Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Maids) - One Shot

[Stefan]

 

From Frontiers:

Frontiers Music Srl is pleased to announce the signing of Danish vocalist Ronnie Atkins to a solo deal. The acclaimed Pretty Maids and Nordic Union vocalist is currently wrapping up work on a new solo album, ”One Shot,” which will be released in the spring of 2021.

”To be honest, I initially had no intention to do a solo album to begin with, but for various reasons and in particularly my own personal health situation I finally decided to have a crack at it,” says Atkins.

”Around Easter 2020 and only some six weeks after I was told that everything seemingly looked very positive for my health, I was unfortunately diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and told it was incurable, which was devastating news for me. Needless to say, that was a total game changer and I went into kind of a panic situation for a while! But when the dust had settled. I realised there were two ways to approach the situation. I could sit down, accept the facts, and feel pity for myself or I could pull myself up, set some goals, pursue my dreams, and carry on living! And with fantastic back up from my family and true friends, I went for the latter!” continues Atkins.

With the global pandemic shutting down touring for the foreseeable future, Atkins knew a tour promoting the latest Pretty Maids album, ”Undress Your Madness” (2019) was not going to be in the cards anytime soon. Suddenly, the timing for working on a new solo album seemed to have presented itself.

”Well, I couldn’t change the way things were by any means. The whole world was on a lockdown and the future prospects of concerts were very uncertain and still is to this day! Basically, that meant that if I was gonna carry out the idea of a solo album, it had to be now since I don’t necessarily have all the time in the world. I had all these ideas recorded on my iPhone that I felt were too good to never see the light of day and I was writing a lot at the time to help ease my frustrations,” tells Atkins.

Ronnie’s next step was that he hooked up with good friend and PM bandmate and producer Chris Laney to begin the work of putting these ideas together into songs. Chris is overseeing production, Jacob Hansen will mix, and musicians/singers appearing on the album include, in addition to Laney, Allan Sørensen, Morten Sandager, Pontus Egberg, Pontus Norgren, Kee Marcello, Olliver Hartmann, John Berg, Anders Ringman, Linnea Vikström Egg, and Björn Strid.

The album is currently scheduled for release in spring of 2021 with the first single and more album details to be revealed in January 2021.

Stay tuned!

Edited November 10, 2020 by Stefan

[J.S.M]

So sad it's incurable... he's a great singer and I loved all the recent Pretty maids albums and his singing in Avantasia. 

[KarpetRydOFunk]

Pretty solid list of musicians. I'm looking forward to this. 

[Aordave89]

Great first track from Ronnie. Big fan of this guys work and this is no exception. So sad to hear what he is currently going through. 
 

 

[Geoff]

Wow, love that. An album full of this and I'd be a very happy individual. Agreed that it's very sad regarding his limited time. I hope that for him and us he still has plenty of music in him. 

Assuming he wrote this, this is why I always said the Nordic Union thing didn't work for me. This is better than anything on those two albums and this guy doesn't need guys writing songs for him when he writes better than any of his co-writers. 

If, he didn't write this then my face is blushing with red. 

[Aordave89]

1 hour ago, Geoff said:

Wow, love that. An album full of this and I'd be a very happy individual. Agreed that it's very sad regarding his limited time. I hope that for him and us he still has plenty of music in him. 

Assuming he wrote this, this is why I always said the Nordic Union thing didn't work for me. This is better than anything on those two albums and this guy doesn't need guys writing songs for him when he writes better than any of his co-writers. 

If, he didn't write this then my face is blushing with red. 

He did indeed write this one - no blushing today mate.

I know Chris Laney was involved in songwriting also but believe it was more of a role to help piece things together. 
Ronnie is a very talented chap so I hope he has plenty of music left in the tank also. 

[Stefan]

7 hours ago, Aordave89 said:

Great first track from Ronnie. Big fan of this guys work and this is no exception. So sad to hear what he is currently going through. 
 

 

 

New video for the new song 'Real'.

The same people involved as in 'At The Movies'.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Stefan

[tts42572]

Good to hear new music from Ronnie.

This sounds good to me.  I've always dug the more melodic side of Pretty Maids and this falls along those lines. 

Definitely sad about his situation.  But hopefully he's able to keep plugging along and keep doing what he loves.  One thing is for sure and that is that he still sounds great.

[Eric3]

Holy shit, I had no idea he was sick again, much less that it was so much worse this time around...

Great song. I'm with tts42572, I hope the rest of the album is of a similar sound. It's terrible to hear the news about Ronnie's health though, man.

[Dead Planet]

Nice song.....

[J.S.M]

Just listened to the Itunes samples and it made me pretty sentimental. For me that album isn't about how many good songs there are or if there are songs that I don't like. This album is a lot of strength that Ronnie Atkins gives to the whole world. Pretty maids was never among my top 5 bands because on every album were a few songs I didn't like but they always managed to give me some moments I was close to tears (little drops of heaven, bullet for you, Will you still kiss me, shadowlands) and I just can't imagine there comes a day without new music from PM and Ronnie. He's incurable they say so no one knows if this is his last work. I'll definitely buy that and listen to it for many years because of it's honesty, emotions... you can hear his feelings in every word he sings and even if there are songs that are maybe not my cup of tea I hope he'll reach more people than ever and will never be forgotten.

[KarpetRydOFunk]

Yeah... am I even gonna be able to listen to this album without tearing up? Damn. This song alone was hard enough to get through with my emotions intact. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sign of true artistry. 

[Glen]

fine song.

 

 

[Stefan]

New video for 'One Shot'.

 

 

Edited January 21, 2021 by Stefan

[KarpetRydOFunk]

I love that! Very Eclipse. I can't wait for this album. I know I'm gonna love it no matter what, just because of the circumstances surrounding it. I'm already catching the feels. 

[J.S.M]

4 minutes ago, KarpetRydOFunk said:

I love that! Very Eclipse. I can't wait for this album. I know I'm gonna love it no matter what, just because of the circumstances surrounding it. I'm already catching the feels. 

I actually think it's better than Eclipse because the difference that I see is Eric Martensson is using the same formula for every song, even the guitar always sounds the same, it plays very similar riffs and so on. The W.e.t album that's released tomorrow has the same songs on it as the previous Eclipe album, at least you could think so by listening both albums once. He's writing great songs and I bought the last two Eclipse albums but I think in Ronnie's song there's less formula, more real feelings. And I prefer Ronnie's voice. It has this "hey, I experienced a lot, let me tell you" character that not a lot of voices have. 

[tts42572]

Dig that a lot and think I like it more than the first tune.  

Either way, t's going to be very easy to connect to these songs knowing what Ronnie is going through.  Agree that you can just feel the emotion coming through in these songs.

Ronnie looks good and sounds good so fingers crossed for him.

[lettard]

Yeah like that more than the first track...looking forward to this one.

[Eric3]

2 hours ago, J.S.M said:

I actually think it's better than Eclipse because the difference that I see is Eric Martensson is using the same formula for every song, even the guitar always sounds the same, it plays very similar riffs and so on. The W.e.t album that's released tomorrow has the same songs on it as the previous Eclipe album, at least you could think so by listening both albums once. He's writing great songs and I bought the last two Eclipse albums but I think in Ronnie's song there's less formula, more real feelings. And I prefer Ronnie's voice. It has this "hey, I experienced a lot, let me tell you" character that not a lot of voices have. 

Agreed with all of this, especially feelings over formula.

You can really tell when an artist puts their all into music and that's what I'm getting from these two songs. 

[Ken]

Both are good. He sounds great. All fingers crossed.

[tts42572]

New tune:

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by tts42572

[KarpetRydOFunk]

Another good one. When does the album drop?

[tts42572]

8 minutes ago, KarpetRydOFunk said:

Another good one. When does the album drop?

I believe March 12th.

[KarpetRydOFunk]

16 minutes ago, tts42572 said:

I believe March 12th.

Thanks. 

[tts42572]

Any thoughts on this one as it's out today?

It's kind of a tough one as we all know where Ronnie is coming from with this album.  And there is definitely a lot of emotion in these songs.  It's the kind of thing you almost don't even want to be critical of at all.

Anyways, I guess I'll just say there's some good tunes here.  It basically feels like Pretty Maids "lite" to me.  I think my highlights are probably Real, Scorpio, One Shot, I Prophesize and One By One.

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by tts42572