Prom Kings, Discos, and Mad Scientists: The World of Vincent Limelight
Vinny Nelson was never the prom king. He’s not a rich and famous pop star. He’s not selling out Madison Square Garden. Vinny is a 19-year-old living in Omaha, Nebraska with a 24-track, a synthesizer, and an alter ego with a story of his own. “I’ve been practicing music since last March,” Nelson said. “Just because there’s nothing else going on really and I had to do something. I had to pick up something because I was just fucking bored.”
Inspired by pop icons such as Lady Gaga and Ayesha Erotica, Nelson decided that he needed a persona if he was going to begin releasing music. And thus, Vincent Limelight comes into frame. “I love my little persona!” he laughed. “Vinny Nelson is fine but it doesn’t sound pop star like at all. I wanted something like really super pop star. I didn’t want to do anything boring. I don’t really go by Vincent in real life [and] it’s clearly a fake last name, but it’s my real first name so it’s like half real half fake.”
Nelson wanted to write for a persona simply because he didn’t want to write about his own experiences living in the midwest. Instead he found creative expression through escapism. “My persona is like “I’m rich, I’m famous! I’m living in LA or New York or whatever” which is the goal,” Nelson said. “I don’t think I’m gonna get famous but it would be fun. I kinda realize that fame is prison so do I really wanna be [my persona]? I’m just doing it for fun. I don’t have a label backing me; I’m just doing it on my own and I’m fine with that. If I got signed to a label that would be a dream but I’m not gonna count on it.”
A Track by Track Breakdown
Intro
“So the first track is the intro and that was the first composition I had ever written on the piano. It’s just set to the key of C Minor and I wrote it on piano but then I set it to this arpeggio. Basically, I love it because I imagine my persona like gassing it going super fast down a highway. It’s just like movie music. Disclaimer: it’s not perfect. This is not professionally mixed or professionally mastered, and it’s fine, I don’t care. The whole point of this was for fun and to see that I could do it. That’s really surprising because I’m a perfectionist, Perfection, as much as I like that, it’s hard to achieve, it’s unrealistic. I’ll get there but for now I’m just having fun.”
Fame Monster
“This was like the first song I wrote, not composition but like, song with lyrics. It’s just set to these three chords F, G, A and I feel like a lot of pop stars have songs set to F, G, A. It's like really basic, really simple but those are my favorite chords. I definitely wanted [this to be] mostly an homage to Lady Gaga. I kinda wrote that as my first song because it’s like the manifesto song of the project like “this is what I want to achieve. I want to live in LA and I want to be famous” but I have this realization before the bridge that fame is prison and like, what happens when they hate you? You know that happens to a lot of artists. They have their hayday and their rise and then their fall is a fucking catasrophe. You know, the rise and fall. I love that though, I love the Primadonna rise and fall. It’s also kind of a reference to Primadonna Girl by Marina and the Diamonds. She’s like “I want the world” and I want the world too.”
Burn the Disco Down
“It’s definitely a cheesy song. A lot of these songs are definitely campy but I love it. I love camp. I just think that this is my persona, I’m writing to a persona, and my persona would love to go to a club. I mean, I would love to go to a club. It’s also like, “I want to leave.” The pre chorus is like “I want to sneak out and go have fun” but I’m stuck inside and there’s covid. This has definitely been escapism for me because I have this persona where I can dream about being somewhere else and living somewhere else and not being stuck in my own head in my basement. So that’s been the best part for me, this escapism, and Burn the Disco Down is definitely escapism for me. I just want to fucking go dance, like fuck! I literally want to go to a party so bad but, you know, covid.”
City Lights
“The final track on the first EP is City Lights and this track is one of my more personal songs and one of my favorites on that project. It’s basically about my love for New York City and how I want to live there. Like, what my goals are and how I just want to fucking leave Nebraska. I don’t know if it’s LA or Boston or New York but I want to live in a bigger city. New York is the dream, I’ve never been but I know that I would love it there. It’s kind of another manifesto track. It’s pretty short but it’s basically like a stream of consciousness because there’s no chorus, verse, chorus, verse [pattern]. It’s blurbed out there but its got structure still.”
World Tour
“The start of [my second EP] is World Tour and I just made this one for fun. It’s definitely not meant to be taken super seriously. It’s mostly about my love for concerts, I just know that my persona would be a crackwhore for that stuff. I’ve never performed for anyone so I can’t imagine if I’d be good at it or not but like I feel like I could do it. I think I would like performing. Going on a world tour sounds like a fucking blast and just like, being in a stadium and the adrenaline rush. Lady Gaga has a song called Applause which kind of has that same thing too. This song is nowhere near as good as Applause, I have to admit. But I made it for fun and I thought that it kinda fits the theme of what the future is and what I want to achieve in the future.”
Prom King
“This was the hardest song to record. Not like emotionally the hardest, but it was the hardest one to mix and master. I love that song a lot because it tells the story of where I came from. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life at all and then quarantine hit and I had time to think about what I wanted to do and I kind of discovered music and I was like “this is what I want. I want the cash, I wanna go fast” and the chorus kinda tells that story. And then we jump into the second verse where it’s like “yeah I was never the prom king in high school” but I always wanted to be. I just wasn’t popular enough to be prom king. But now I’m finally living out my fantasy and it feels good.”
Mad Scientist
“This is the campiest song of the project but it’s very true to me still. I’m basically talking about making music and how I feel about it. I kind of refer to my music as Frankensteins because I need to, like, piece them together. I’m chopping and editing and it drives me crazy in the best way. It’s like achieving a goal but I also get so obsessed with this it feels like it’ll literally kill me like I need to get this done. I also made this one for fun and I felt like it was very true to making music and, like, once it’s out it’s done but until then I fucking feel like I’m going crazy because I have these melodies and these lyrics stuck in my head but I don’t know how to get them out yet. I’m still new to songwriting. And I will admit my songs aren’t Grammy-award-winning but that’s not why I’m doing it. For now I just feel like they’re stuck in my head and I need to get them out and I feel like I’m gonna go crazy if I don’t.”
The Future
“This, to me, is the most personal song on the record because I’m talking about what I want to achieve in the future. The Future is just talking about how I feel stuck in life but life’s moving so fast I want it to fucking stop so I can focus. With school and my mom wanting me to get a job and my music and keeping up with my social life and my boyfriend I just feel like I don’t have enough time in the day anymore because I have so much to do. It just feels like so much responsibility. It’s mostly about how I hate school and how I just want to not work and make music but I can’t do that, I just wanna, like, take a break even though we literally had a break for a year. I don’t know, it’s conflicting for sure. It’s hard to put into words, just life is overwhelming and I want to stop but I don’t want it to stop. I want to get back to normal life.”
In the future, Nelson hopes to experiment with different styles of music. “I want to evolve and have different eras,” he said. “I really want to do 80s glam rock for a future record. I want to have a Queen era so bad! But the thing is, I need to learn guitar first. My next big goal is to learn more guitar.” He also noted that he likes the imperfections of his debut EPs because they mark a starting point. “In five years from now, if I’m still making music, I want to feel the growth,” Nelson said. “I could nitpick it and make it perfectly perfect but I want to have signs of growth throughout my career. I want to mark this as my first project.”
