First, in any industry, no matter what you do, you need to work hard.
Show up on time — if you can, be a little early — and stay a little late.
Be kind and nice to people.
Say yes, be open to opportunities.
But when it comes to art, if you’re thinking of it only as an industry, you might be in the wrong place. You need to have a passion for the art itself.
Roy Orbison always said, “Work hard, be on time, and be kind.” And that’s stuck with me.
I had the pleasure of talking with Åsa Orbison. Åsa is a Swedish-born musician and vocalist who has recently gained attention for her distinctive blend of jazz and pop music. Married to Roy Orbison Jr., the son of rock and roll legend Roy Orbison, Åsa has embraced the Orbison family’s rich musical heritage while cultivating her own sound. Her unique interpretation of “Blue Bayou,” a song originally written by her father-in-law and famously covered by Linda Ronstadt, has become a key highlight of her emerging career. Released in June 2024, her version of the classic hit offers a fresh jazz twist, subtly reflecting her Scandinavian roots. The track was produced by her husband and includes a harmonica contribution from Charlie McCoy, who had played on Roy Orbison’s original recording of the song.
Born and raised in Stockholm, Åsa’s early years were marked by a deep passion for music. She attended music school in Sweden but later pursued a career in marketing, temporarily putting aside her artistic ambitions. It wasn’t until her move to the United States, following her marriage to Roy Orbison Jr., that she fully returned to music. Together, the couple has explored various musical collaborations, including the creation of Åsa’s debut album, *Blue Bayou*, set to release in September 2024. The album was recorded in Nashville at Pretty Woman Studio, owned by Roy Orbison Jr., and features Åsa’s signature breathy, soft vocals on tracks such as “Green Eyes,” “Unchained Melody,” and “Satin Doll.”
Åsa’s debut as a professional musician was cemented in 2019 when she received a platinum record for her backing vocals on *Unchained Melodies*, a posthumous album featuring new recordings of Roy Orbison’s songs with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This project was an important step in her growing musical career, highlighting her ties to the Orbison legacy while allowing her to explore her own artistic vision. Her first full-length album will include contributions from respected Nashville musicians, including saxophonist Jim Horn and guitarist Wayne Moss, both of whom have worked with a variety of legendary artists, from Dolly Parton to George Harrison.
Åsa’s music reflects a careful integration of jazz, pop, and classic rock, exemplified by her rendition of “Blue Bayou.” Her version reimagines the well-known melody and lyrics through her jazz-influenced vocal delivery, offering listeners a fresh yet familiar experience. Åsa’s musical journey is also shaped by her Swedish upbringing and the vibrant American music scene, particularly in Nashville, where she has immersed herself in the city’s rich musical traditions. Her debut album, *Blue Bayou*, is not just a nod to the Orbison family’s legacy, but also a reflection of her evolving sound and personal influences.
In addition to her musical endeavors, Åsa has made a name for herself through her appearances on the Bravo reality series *Below Deck Mediterranean*. Her time on the show helped to expand her public profile, introducing her to a wider audience beyond the music world. Despite the increased visibility, Åsa remains dedicated to her craft, with music continuing to be the central focus of her career. Her personal life, shared with Roy Orbison Jr. and their four children in Malibu, California, provides a foundation for her creative work, allowing her to balance family life with her artistic pursuits.
Outside of music, Åsa is involved in charitable work, supporting organizations such as Music Cares, Operation Smile, and BabytoBaby, which provide assistance to musicians, children, and families in need. These causes reflect her commitment to giving back and supporting communities through her platform.
As Åsa’s career continues to develop, her debut album marks a pivotal moment, offering listeners a glimpse into her musical journey. Her ability to blend genres and honor the musical traditions of her family, while also introducing new elements, positions her as a distinctive voice in the music industry. With a growing body of work and collaborations with renowned musicians, Åsa Orbison is poised to make her mark, both as an individual artist and as part of a storied musical legacy.
Yitzi: Åsa, it’s an honor to meet you. Before we dive in deep, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share the story of your childhood and how you grew up?
Åsa: I’m from Sweden, from a little town outside Stockholm. I grew up with an older sister and my mom and dad. It was really a beautiful childhood, out in the countryside. I went to music school when I was a child and then moved to Stockholm. I ended up going into marketing and got a job as a marketing director at one of the bigger PR agencies in Stockholm. One afternoon, I ran into Roy Orbison Jr. in the park, and I didn’t know who he was. We really hit it off that first night. Of course, he told me his name, and I said I didn’t know who Roy Orbison was. But when we Googled him, I recognized all the songs. That’s something I hear a lot when people talk about Roy Orbison — maybe you don’t know the name, but you definitely know the songs.
We fell in love, and one year later I moved to the U.S. We both started playing music again. I hadn’t played since I was a child, and Roy had been more on the business side of music, working a lot with his mother, Barbara Orbison. He hadn’t played guitar in about seven years because of a shoulder injury. But when we met, he was stuck in my apartment in Stockholm when I went to work, and I didn’t have a TV. There was a guitar there, and he started to play it, didn’t have much else to do. We began playing and singing together, and that’s essentially what led to the album we’re putting out now.
I moved to America, we had kids — our first was little Roy Orbison III — and then we had three more. So we’ve been working on this album for a while, fitting it in between raising our kids. Now, we’re finally putting it all out and we couldn’t be more excited.
Yitzi: Unbelievable. You have so many amazing stories from life in Sweden, moving over, and also from your professional life. Can you share with our readers one or two of your favorite or most memorable stories from your professional life?
Åsa: Well, I think one of the most amazing stories is how the song Blue Bayou, which is also the title of my album, came about. Roy Orbison recorded it in 1963. Then, in the ’70s, Linda Ronstadt covered it, and it became her biggest hit.
In 2019, my husband, Roy Orbison Jr., and I worked on a project with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I was singing background vocals, and Roy Jr. was playing guitar on new versions of some of Roy Orbison’s songs, and Blue Bayou was one of them. Around that time, Roy got into jazz and started playing around with the arrangement of Blue Bayou. I changed a couple of notes, and with my Swedish pronunciation and approach, it turned into something we really liked. We thought, “Wow, this sounds good. We should do something with this.”
He phones up his friend Charlie McCoy, Mr Harmonica, who played on the original “Blue Bayou”. He is a living legend. Charlie says ofcourse he will play on our version!
He then phones up another dear friend, legendary saxophonist Jim Horn (played for the Traveling Wilburys, George Harrison, Tina Turner, Frank Sinatra…) and he comes over and lays a one minute solo on our song! I think to myself — how did I even end up in the same room as these people and how in the world am I recording with them? It all of course comes down to the great Roy Orbison. Our version of Blue Bayou connects seven decades of Roy Orbison’s musical life and career. And working with these people brings me closer to him. I get to ask these people not only about music, but what was Roy Orbison, my children’s grandfather really like? It means a lot to me to just be around these people.
Yitzi: It’s been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a humorous mistake you made when you first started your musical career?
Åsa: There are so many mistakes in the whole release of this album that ended up turning out well! Delays and other hiccups that caused a release to be earlier or later than you originally planned, and it just ends up aligning with something else perfectly. I have faith that everything happens the way it’s supposed to. So I never feel like I’m missing out. I always trust that it’s part of the process, and I think that’s essential to finding happiness and being content.
Yitzi: Beautiful. So if you could take all of your lyrics, all of your music, and put it into one bucket and mix it up, what would be the main message or theme that comes out of your music?
Åsa: I write a lot about love. Swedish lyricists tend to use nature a lot — raindrops as tears, windows as eyes, lots of symbolism. I think that’s a big part of how I write. But overall, the main theme of this album is love.
Yitzi: How do you feel that your Swedish roots influence your music?
Åsa: I think some of it I don’t even notice myself, especially my accent. You know, when you have an accent yourself, you don’t hear it. So I don’t hear my own mistakes, and Roy, my husband, never corrects me. I’ll say something wrong, and he thinks it’s cute, so he just lets me talk like that. I’m not going much further with my “Americanization.” I’ll be “Swinglish” forever.
But I do notice that when American people listen to my music, some say it reminds them of The Girl from Ipanema. It sounds foreign to them. To me, I’m just singing English, and I don’t think I sound that Swedish, but apparently, I do. It’s tricky to place where I’m from, though, because I’ve moved around a lot. I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, so maybe there’s a bit of a Southern accent mixed in. But in school, I learned British English, since that’s what they teach in Sweden. Then I moved to LA, so there’s probably some California influence, too. I’m definitely a mix of everything, and that makes it hard to place me. It definitely puts me in a different time and origin, and I think people appreciate that.
Also, we Swedes tend to sing pretty flat — we don’t use a lot of vibrato. I like to hold a straight note for a long time, without adding anything extra, where others might use vibrato. But I sing it straight and honest, like an arrow.
Yitzi: That’s great. So in your duet with your husband, Love is Strange, what do you mean by that — Love is Strange?
Åsa: Well, that’s a cover song, so I didn’t write it. For me, Love is Strange is about the game of love, as the song suggests. You know, “many people takes it for a game”. For us, it’s one of our favorite songs from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. It was originally recorded by Mickey and Sylvia, and it’s just a really fun duet to perform.
On that song, Wayne Moss plays guitar. I don’t know if you know who he is, but he’s one of the most legendary, most recorded guitarists out there. He came up with the riff for Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”, and he played on the original “Oh, Pretty Woman”. So again, it always comes back to Roy Orbison in some way. Having Wayne play on that song was such an honor — and so much fun. Roy and I really enjoyed recording it, and we’re going to work on a music video for it soon. It’s absolutely one of my favorite songs right now. And it’s doing really well — we’re close to 70,000 streams in the first month, I think! And “Blue Bayou” is up to 700,000. You know, it’s crazy. But that’s how powerful that song is.
Yitzi: So, as a mother of four, how do you balance all these roles as an artist, a wife, and a mother?
Åsa: I don’t, really! But the kids play a lot of music too and we’re always together. Our music studio is in the house, which helps a lot. Practically, I’m pretty disciplined and good with schedules. My kids have all been good sleepers from an early age, which is a lifesaver when you have as many as we do. They nap well and love to sleep, so that gives me some time to work.
When they nap, that’s when I work, and I have to make the most of that time every day. I also make sure to exercise daily. I try to run for 30 minutes a day mostly for my mind. And then, after that, it’s back to work!
Yitzi: You appeared on Below Deck Mediterranean. That can be quite an experience. Can you tell us a bit about that? Maybe share a story?
Åsa: We had never watched the show before, and the first time we appeared was during the season when the show really blew up. It was with Captain Sandy and Hannah Ferrier, the chief stew. It was so much fun! We got an email from the show’s producers asking if we wanted to be on, and we thought, “Is this real?” It seemed real enough, so we said yes. We flew to Majorca, and sure enough, it was the real deal.
Below Deck is probably one of the only truly non-scripted reality shows. Everything you see is pretty much what actually happened. Of course, they can take things out of context, but it’s not scripted. The show is really about the crew working on the boat, and we come on as guests. For us, it was an amazing vacation, and the cool part is that it’s all filmed with great cameras and lighting, so what you see is like these perfect family vacation videos. That’s really what it felt like for us — just a really well-documented family vacation!
Yitzi: Do you feel like your appearance on Below Deck Mediterranean impacted your musical career?
Åsa: In some ways, they’re completely different worlds, but on the other hand, yes. I think that show is viewed by about 120 million people, and we’ve been on three seasons. So, absolutely, we get recognized on the street for Below Deck Med. Someone actually came up to my husband once and said, “I named my dog after you!” And not because of Roy Orbison — but because of Below Deck, which is so funny.
We went to BravoCon, which is like Comic-Con but for the Bravo Network, and it really opened my eyes. It’s easy to take reality shows lightly, but for a lot of people, these shows offer an escape. They have hard days at work, relationship struggles, or someone is sick, and they can disappear into this other world for a little while. For a lot of people, it means a lot.
There was one guy who came up to us and said, “Your show was so funny to me — I watched it every time I had chemo.” Stories like that are really beautiful. If we can be a small help or give people something to laugh at, then it’s all worth it.
Yitzi: That’s great. Looking ahead, do you have any other projects you’re working on or hope to work on?
Åsa: Yes, we’re recording more albums, more songs. And soon we’ll tour. I’d love to play some jazz festivals. Next summer, we’re hoping to tour a bit in Southern Europe. We’ll pack up all the kids, get a trailer or a van, and go camping while playing shows. How dreamy does that sound?
Yitzi: Beautiful. So this is our signature question. You’ve been blessed with a lot of success now. Going back to when you first started your music career, can you share five things you know now that you wish somebody had told you back then?
Åsa: I’m not sure if I’ll get to five, but here’s what I’ve learned.
- First, in any industry, no matter what you do, you need to work hard.
- Show up on time — if you can, be a little early — and stay a little late.
- Be kind and nice to people.
- Say yes, be open to opportunities.
- But when it comes to art, if you’re thinking of it only as an industry, you might be in the wrong place. You need to have a passion for the art itself.
Roy Orbison always said, “Work hard, be on time, and be kind.” And that’s stuck with me.
Yitzi: That’s great. Beautiful. Can you share with our readers some more of the self-care routines or practices that you do to help your body, mind, and heart thrive?
Åsa: Sure. For my body, I run. We had a really scary experience with a fire at our house in Malibu. We had to get out of the house in five minutes, middle of the night. It wasn’t a “normal” wildfire where you usually have a bit of time to evacuate; it came so fast and was just terrifying. After that, I started sleepwalking at night from the anxiety. With a lot of kids, I still had to show up and be present every day, so they really helped keep me grounded because I had no choice. That’s one of the great things about being a mom though — you keep things together, because you have to. Moms just do. Motherhood has made me so strong.
Anyways, I realized I either needed to go on medication or find a different way to cope, and I heard that running helps with anxiety. So I started running 30 minutes every day, first thing in the morning. Even when it meant putting the kids in front of “Mickey Mouse” with me running next to the couch.
Running has really helped keep me sane. I’ve also started lifting weights because as you get older, you lose muscle, and I’m trying to stay ahead of that.
For my mind, being with the kids is almost like meditation because you have to be present with them. Meditation is great, but I don’t always have time for it. Putting away the phone and being present with the kids helps my mind.
For my heart, it’s my kids and my husband. We’re always together, and that keeps my heart full. I feel really lucky, Roy Jr is lucky too and the kids are lucky too, we’re all better together.
Yitzi: We’re almost done. This is our aspirational question. Because of your great work and the platform you’ve built, you’re a person of enormous influence. If you could spread an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most good to the most people, what would that be?
Åsa: I think it would be to be kind to yourself and to others. Go easier on yourself and others. Just kindness, really. The world needs more kindness.
Yitzi: How can our readers purchase your work? How can they support your music? How can they stay connected?
Åsa: You can listen to all my songs on Spotify. I also have a YouTube page. I’m printing a vinyl, hopefully by Christmas. Our songs are partially recorded on tape, so they’re high-quality and will sound great on vinyl. I’m excited to design it with the colors and everything. Spotify, Facebook. I’m on TikTok too, still trying to figure that out! As a musician, they say that’s the place to be. You need to post 30-second content every day, even if it’s the same song. You just keep going because eventually, the algorithm picks it up. I don’t know, I’m trying to figure it out though — it’s like fishing!
Yitzi: Well, it’s been so delightful to meet you. I wish you continued success and more blessings.
Åsa: Thank you so much for having me.
Yitzi: My pleasure. Really a pleasure. I hope we can do this again next year.
Åsa: Yes, let’s do it.
Music Stars Making A Social Impact: Why & How Åsa Orbison Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.