Cassö

One time I put my sofa on Facebook Marketplace, and pretty soon a local guy showed up at my door to buy it. He and I had never met before, but we hit it off and ended up chatting about literally everything for an hour until my wife insisted we get the sofa out of our living room and into his vehicle so she could get on with her day. A year later, I ran into this guy again at a football game and it was there (after another few hours of chatting) that we discovered we both had ADHD.

I’ve always clicked with fellow ADHD-havers. And my Tuesday afternoon conversation with multi-platinum artist Cassö is no different. This guy rules.

‘I’ve lost my passport so many times that if I lose the one I’ve got right now, I can’t get another one for ten years,’ he laughs as we talk.

I lament the world’s shift away from wired earbuds. ‘For me, having to untangle them for 30 minutes every time I pulled them from my pocket kept me aware of where they were in time and space,’ I say. ‘But I just sent my AirPods through the wash last night.’

Cassö fires back and tops me, laughing: ‘This weekend I lost three pairs of AirPods over the course of three days. I was telling my parents yesterday: AirPods are an ADHDer’s kryptonite.’

It’s difficult to explain, but if you could capture that peaceful early morning feeling combined with the giddiness and excitement of opening Christmas presents and turn it into a person, that’s him. He’s a chill guy, a thoughtful listener, but his humble excitement about his craft is infectious. It’s always bubbling under the surface.

‘I slept for like twelve hours so I’m feeling brilliant right now,’ he smiles. ‘I had a pretty heavy weekend. I had five shows over three days.’ Cassö has just spent a long weekend traversing odd corners of Europe: four shows in Germany and one in Ireland. ‘I got back last night. Saturday was tough. We didn’t have a hotel because we were playing all through the night. So we just went to one club, played, drove two hours to another club, played, drove two hours to another club, played. Did it again and eventually got to the airport and came home.’

No wonder he lost three pairs of AirPods.

After all, he’s had a lot to keep track of. Cassö has had an absolutely bonkers year. He graduated uni with a degree in business and economics in 2023 and then uploaded his first remix to SoundCloud after producing for only 8 months. Remarkably, his first upload was ‘Prada,’ the instantly famous remix featuring RAYE and D-Block Europe that went insanely viral and has well over half a billion streams on Spotify alone.

‘The same week that I finished uni was the week that I got signed to Sony,’ he recalls, disbelief still evident in his voice. ‘So I jumped from one ship straight to the other one. I had no time to prepare. I literally signed and said “Oh shit. This is happening.” I had to take everything in stride and I had no time to prepare, really.’

‘I’ve been touring so much that the production side is being left alone a little bit. But I don’t have time to leave it alone because I need to keep the momentum going and I need to keep everything moving,’ he says all this while subtly motioning like he’s juggling. ‘My biggest weakness is I’m adapting to everything.’

Huge emphasis has been placed on getting Cassö ready to kill it live so he can back up his smash hit with equally legendary in-person experiences. That’s a tall order. He and his team cracked the streaming side of things way early in the game with ‘Prada.’ The song has become so ubiquitous that it’s casting a long shadow over the original song, ‘Ferrari Horses’ from D-Block Europe’s 2020 album The Blue Print - Us Vs. Them.

Cassö’s haphazard SoundCloud upload could not have come at a better time. 2023 was a dream for the song’s star vocalist RAYE, who was nominated for 12 Brit Awards and won 6 at the 2024 ceremony. Cassö’s ‘Prada’ was even one of RAYE’s 12 Brit nominations. RAYE capitalized on the song’s viral moment, releasing her own melancholic acoustic version that really showcased her full bodied, lower register in a tasteful way.

His remix has even spawned remixes of the remix. Even David Guetta put his spin on Cassö’s track. ‘It’s even weird hearing that to be honest,’ Cassö laughs nervously when being asked about David Guetta doing a remix of his work.

Everything is still so surreal. The song is so preposterously massive that when he showed up to Australia, he was expecting his gig to be a bust but was wildly incorrect in his assumption. ‘I turn up and there are thousands of people who turned up to see me,’ he recalls. ‘I was like wow. How has my music traveled halfway around the world and this many people know my stuff over here? That to me was a real moment.’

When he graduated from uni, Cassö never could’ve imagined that he’d utter this phrase. I quote: ‘The Calvin Harris collaboration came about because of when I went to the Brits. I never thought I’d say that.’ He met Harris there properly for the first time, and was later asked to remix Harris’ song ‘Lovers In A Past Life.’

Later, Tate McRae released ‘greedy.’ Apparently Tate herself specifically requested Cassö for a remix. ‘In a heartbeat I said yes. I’m really happy with that one,’ he beams. Those have been his two major collaborations since ‘Prada,’ and a part of him was worried they’d be completely dwarfed by his hit. Seeing them both break the million streams mark was a relief. His collaboration with Tate McRae is poised to break 9 million soon.

‘That took a little bit of pressure off. But there was so much pressure,’ he says. ‘Because when you make a song like “Prada,” you have to accept that no matter what it’s going to be extremely difficult to make something to ever top that. It’s a global song. So it’s more about getting myself cemented as a real DJ and an artist and moving forward and accepting that that’s how it’s going to be.’

Learning how to work within such a unique framework isn’t always easy. He and his team are working hard on getting people to make the link between Cassö the person and Cassö’s music.  ‘A lot of people know my music but don’t know who I am. Which I actually quite like,’ he jokes. At this point, he can go out into the world and not have a single person recognize him. His mates – also DJs – get stopped, but not him. ‘I wouldn’t like that, I don’t think. Obviously they do it with respect because they’re fans and they love what they do. But I really like having it compartmentalized where my personal life is separate.’

When he enjoys something, he becomes really, really focused on it. He can’t sit down and do something he doesn’t enjoy for hours on end. He says he gets bored or easily distracted and will end up doing something else. Anything else. ‘But with production I can sit there for hours and not think about anything else and solely just focus on that because I enjoy it,’ he says. ‘So I think it’s when you find something that you’re really interested in, you can use it to your advantage. You get almost more concentration than what other people would get.’

He still hasn’t figured out how to control that future vision. ‘The hyperfocus happens so randomly. I could be in bed at 1 AM and have an idea and then I’ll go up to my studio and I’ll be there for like three hours. It just happens at the most random points,’ he chuckles. ‘It’s just realizing that when you’re about to go into it, you’re like okay, grab it with both hands. GO. Focus. Because you’re not going to focus for another two days after.’

Speaking with Cassö at this stage in his career is incredibly refreshing. He’s wide eyed. He’s hungry. He’s excited. But he’s also so incredibly grateful. ‘I’m so surprised by how many people are willing to give advice and how many people want you to win as well,’ he says of his encounters in the music industry. ‘I’ve met RAYE a few times and she was so down to earth and helpful.’

He’s also grateful for super recent successes and the immediate days to come. He headlined the indoor mainstage at Creamfields this last August. ‘That’s always been a dream of mine because I went to it growing up. That festival is the pinnacle of it all for me.’

Pinnacle of it all? Okay maybe not. He jokingly clarifies: ‘I would love to make a song with Travis Scott. That’s my number one goal.’

With his future sense and his present success, I have no doubt we’ll be hearing a lot more from Cassö very soon.

Stream Cassö’s latest release featuring Headie One and Jazzy below.

---