Pablo Rouss, the 28-year-old from Pamplona who aspires to 4 Latin Grammys with Sebastián Yatra

Pablo Rouss landed in Bilbao after twelve noon and at five in the afternoon I was already taking another plane back to Madrid. Last Wednesday, the Navarrese producer and artist stayed for just over four hours at BIME, the main meeting of the Spanish music industry that has taken place these days in the Biscayan capital. Rouss did not want to miss the night Latin Grammy Acoustic Sessionin Madrid, a party prior to the Latin Grammy gala in Las Vegas, where he starts with four nominations for his participation in the song ‘Tacones Rojos’ by Sebastián Yatra. He’s actually used to living this fast. Pablo Rousselon De Croisoeuil, better known as Pablo Rouss, or simply Rouss, was born in Pamplona in 1994 but when his career as a music producer soared, he moved to Madrid in 2017. In addition, Rouss is preparing his debut album ‘Ciclos’, of which he releases some advances from time to time, and which will be released in the first half of the year that comes. It is known, yes, that it will feature the participation of numerous artists.

They told him a few years ago that he was going to walk like this and he doesn’t believe it.

I don’t think so, no. I have been going in automatic mode for quite a long time in my life. I feel that I must do it, I move a lot by my intuition and the truth is that it has always gone very well for me, it has given me great things in my career.

In the end, is it about hitting the right key?

It is hitting the key, being in the right place at the right time and knowing how to connect with people. Those three things together would be the formula for success. If you are in the right place but you don’t know how to connect with people, it is very difficult for you to stand out in all this sum of talented people.

Where would you place that right place and time in your case?

The point that broke my barrier of anonymity was when I did La tirita with Belén Aguilera and Lola Índigo, which is a song that blew it up and has about 25 or 30 million views. It was my first big record job and with big artists. I linked a very good relationship of friendship and work with the two, and from then on work rained down on me from all sides. I ended up working with Recycled J, I started working a lot with Hens, with Walls, with Pole… with all the new wave. I was spreading my seeds a little bit in the pop, urban, and new wave industry and I’m very happy.

The one who has put him in the Latin Grammy race is Sebastián Yatra. Is this going up one more step?

If the truth. I have a lot of respect for the song, the team and him. It happened in a very beautiful way. I came from doing a session with Sebas, like two or three weeks before. We were quite excited about that song, which wasn’t Red Heels, it was something else, but in the end it didn’t make it onto the album and it didn’t see the light of day. I was at Metropol Studios in Madrid, rehearsing with Recycled J, and suddenly I saw through the glass that Sebas was in the studio next door. I went to say hello and we were talking, as if remembering the song we did, and he told me: “Uncle, there is no producer in the session right now, if you want to join”. It was nine o’clock at night and by chance I had brought the computer, which I never bring to rehearsals, and I ended up with the whole team in the session with Red Heels.

If all goes well, how many Grammys does he take home?

Right now two are direct, and another two are indirect. The direct ones are in the Song of the Year and Pop Song categories, and the indirect ones are for Album of the Year and Pop Album, because Tacones is part of the Dharma album. I wish. Let’s cross our fingers, it has possibilities, it’s a song that has played a lot and I think it has marked a before and after in the career of both Sebas and all of us who have worked on that song [Yatra, Rouss, Joan Monserrat Riutort, Manuel Lara y Manuel Lorente]. I’m going to Miami on the 7th to spend a week there and on the 17th is the event in Las Vegas.

How does that facet of producer of others coexist with that of artist and your own career?

Well, both are bringing me very positive things. In my career as an artist I am working on an album with 17 songs and more than 20 collaborations in which I have involved half the industry. I am very happy, everything has come about in a very fluid way, all the people who have joined the songs have been from respect, from mutual admiration, the affection that we all have for each other, because I have a friendly relationship with everyone. It was a project that I really wanted because I come from being an artist, before being an engineer, producer or composer. It makes me a little nostalgic to remember those times, six, seven years ago in Pamplona, ​​playing in clubs, touring Spain, losing money, filling rooms with twenty people… and after much, much pick and shovel, being able to be here.

“Nostalgia for 6 years ago”… But how fast is this world going?

It’s flown Two and a half years ago I didn’t exist in the recording industry. In that time I have done more than a hundred songs. It has been such a frenetic evolution and pace of work that that’s why I told you I’m going in automatic mode, because if I stop to think… Right now on Spotify I have more than 600 million views on produced songs. In two and a half years. It’s such nonsense that when I stop to think about it, it’s even more nonsense.

Does any sound memory of that time sneak into the new songs, of guitars or of its most metal beginnings?

Sure, I come from the world of hardcore, metal, rock. It’s always been the thing I’ve listened to the most. My influences have always been Architects, Pearl Jam, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses or more punk rock stuff like Green Day. As a producer I do implement it a lot, I notice my influences a lot, and as an artist I notice my American influences a lot. I, who am a fan of Justin Bieber’s career, drink a lot of the American influence in melodies, composition and others.

Does music live moments of change, of agitation?

When you get into the wave of music everything goes very fast. You don’t think too much. It’s all so grandiose that it’s a bit overwhelming. In the end you have gone from recording more than 50 metal, hard core rock and variant projects, in the first two years in Madrid, and the following two years already involved in the record industry to the fullest, working with fifty different artists. Is very crazy. I recently got together with David Bisbal, too, and we did a couple of incredible songs; with Álvaro Soler, and I continue with the artists with whom I always work… I really want to continue growing but I am so happy and content that you tell me that I am going to stay at this point for the rest of my life and I would not miss it be higher.

Do you have time to return to Navarra to see family and friends?

I hardly ever go back, it makes me a little sad because I have my crew there, we are about eighteen, all our lives. I have my father, many old friends that I don’t see because I don’t have time. And when I come back it’s to see my father and I don’t have time for much else.

They will have to go see him…

They don’t come to Madrid much, they’re pretty much natives of Pamplona. I want to pause a bit and be able to go to Pamplona to spend four days and rest and disconnect, something very difficult in my life.