Mirel Wagner

It’s a busy day at Supersense store in Vienna, when Mirel Wagner pops in for a recording session. The Ethiopian-Finnish singer-songwriter first gets photographed and it’s not just the analogue portrait that reveals her old soul. Once Mirel Wagner starts performing, everything else gets drowned out. And not because she gets loud, she never really does. Yet stripped to the bone her gloomy folk reveals an unshakeable strength and sobriety. Mirel Wagner has often faced the question how a young woman can sound so sad. In an interview with the German Rolling Stone she said: “I think it’s a bit lazy to say that I make sad music. Of course you might say the lyrics are bizarre or dark. But for me, the songs are first and foremost filled with desire. And there’s this hope in them that love overcomes everything. What I find sad is the soulless music that is on the radio most of the time, music that is simply product. If there is no life in it… is this not much sadder than a melancholic song?”