Valentina Ploy on keeping diaries, self-expression in 'Bla Bli Blu' and 'Berlin', and her upcoming album

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It is safe to say that the phenomenon of getting tongue-tied and not knowing how to express oneself perfectly doesn’t skip over the linguistically talented Valentina Ploy.

Having grown up with a mixed heritage of Thai and Italian, the ever-adventurous singer went on to perfect her fluency in English, French, Spanish, and most recently, Portuguese.

“From studying it at school, mixed with the passion that I have for languages, I managed to learn all of them!” she shared excitedly over the call, “I don’t even know how sometimes, I’m just like, ‘Oh! Okay…’”

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Yet, her recent releases, ‘Bla Bli Blu’ and ‘Berlin’, somehow find the charming ‘Love You Better’ act fighting for deeper conversation or inventing made-up phrases in a blooming relationship. Staying true to her roots of dissecting very raw and authentic struggles in daily life, the X-Factor Italy alum confirms how the language of love is undoubtedly, the hardest to master.

Telling Bandwagon that sometimes, the people we love most are the people we say those three special words to the least, we caught up with the tender singer-songwriter on her diary habits, her recent music direction, and even, her soon-to-come album!

Hi Valentina, excited to hear what you have to say today. Just to break the ice a little bit, tell me about some songs or artists you’ve been into recently!

Hi! I have been listening a lot to an artist called Orla Gartland, I’ve been really into [her] and then, a girl band called MUNA. Phoebe Bridgers as well and Maggie Rogers. I went back to listening to her whole old album for some reason. So, yeah, these ladies I’ve been quite into recently!

Diving right into it, walk us through the idea for ‘Bla Bli Blu’ and how it came to you.

So ‘Bla Bli Blu’ came from my personal experience. It’s something I said when I was in a past relationship and I made this expression up. I created a language, a code to say ‘I love you’ because I didn’t want people to understand if I wanted to say it to my person in front of other people. So, we just created this silly, stupid thing and then I brought the concept of it to a session and we wrote a song about it. That’s how ‘Bla Bli Blu’ came up.

When we talk about this track, we can’t miss out mentioning your multilingualism in the hook. Other than your mother tongues, you’re fluent in French, Spanish, English, the list goes on, where does your interest in learning languages stem from?

Actually, I’ve always been a curious person, I’ve always been fascinated by cultures and other people and countries and travelling and learning about all of that. I found that language was like a channel and the way to connect with other humans on a deeper level, like a passport to the world. If you know languages, you can go anywhere and feel at home. You can talk to the people of the place, and I just love all of this human connection and travel. So, I think it comes from there.

Do you feel like your knowledge of all these different languages influences your songwriting and lyrics choice?

I think yes, definitely. If you think about it, I write in English but the first language in my brain is Italian, for example, and the way I say things in Italian are widely different because the Italian language is so different.

I feel like even if I write it in English, it would still be influenced by expressions in other languages, you know, apart from more obvious things like putting expressions in other languages like I did in ‘Bla Bli Blu’ or ‘Berlin’. Because language also shapes the way you think, I feel like when I write a song, it has to be influenced by that as well, for sure.

Let’s switch gears a little to your music video. How did you decide on its direction and how was the on-set experience?

The experience was very nice and very fun, very new for me because I got to dance! In terms of direction, I had this concept of the pink-ness that I wanted to keep, to be consistent with the whole art direction of it because it is quite a happy, upbeat, chilled, blooming love song. I really wanted to dance [too] but like a quirky, silly little dance so we had this choreographer who guided me.

I would say my ideas were more general. I wanted to do something weird and quirky that you wouldn’t see [in real life], like a bath in the pink milk and eating cereal in the bathroom, weird, funny stuff like that, but the director was an absolute genius. She was like, ‘Okay, what do you think about this idea and this idea?’ and kinda brought [what] I had in my head to life, even 10 times better [than what I imagined] so it was super fun and interesting.

You mentioned that ‘Bla Bli Blu’ is very lighthearted and poppy. As opposed to your usually more contemplative and pensive work, this is definitely a newer approach, how does it feel to be moving in such a different direction?

It feels good and challenging at the same time. I mean, it’s not something that I tried to do. It just happened naturally. I mean, we as humans, we grow and we evolve. I feel like my music will always evolve with me.

Maybe [in the future], I will go back to my origins and just release a track that is just guitar and acoustic but sometimes, I feel like bringing an acoustic track to a more poppy direction. So, it feels natural and until it feels natural, I’m good with it. I don’t like to force things but for example, this year, I’ll have these two tracks that are more poppy like ‘Bla Bli Blu’ and the other one, ‘Berlin’ then, after that, there’ll be singles that are more like the original me - guitar crying kind of thing (laughs).

This is also a track that you’ve worked on with Richard Craker, right? Previously, you worked on ‘Drunk Sleeping In Taxis’ together and once again, the concept is super different, so how was the production process different or similar, despite working with the same person?

In these two cases, it’s different because the songs come from a totally different place. ‘Bla Bli Blu’ came from a session so it’s the first song that I didn’t write in my toilet alone but I wrote with Richard Craker and Jackson Dimiglio who are both songwriters. So, the production was already there since the start. I didn’t start the song by myself on my guitar. The doo-doo-doo - I will never be able to do that doo-doo-doo. (laughs)

And then, ‘Drunk Sleeping In Taxis’ was more like, I wrote the song by myself, then, on my guitar. Afterwards, I imagined the production so I guess I drove the production a little bit more than ‘Bla Bli Blu’ like that.

I understand that you’ve kept a personal diary since you were seven and that the entries often turn into inspiration for new songs, so firstly, what made you decide to start journaling at seven? And secondly, over the years, what does journaling mean to you?

I have so many diaries up to now so it isn’t just one because there are so, so many. I don’t know why I started it actually. I used to have a secret diary where I just wrote secrets and it even had like, a key thing! Other times, I was just writing stupid lyrics or anything I felt. It was like therapy because I was shy and insecure and I had my issues in my little head. (laughs) So, I was writing things out to make myself feel better without thinking too much about anything else really and then, gradually, I realised that I can turn this into songs because I love singing and [from there,] I found my way.

Both journaling and writing songs, writing in general, just expression in this sense, means a lot to my life. I think I would have gone totally nuts if I didn’t have that growing up. I would be a crazy human so that has helped me to keep myself more grounded and positive and process my feelings better.

Other than journaling, do you have any other ways to release these negative feelings and continue to stay grounded?

I think listening to music and to other artists’ music, things that they say in the songs or even, reading. It’s something that helps me a lot because it keeps me inspired so everything that keeps me inspired and keeps me hopeful in a situation of despair, is a mechanism of coping to me. Anything creative or like, just doing nothing! [Things like] Spending time in nature? Dancing like a freak? (laughs)

Speaking of dancing, tell us more about what it took to get you dancing to choreography in the ‘Bla Bli Blu’ music video. Did you take lessons leading up to the shoot? And will we be able to see more of your dancing in future music videos?

So, I don’t do classes or lessons. For every music video, I literally have one hour of practice, like one hour with the choreographer to learn and then, I have to sort it out by myself at home or over video. I’ll have to practice alone. It’s been very challenging, trust me, I don’t know how to dance. I love dancing so much but my body just rejects the coordination.

We will continue to see me in the next video for ‘Berlin’. That’s my favourite dance up to now. After ‘Berlin’, I don’t think I will dance anymore, I don’t know. I think I’m gonna get back my guitar and sing. (laughs)

When I heard your two tracks, ‘Bla Bli Blu’ and ‘Berlin’, it was interesting to me that ‘Bla Bli Blu’ talked about falling in love and expressing your love, then ‘Berlin’ comes right after as a song where you’re trying to know your lover more and more past their walls, was the order of the releases intentional to tell this story of a blossoming relationship?

I think it came naturally with time in my life. After a while [of experiencing something], I was like, “Oh God, I need to write this”. [Though] I never actually thought about it as an intention, but it does make sense because the next song that I’m releasing after ‘Berlin’, it’s about falling apart. The walls weren’t broken down, so it’s like a three song cycle, we can put it that way. There are other songs that I’ll have in the album that don’t speak just about love but like friendship, loss, and family. The other sides of love.

Since you mentioned your album, you said that it would speak about relationships with your family, friends, and lovers, so if there was one bracket that you could put the album under thematically, what would it be and why?

I’m indecisive between two titles for my album so I won’t say yet but there’s a song in particular that is my super favourite-st song that I’ve ever written in my life. It’s a very simple song, an acoustic little track but that summarises really why I do what I do and the ultimate, deepest message behind my music and why I love to share stories!

The song is called ‘Left Unsaid’. It’s basically a song about how I reflect on how humans don’t say the things that they really feel the most. Sometimes, you love your parents so much but it’s the people you say ‘I love you’ to the least, for example. Or, how you just realise that it’s so important to share your feelings and your love to the people you love when it’s too late and we’re running out of time so we have to do that more, but it just makes me a bit sad.

So, I feel that’s why I’m super motivated to share and write a lot of songs, tell the people that I love that I love them and be open about it. I wish that it could be contagious to other people and I feel like, yeah, that song summarises all of the other songs on many levels. Some are more fun and superficial, some are deeper but all of it revolves around the bracket of that.

So, to end things off, since ‘Bla Bli Blu’ is an invented phrase to express your love, if you could invent a word right now to describe how you're feeling, what would it be and what would it mean?

Oh, my god, I’m feeling very… Cruccali (laughs) I don’t know what that means! But cruccali, cruccali, cruccali and I will decide that it means that I’m excited (laughs) for my next single to come up in two days!

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