I released an album in 2018 called Language. It was my first studio album. The album era ended right before the pandemic. I'd lost a bit of confidence, frankly, because of the state of the industry. How you were able to measure success at that time absolutely affected the way I measured the success of that album, and affected how I felt about it at the time. I pressed pause on the artist thing for a while, and I worked on a bunch of other female artists' projects. And then came the time to make music for myself, and it was a bit stop-and-start initially.

I produced and conceptualized alongside these projects I was [working] on. Whenever I needed a second to really like hone in on the album, I was able to do it. I really wanted to just make an up-tempo dance record that had really fun, hard beats, but also introspective lyrics that talk about what I've been going through mentally, and what I think others can relate to as far as self-worth, self-esteem, body confidence, body image, and gender representation. There's so many topics on the album that I feel like people of my generation can relate to.

You said the industry's changed. What do you think is the primary change since 2018?

The ways that you receive the validation, and the lack of monoculture. [In the past] labels could control what people were listening to and who the premier artists of the time were. Now the public gets to choose. Now everyone needs to work as hard as each other to get their shit out there. I don't want to wait eight years between releases anymore, that's something you definitely can't do as far as longevity and consistency. This is the beginning, in a lot of ways again, of me just having a new outlook on making music and releasing it.

One of my key takeaways from the new album was how rooted in the club music it is. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with going out and nightlife?

I love to go out and party. I wanted to make a dance record because that's what I've been doing. I've been listening to a lot of house, techno, garage, and two-step. I’ve had a good time just absorbing that kind of [dance music] energy. I always have, but in the past couple of years I've enjoyed it more, and it's definitely influenced the music. I'm a gay 30-something in London and L.A., who just wants to have a good time. But I'm also still a Scorpio, and Scorpios be thinking. There's the chaos of the club but also the introspective moments, which I think is me. That's the reality of how I view dance music and how I want to attack it.

You have a song from the album that explores body image in the LGBT community. Why did you want to tackle that subject?

[It’s about] me being a bigger guy in a community that raises sculpted, six-pack, white, blue-eyed [people], and how I've navigated that, and how the ways in which desirability has affected the way I navigate relationships, how I view myself, how I trust people, and my self-worth. We are more than our bodies, of course, but then that's the only way people can measure us before they get to know our heart. There's topics on this album, where I'm touching on it from an overseeing point of view. I was really inspired by SZA on that record, where she's able to have a collage of thoughts that don't need to resolve but evoke a feeling and a mood.

For people who may know you through your work with other artists, what are you excited for them to hear with this body of work?

I'm excited to be releasing music again. It's been in my hard drive, and it's been in my phone. Even seeing "REVERSE!!" out there, with my ass out on the artwork, it's really surreal to know that belongs to everyone now. People have heard things that have come from my brain for the past 15 to 20 years in this industry, and it's amazing and great, but I'm excited to let them into this side.