Minelli Reclaims Creative Freedom on Mixed Feelings (Opening Season)

Minelli Reclaims Creative Freedom on Mixed Feelings (Opening Season)


For Minelli, pop music has never just been about hits. It’s been about voice — not just the one that’s sung, but the one that tells the truth.

With Mixed Feelings (opening season), the Romanian artist opens a new chapter, not by chasing the charts — though she’s more than capable of dominating them — but by chasing clarity. This record is the sound of an artist coming home to herself.

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“This past year gave me the chance to reset,” Minelli says. “To remember why I make music in the first place.”

That reflection becomes the heartbeat of Mixed Feelings, the first of a two-part album that marks her most personal project to date. It begins with “Thoughts,” a spoken-word track that doesn’t aim to entertain — it aims to disarm. In just over a minute, Minelli lays out the emotional contradictions of success: the stillness after the dream comes true, the tension between recognition and disconnection.

Photo Courtesy of Minelli

What follows is not a playlist of singles, but a body of work. Tracks like “Bus Station” and “Bug a Boo” explode with kinetic energy, yet even at their most high-octane, there’s a thread of vulnerability running through the pulse. “Over’n Over” strips things down — sonically and emotionally — as Minelli asks the kind of questions that don’t need answers, just space.

It’s a project made with intention. Across its nine tracks, she collaborates with genre-defiers like Tobi Ibitoye, R. City, and Guaynaa — not for reach, but resonance. These are artists who, like her, live in the middle: between countries, between sounds, between identities. It’s no coincidence that the standout track, “Alien,” is a celebration of that very in-betweenness. It doesn’t apologize for being hard to label — it celebrates it.

Minelli’s own story is one of reinvention. She first came up writing songs for some of Romania’s biggest pop names, then took the mic herself — eventually exploding across borders with hits like “Rampampam” and “MMM.” Her numbers are jaw-dropping: over 1 billion Spotify streams, 2.5 billion YouTube views, Platinum plaques across Europe, a spotlight on Spotify’s Times Square billboard, and music placed in global series like Gen V and In From the Cold.

But none of that means anything if the art doesn’t matter. And with Mixed Feelings, the art finally feels like hers again.

“I’ve been in rooms with producers from all over the world,” she says. “But this time, it wasn’t about proving something. It was about making something I believed in.”

What’s next is already in motion. The second half of the album drops this fall. A West Coast tour is on the books. An exciting collaboration is waiting in the wings. But Minelli isn’t in a rush to prove her next move. She’s already made the most important one: getting honest.

SPIN Magazine newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.

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