A Summer Prince, Athens, The Sea & My Teenage Dreams

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re doing great. I’m writing you from Athens where I’ve been for the last month. Today I’m sharing with you a very special video for “Summer Prince” from my recently released debut album Who Am I. It’s very candid, like the song itself – very spontaneous, summery and Greek, if you please. It’s filmed in Marathon and features me… basically, being me. I hope that you’ll enjoy watching/listening it and I wish for all of you to get the chance to visit the sea this summer. Even if it’s just for a couple of hours, like my husband and I did!

A few words for Athens

I’m always asked if I’m visiting Athens too often and how people get by during these hard times for Greece. I didn’t visit my hometown for almost a year and I have to admit that many things have changed since then. What hasn’t changed though is the Greek desire of living a good life. The bars, the restaurants, the cafes – they’re all full of vibrant people who spend their evenings exchanging views on matters that others wouldn’t dare to discuss. In my culture, things are somewhat simpler and the whole point of life is to live it well. I worship that. Greeks will never get on their knees – as long as the sun’s shining above their heads, as long as the sour orange trees fill the evenings with their distinct perfume. It’s magical, it’s like a dream!

The purpose of my trip to Athens is mainly for the promotion of my album Who Am I. There are many amazing features coming up and I’m beyond excited to share them with you. However, yesterday we got the chance to get away for a couple of hours and go to the sea, dip our feet in the sand and get inspired by the perpetual movement of the water.

The video of “Summer Prince”

In contrast to all those amazing, big productions that come out every day, we went for spontaneity and let the scenery speak for itself. “Summer Prince” is inspired by summer holidays with my parents, while road tripping across Greece (through Crete, especially), seeing the landscapes changing and waiting for the moment I would sneak a peak of the sea – the place where I wanted to be the most.

“Summer Prince” is also inspired by all those vivid dreams I had as a teenager and young adult. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic and during those sensitive years where unrequited love was one of the greatest themes of my life, I used to spend a lot of time alone, by the sea, contemplating about all those ifs and maybes that would make me able to be loved back. Later on, at night, whilst asleep, a summer prince – my summer prince, would come to find me. He would give me all those things I wished for – romantic strolls at the beach, sweet conversations about nothing. He would look me right in the eyes because I was the only one he saw. Then he would leave me, and I would think that my dreams were more exciting than my actual life. I would wait for him to come back again the next night – sometimes he did, some others not.

Nostalgia, innocence, and authenticity

When thinking about my childhood and teenage years, I always tend to be nostalgic, while as a kid I was always looking forward to becoming an adult. It was even him – the “Summer Prince” himself – who told me that better days were on their way and that what I wished for would find me later on. And it did. It surely did.

Life can be hard on us – teaching us lessons and showing us tough love. The moments I catch myself to be more suspicious and skeptical, I feel very disappointed in myself. When my gran tells me that I used to laugh and smile more, I get sad. Unfortunately, we’re teaching our children that innocence is equivalent of a simpler mind, of stupidity. We wish for them to be canny, otherwise, we tell me they will be taken advantage of. And most likely they will. Innocence is a gift given to be taken away later on, sometimes savagely. But there can be dots in time that bring it out again – or at least a memory of that feeling where all that mattered was being in the moment without having second thoughts. I think that my husband, Robert, captured through his lens that exact burst of innocence and authenticity, and as spontaneous as we were yesterday, we want to be the same today – cutting frames together and sharing sequences of a day at the sea, as visuals for “Summer Prince”.

I really hope that our video will bring to you the same feelings of being and feeling free. And I really wish for you to live it up on a daily basis.

Much love,
Sarah