“They tried to Happy Birthday their way back into my life,” Pablo Brooks jokes when asked about the tale behind new single ‘Never Really Over’.
The rising German star today drops his first new music since January and the latest single comes after weeks of social media promotion that had followers in nothing short of a frenzy.
‘Never Really Over’ is a swashbuckling pop release. A huge chorus with gloriously playful lyrics, it’s a flick straight out of the Pablo Brooks playbook but marks somewhat of a new dawn for the singer.
“I’m super excited,” he tells CelebMix. “It’s the first song I’ve made after a little break from my last project.
“I needed to recalibrate what I was doing. I haven’t made music like this since I was 14. I wrote and produced it by myself. It’s all me and I’m really pumped for that.”
Shortly before writing the track, Berlin-based Brooks had a conversation with pals and was asked if he thought an ex-love interest might ever slide back into his messages in a bid to rekindle a relationship.
“I always had this one person in mind,” he explains. “Then they actually made a comeback and hit me up on my birthday. I was thinking about these types of people and relationships with people you can’t seem to ever let go of.”
Fans have been pleading with the songwriter to release the track for weeks having been teased with short clips of the song online. Its feelgood factor comes thanks to inspiration from early 2000s pop music.
“This was a very intentional writing,” Pablo explains on how the track came about. “Usually stuff sort of comes out of me but it was 3 am in my bed and I was making beats the way I used to when I was 14.
“I made this beat that sounded like a 2000s Timberland song – I went to a party earlier that week when they played that music and thought, why is this not happening anymore?
“I made the beat and the song flowed really quickly. I wanted to have a song with a chorus that just scratches the brain and makes you excited.”
A self-professed pop music addict, Brooks grew up in the small city of Dusseldorf, binging Hannah Montana and dreaming that he may one day make it.
Having broadcast his love of Miley Cyrus’ iconic Disney Channel character to the world, CelebMix asks if his love of the show is still present today. “I think she’s the blueprint of the pop star – my generation’s idea of a pop star, that is,” Pablo explains.
“When I watched Hannah Montana I thought, oh this is a normal girl who is also a pop star. For a good five years, I thought it was just something I could do. It was nice to think that and I dove in there.
“My parents didn’t want to kill the fantasy and encouraged me. I took it very seriously and never stopped. The wig is just missing… if I get a wig then maybe everything will fall into place!”
These days, the singer admits to loving Chappell Roan, taking inspiration from ‘Good Luck Babe’ and the viral singer’s ‘funny and captivating’ tracks. Those ideas are easy to hear in the singer’s own discography too.
If there’s one track listeners may already know, it’s like ‘Not Like The Movies’, which has racked up millions of streams on Spotify. “My entire teenage years I tried to write that song,” Pablo remembers.
“At that age, I was writing exclusively about being a teenager and what it felt like. I wrote that song when I was 17 on my graduation.
“It means a lot to me that it’s the one that has really resonated with people. It’s sort of the song I wrote at the end of my journey of being a kid. It was really cool.”
For new listeners discovering the 21-year-old for the first time through ‘Never Really Over’, the singer suggests your next stop is 2022 single ‘Perfume’ to find out what he’s about.
“Perfume is always a good song to go back to. It’s the saddest you can go with the music but it’s very encapsulating of me as a person. It’s very gay and very sad.
“I had a crush on a person that my friend was dating. It was an interesting thing to write a song about so I did, and it ended up being my favourite song ever. It’s cute as it makes me think about being an angsty little kid.”
You can catch Pablo Brooks on tour across Europe later this year. UK dates are as follows –
OMEARA, London – November 9
The Lodge, Manchester – November 11
Poetry Club, Glasgow – November 12
The Louisiana, Bristol – November 13
Are you a Pablo Brooks fan? Let us know @CelebMix on X.