PRETTY MAIDS Singer RONNIE ATKINS Finishing Up Solo Album Despite Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis

Frontiers Music Srl has announced the signing of Danish vocalist Ronnie Atkins to a solo deal. The acclaimed PRETTY MAIDS and NORDIC UNION frontman is currently wrapping up work on a new solo album, "One Shot", to be released in the spring of 2021.

"To be honest, I initially had no intention to do a solo album to begin with, but for various reasons and in particularly my own personal health situation I finally decided to have a crack at it," says Atkins.

"Around Easter 2020 and only some six weeks after I was told that everything seemingly looked very positive for my health, I was, unfortunately, diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and told it was incurable, which was devastating news for me. Needless to say, that was a total game changer and I went into kind of a panic situation for a while. But when the dust had settled, I realized there were two ways to approach the situation. I could sit down, accept the facts, and feel pity for myself or I could pull myself up, set some goals, pursue my dreams, and carry on living. And with fantastic backup from my family and true friends, I went for the latter."

With the global pandemic shutting down touring for the foreseeable future, Atkins knew a tour promoting the latest PRETTY MAIDS album, "Undress Your Madness" (2019),was not going to be in the cards anytime soon. Suddenly, the timing for working on a new solo album seemed to have presented itself.

"Well, I couldn't change the way things were, by any means," he says. "The whole world was on a lockdown and the future prospects of concerts were very uncertain and still is to this day. Basically, that meant that if I was gonna carry out the idea of a solo album, it had to be now since I don't necessarily have all the time in the world. I had all these ideas recorded on my iPhone that I felt were too good to never see the light of day and I was writing a lot at the time to help ease my frustrations."

Ronnie's next step was that he hooked up with good friend and PRETTY MAIDS bandmate and producer Chris Laney to begin the work of putting these ideas together into songs. Chris is overseeing production, Jacob Hansen will mix, and musicians/singers appearing on the album include, in addition to Laney, Allan Sørensen, Morten Sandager, Pontus Egberg, Pontus Norgren, Kee Marcello, Olliver Hartmann, John Berg, Anders Ringman, Linnea Vikström Egg and Björn Strid.

The first single and more album details will be revealed in January 2021.

The 55-year-old Danish musician was diagnosed with lung cancer last year and underwent at least 33 radiation and four chemotherapy treatments last fall before being declared cancer-free. Last month, he announced that his cancer had returned.

Photo credit: Tallee Savage