O Vampiro Submarino (PZ) will compete in the second Semi-final of Festival da Canção 2022 on 7th March and we got the chance to talk with him about his song “Ao lado de mim” and his participation in the contest. Check out our interview down bellow.

Hello PZ and thank you for taking you time for ESCBubble! First of all, how was your reaction when you heard you will compete in Festival da Canção 2022?
I was really surprised to get the invitation and had some doubts at first weather I should accept it or not.

What made you decide to accept the invitation by RTP to compete in the selection and what are your expectations from Festival da Canção?
My music is not really what you would call suitable for the Eurovision world but Portugal is regarding this competition as a means to showcase all the different genres that we have going in this country. So I went ahed and decided to accept the invitation and I am really glad I did so.

You have different stage name in the competiton, O Vampiro Submarino, how did you come to this name and why didn’t to go with PZ?
It is an opportunity to present a new project that I have been working on: “O Vampiro Submarino”, a new alter-ego that diverges from my electronic oriented music I have been doing as “PZ”. “O Vampiro Submarino” is more about simpler times, a retro-swing with a modern twist.

Your song “Ao lado de mim”, it’s entirely your creation, what’s the story behind it and was it specially written for the festival?
“Ao Lado de Mim” was the first song I composed as “O Vampiro Submarino” in my acoustic guitar. I then invited João Salcedo to help me develop it through a jazz feeling groove through his piano and the drums of Leandro Leonet as well as the upright bass of Carl Minnemann. These are the band members of this project and together they have been playing as a jazz band called “Small Trio”. I love their music and thought they would complement the vision I had for this project and I was right. PZ and Small Trio was the perfect match to give rise to “O Vampiro Submarino”.

Your song has a lot of energy, can we expect this kind of energy from you on the stage or how are you gonna stage your song in the competiton?
I am still working on how to present this on stage but you should expect some twist and charleston like moves…

Are you following Eurovision? What’s your favorite song from the contest?
There are so many, so different in style… I have been following the portuguese songs mainly and am pleased and honoured to be part of such a creative bunch.

Any other plans for 2022? Can we expect new music from PZ?
I plan to release a full length album of “O Vampiro Submarino”.

In the end, I want to thank you for your time and please, if you have a message for your fans and our readers here on ESCBubble?
Thank you for the opportunity and if you want to check out my songs as PZ you can do so for example on Spotify:

Open in Spotify

You can vote for O Vampiro Submarino in our poll down bellow!

[democracy id=”93″]