Name: Berit Dybing aka Ber
Nationality: German
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current release: Ber's Halfway EP is out via Awal.
Recommendations: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (film, 2022) and "26", a song by Carol Ades.

If you enjoyed this interview with Ber and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her on Instagram, and tiktok.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I think I’m just lucky to come from a home and environment where music was always present. The Bee Gees and ABBA were always playing in the kitchen when I was growing up, I started piano and guitar lessons when I was 6, and when I started singing (as soon as I could talk) there just wasn’t anything else I ever wanted to do. It’s just always been there, maybe it’s the one constant.

I didn’t really start writing until college, but when I did I was listening to a lot of Julia Michaels, The Beatles, Lennon Stella, Fleetwood Mac, which all definitely have left their mark as influences for my own music.

But growing up I really was surrounded by anything that came out of the 70s, and local musicians that would play in live bands in my small town in Minnesota.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

I see colours, and it definitely does play a role in the over all experience of a song.

When I’m writing, I like to visualise the music video, or the movie it would soundtrack, it helps me recognise emotions that are missing or being portrayed.

This most recent EP of mine feels very red to me, although I’m really not sure why that is.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I really didn’t expect to be an artist growing up, it wasn’t until recently that I actually accepted that that was my route and really allowed my passion for it to take over.

I started writing some very honest songs in 2020, while processing a hard break up, and it was then that I felt like I was actually writing songs for me and no one else, they felt like journal entries, and that's what made up my first EP.

The biggest hurdle for me was really just being honest with myself, and when I found a voice in that honesty, it felt really exciting. Because not only did the songs help me explain my emotions to myself, but they felt important and real, and outside of the other things I had written to briefs in college.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I learn a lot about myself when I write, and I feel like learning about myself is something I’m constantly doing right now. I’m not completely sure I have my artistic identity figured out, but I don’t really expect that from myself or other artists either.

When I hear a song that says something in a way I’ve never heard before, I get really excited. I’m really into lyrics. As a writer, I think it’s fun when you can tell that someone specific wrote it, because it feels like them. I feel that way about Julia Michaels, and Caroline Pennel.



You really hear them in every song they worked on, there are certain characteristics that feel like them, you can just tell. I get excited when things like that come through.

But really I think identity, as defining and stark as it is, is also very fluid, it changes and people grow. Taylor Swift and her Eras I think are a really beautiful example of that.

[Read our Cole Kamen-Green interview about working as a session musician for Lorde, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé]

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

For me, honesty is key. I just write because I would go crazy if I didn’t. It really is a tool that helps me process my emotions! A very cathartic process as well.

I just hope to make music that helps people feel a little less alone in those big emotions. Music does that for me.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I don’t think it’s black and white.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

COLLABORATION - truly my friends have been such amazing influences and have taught me so much.

Consistency is also very key for me in my process, I need to keep the tap flowing. Journaling and keeping notes is something that keeps my mind fresh when I’m feeling less inspired and is a good tool for recalling funny anecdotes, or bringing funny stories to writing sessions.

And above all, therapy!

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

My day-to-day at the moment is quite different. But today for example, I woke up around 8am and spent about 2 hours on admin. I’m currently prepping for my first headline tour, so my email inbox is full of exciting and tedious tasks.

At 10, I had a zoom session with one of my favorite collaborators and best friends, and we worked on a new song and really dug into the lyrics until around 12. At 12:30 I had a photoshoot for an article in a twin-cities based paper, which was quick and simple, and then at 1:30 I met some friends at the bouldering gym (I recently took up bouldering, it’s been so good for my brain! Hobbies, I’m bad at hobbies, but I love climbing!), and then I did some grocery shopping and finished up some more work before making tacos for dinner.

And then I had two zoom interviews with radio stations in Indonesia! Quite a crazy, full day of random things but a pretty accurate representation of what I’m currently up to.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

When we wrote “Over You”, the closing track from the EP, it was the last session during a long writing trip to London last summer, and I had written probably 15 songs in 15 days with various writers / producers.

That process can be quite taxing, its like speed dating, but on the last day of my trip I got the tube and 2 busses to north London, which was about a 2 hour journey, to meet my friend Rob Milton at his studio. We started the session by grabbing a bite to eat at an eatery down the road and just talking, and I really at that rate was just an open book.

Rob asked me about everything, we just got to know each other deeper and every once and a while he jotted things down, sentences id say, references, jokes we’d make. After breakfast we went back to the studio and he said “so earlier you said something, “I don’t wanna rip my heart out anymore””… and immediately the verses of “Over You” just sort of spilled out of us. We wrote it in our iPhone notes app, I was sat on his sofa and he was at the piano. It just kind of happened.



That's how my favourite songs come about, it starts with me oversharing and slowly becomes a little time capsule for a moment, a very present emotion.

Luckily that song really just wanted to be a piano and vocal, the demo from the day is the same thing that made it onto the record, we didn’t have to overthink that part at all. It was a really special day, and that song is very close to me.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I definitely gravitate towards collaboration, because I really writing from a place of common ground. I find that when sessions start with conversations over coffee or tea, you really get to share stories and level with people and relate with one another, validate each other, and it just feels nice to start something fresh with new energy.

I definitely use music as a way to connect with people, whether it be collaborators and friends while writing, or audiences. I think connecting people is music's superpower!

That being said though, I love the way each and every brain hears and interprets something differently, and the way we hold music close for personal reasons. My favourite albums are albums I feel like soundtrack the parts of my life I can’t put words to myself, and they make me feel very seen and less alone.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Like I said, I think it's a pretty obvious feature of music that it's so unifying. A single album can put 70,000 people in one stadium and have them all scream “Leave America” at the top of their lungs night after night (I’m a big Harry Styles fan, haha).



Writing and making music has definitely allowed me to process my emotions out loud and provided me an outlet, which I’m just lucky to share with people on a bigger scale.

“Meant To Be” was such a great example of that, it opened my eyes to how even the emotions we consider to be the most complex are actually so universal, simple, and something we share. It’s all very unifying, which is so powerful.



Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I may have touched on this already, but music really is the first thing I turn to. I definitely pull inspiration from whatever is in front of me, which really forces me to actively explain my emotions to myself as I’m writing or listening to things.

I’ve learned that my current perspective really alters my perception of lyrics, and if I’m grieving or processing heartbreak, my brain takes me different places while listening to music than it does when I’m feeling generally more optimistic. I’m someone that is generally moved by music often, it doesn’t take much for a song to bring me to tears, whether its my own and brings up old emotions or its something new that I truly just resonate with.

There’s a Lennon Stella song called “Older Than I Am”, and when I heard that for the first time, I was stopped in my tracks, because it had explained to me a feeling that I had been trying to put words to for my whole life. I remember just feeling really understood when I heard that song, like suddenly the thing that never made sense just, did. Please go listen to that song, its stunning.



How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I really have never considered the science of music but I do know and fully believe in the healing properties of certain frequencies and vibrations, and the unifying, connecting abilities it has sociologically.

Dancing and singing are essentially free serotonin, for me at least, and it’s something that never fails to brighten my mood or make me feel more awake and aware, and present. And at the end of the day, we’re all experimenting!

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Oooh, but see, I’m a big coffee person. A good cup of coffee is art. Haha.

I think my answer could go any way here, I want to say that everything I do while writing is so intentional, so from the heart and full of metaphor and very deep and life- changing etc … but I can’t. Sometimes I write songs as a way to occupy my mind in the shower and it's not any deeper than that.

There is a lot of beauty and skill in simplicity, and as someone who overthinks lots of things, thats’ something I try to remind myself every day. It’s enough to write and perform for the joy of doing that, its enough to drink coffee because it makes me so happy and improves my day.

Sure, singing and performing allows me to connect with an audience on such a different level, I don’t feel that way when I clean my kitchen or go grocery shopping or make my bed in the morning, no. haha

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

If the question is whether or not I have an explanation, the answer is no.