22. February 2025
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Media Review

Nico Santos – Nico Santos

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Nico Santos - Nico Santos

Nico Santos - Nico Santos
3.7

Rating

 3.7/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Two amazing tracks with "Better" and "Play With Fire"
  • Some good and very good songs

Flyctory.com Cons

  • The bonus tracks are quite thin
  • Some tracks are very close to each other

Nico Santos is a German artist, which made it quite big and gained international attention the last years. He is currently promoting his new self-titled album by participating in the German Sing Meinen Song (“Sing my song”) TV format. Here is Nico Santos, released on 8th May 2020.

 

Nico Santos – About The Artist

Nico Santos, whose civil name is Nico Wellenbrink, was born on 7th January 1993 in Bremen. His father is quite famous in the TV and music business in Germany. Shortly after his birth, his family emigrated to Majorca, where he grew up and also finished High School in Spanish. He is fluent in Germany, Spanish and Catalan. After school, he studied sound engineering in Cologne.

As both of his parents had bands, he was supported in music very early and learned to play the piano from the age of six. Already at a quite young age, he played on some Spanish festivals, but also toured in Germany and published songs on YouTube. One of his songs, the Spanish Eres Perfecta, surprisingly became viral and was played some 300,000 times soon after publishing. Thereafter, he had a short career with the US rapper KY before he went solo, publishing his debut single Symphony in 2016. The first single of his 2018 debut album Streets of Gold, Rooftop made it to the fifth spot in Germany and Switzerland as well as to the second place in Austria. The album just peaked on average rankings, but the single Safe sold quite well. In 2019, Better, which is part of the 2020 Nico Santos album, made it to the Top 20 in Germany and Austria.  Santos also works as a songwriter and producer as well as as an actor.

 

Nico Santos – Nico Santos – Track By Track

The album has 14 songs and a playtime of 45 minutes. The last three tracks are declared as bonus tracks.

1. Better (feat. Lena)

In the first 30 seconds of Nico Santos’ album, you listen to… Lena Meyer-Landrut, you is the last German artist to win the European Song Contest. In fact, this duet is a fresh and straight pop song, which is very popular in German radio as well.

2. Play With Fire

I gotta get out
This is what you get when you fall in love
No one ever said how good it hurts
I tried it once, but it’s once too much
You end up getting burned
I’m like the gasoline, you light the match
Ain’t no one else who can burn me like that
So I cross my heart, kill my desire
This is what you get when you play with fire

A typical breakup-song. Similar arrangement than the first song with Lena, pop track with hip hop elements in the verses. Great production.

3. Low On Love

Low On Love is a lovely and intense piano ballad. I personally love these kind of Nico Santos songs more, even if they pop tracks are much more popular.

4. Like I Love You (feat. Topic)

For this song, Nico Santos pairs up with Topic, who was a 2016 nominee at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The result is a speedy, rhythmic, but also quite repetitive pop track. Not my favorite, but a commercial success.

5. 7 Days

7 Days is the first track on the album, where you also feel the Spanish root and soul of Nico Santos. A cool Latin pop track, which catches me from the very first minutes. And… The second verse is sung in Spanish. One of the highlights of the album to me.

6. Changed

One thing I like about Nico Santos’ songs is that they tell stories, most of them are not too thin on the lyrics side. I struggle with Changed on the melodic side, though. It is just too much of a speech song, which changes slightly towards the end. I guess to key audience likes that songs, I just feel that the artist has such a good voice, this song is not transporting that.

7. Killing Me

Now the lie is the truth and I try not to move
I don’t wanna chase the memory away
I’ve been using my time, only losing my mind
Guess the day you went away, I went insane

This quote, which is the second verse, shows: we are in the breakup topic again. Though the song is comparably melodic again, I would at most give it average ratings – especially in an album, which features amazing ones like Better or Play With Fire.

8. Easy

Oh, was it easy to let me down?
Was it easy when you walked out?
Tell me, was it somebody, somebody new
That made you wanna leave me?
Was it easy to let me down?
Why the hell did you shut me out?
Tell me, was it somebody, somebody new?
Don’t tell me it was easy, so easy to

The more you listen to this album, the more you cross your fingers that it is not too autobiographic. Too much bad love for a young guy like this. The song, which again has this magic Latin touch to me, is definitely one the better tracks of Nico Santos.

9. Walk In Your Shoes

Nico Santos’ voice is just so amazing in ballads to me. Walk In Your Shoes is catching from the very first moment – and definitely one of my absolute favorites of the album. Dare a listen, definitely!

10. Who’s Gonna Love Me Now

With Who’s Gonna Love Me Now, the album presents a slower, but rhythmic pop track – and is thus a track which I definitely appreciate as well. Good song.

11. Nothing To Lose (feat. ToTheMoon)

ToTheMoon is a producer duo from Germany, who are now starting to produce tracks together. Nico Santos collobrates with them in Nothing To Lose. Quite nice and melodic track, which I somehow do not like that much, to be honest.

12. Rooftop (feat. Kool Savas & Kelvin Jones)

The section of bonus tracks, which are all previous Nico Santos in new versions with other artists, starts with the amazing Rooftop, which made it to 40 million streams on YouTube only. I have to say that the collaboration with rapper Kool Savas and British-Zimbabwe artist Kelvin Jones does not add any value to me. I stick with the original.

13. Unforgettable (feat. Alvaro Soler)

The second bonus track is a new version of Unforgettable with German-Spanish pop artist Alvaro Soler. I feel that this track is just not too much different from the original track.

14. After Party (feat. Ilira)

After Party is a 2018 track by Nico Santos. The song just had som 25,000 views on YouTube so far, which feels so minimal compared to nowdays tracks. The Nico Santos version has been recorded with Swiss artist Ilira. She is famous for her wide range voice. Unfortunately, you just get very little of her potential in this song. Still, it is my favorite of the three bonus tracks.

 

Nico Santos – Nico Santos – Spotify

Here is the Spotify widget for Nico Santos’ album:

 

Nico Santos – Nico Santos – My View

You are smashed with the first two tracks of the album and just long for one thing: MORE! Unfortunately, the album cannot keep up with the album. Without the bonus tracks, the album becomes quite thin (eleven tracks, some 35 minutes) – only After Party somehow adds some value to the eleven main tracks. Too many songs are close. Bad luck, songs like 7 Days and Walk In Your Shoes would have definitely deserved a higher album ranking, but overall, I feel we are just miss the top quarter of pop music recordings here.

 

German Artist Music Reviews on Flyctory.com

Here are more Media Reviews of the German Artists:

 

Spain on Flyctory.com

Here are all postings about Spain:

 

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