Alan Haber's Pure Pop Radio

By Alan Haber – Pure Pop Radio

It is comforting to know that, even as a sudden burst of winter fury blankets the landscape outside the cramped yet comfortable Pure Pop Radio studio with snow, snow, snow, the forecast for the world inhabited by melodic pop musicians is maintaining its clear-skies-and-smooth-sailing posture–sailing more in the metaphorical sense rather than the literal, although great records by great recording artists often do sail to the top of the charts.

I could easily see Dear Stella’s wondrous Time Zones EP, released late last year to much acclaim, rising to the top of the charts this year, or sailing there, if you prefer, because it really is that good. Time Zones’ six song playlist starts with “Time Machine,” a cheery burst of insanely creative, passionate force-of-good-naturedness recalling Jellyfish and other such there-are-no-limits-to-what-we-can-achieve-if-we-put-our-minds-to-it merry music makers, and ends with a quieter-by-many-yardsticks ballad, the very pretty “Brighton Beach” (not the one in Brooklyn, New York, and I made sure to ask).

I was so captivated by Dear Stella’s initial release, on which Stefanie Drexler (she is Dear Stella) sings her heart out with the help of members of melodic pop’s usual suspects club (Bleu, Eric Barao, Kai Danzberg, and David Myhr), that I thought a talk with her would be a good addition to the current crop of Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation shows.

The young Austrian singer-songwriter and I gathered together on Zoom for a lively, rather charming chat, during which I found out many interesting things about this up-and-coming artist, such as: she sang harmony vocals on an Air Supply recording, toured for a week in a band that opened for the B-52s, was a big fan of Britney Spears, and earned a Masters degree in popular music research.

That’s a pretty good list of achievements all by itself, but of course there is more, which you can discover by watching and listening to my chat with the multitalented and multifaceted Stefanie Drexler below, brought to you in See! Hear! Pop!, Pure Pop Radio’s finely-tuned, video-riffic sight and sound format. And below our 45-minute-long back-and-forth, you can hear three of the great songs featured on the Time Zones EP.

Enjoy.

Where to Get It: Amazon, Bandcamp, Apple Music

Pure Pop Radio: In Conversation, hosted by Alan Haber, is the internet’s premier talk show presenting melodic pop music artists talking about their work. New episodes appear here exclusively on the Pure Pop Radio website. Podcast versions of previously-aired episodes are archived here.

Alan Haber’s Pure Pop Radio is the premier website covering the melodic pop scene with in-depth reviews of new and reissued recordings, and a wide variety of features.