Lenny Monsou and the Art of Playing Nearly Every Part on Wrecking Ball
Lenny Monsou and the Art of Playing Nearly Every Part on Wrecking Ball
A Dutch Basement Production with a Summery Chorus Became an NPO Radio 2 TopSong
Lenny Monsou wrote Wrecking Ball on a writing trip to Sweden, in the middle of a breakup. It still came out as a song about being head over heels. The Dutch singer-songwriter, 22 and based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, released it on 31 July 2026. Its sound comes down to one room and one player: most of what you hear is Monsou himself, recorded in his parents’ basement.
Lenny Monsou’s single sits in the playlist below. Wrecking Ball reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Hit play, then read on for how one player built it.
The Arrangement of Wrecking Ball Puts Lenny Monsou on Guitars, Bass, Keys and Both Vocal Parts
Start with the parts list, because it is short on names. Monsou sings the lead and the backing vocals. He plays acoustic and electric guitar, bass, keyboards, piano, Rhodes and synthesiser, and does the programming as well.
Still, the rhythm section stays in the family name. Daniel Monsou plays the drums and Jean Monsou adds percussion, with Wout de Kruif as drum technician. That fits the story Monsou tells about himself: he grew up in a family of musicians, with a drummer and producer for a father and a singer for a mother.
A Writing Trip to Sweden, and Heroes From Bowie to Harry Styles, Shaped the Song’s Pop Polish
The song itself came out of that session in Sweden, where Monsou wrote it with Rhys Frank, Gabriel Pettersson and Beatrice Jaksch. Sweden has been one of pop’s busiest writing rooms since the late 1990s, when Max Martin and the Cheiron Studios team in Stockholm wrote global hits there. So the trip followed a well-worn route.
What the parts add up to is bright and quick to learn. The colour is summery, while the chorus is simple enough to sing back on a second listen.
It is also a song built around the voice. Monsou calls his own singing powerful, and the chorus gives it plenty of room. Two of the heroes he names, David Bowie and Harry Styles, show in where the record sits, between rock attitude and pop polish.
Styles is the closer neighbour on this one. His Watermelon Sugar won the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance in 2021 on a sunny, easy chorus. Wrecking Ball chases the same kind of summer hook.
Lenny Monsou Produced Wrecking Ball in a Basement, and Tim Palmer Mixed It in Austin
The production also stays close to home. Monsou produced and engineered the recording himself in that basement studio, with DianDian as co-producer.
The mix travelled further. Tim Palmer, whose studio has been in Austin, Texas, since 2009, mixed the track with Travis Kennedy, and Justin Shturtz mastered it.
Palmer’s history ties the record to Monsou’s heroes. He produced Tin Machine, David Bowie’s 1989 debut with that band. He also mixed Pearl Jam’s Ten in 1991, and his mix of U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind earned him a Grammy nomination. So a song by a young Bowie fan was finished by someone who once made a Bowie record.
NPO Radio 2 Made Wrecking Ball a TopSong, Then Lenny Monsou Topped the Verrukkelijke 15
Radio found it fast. Wrecking Ball entered De Verrukkelijke 15, the chart Leo Blokhuis presents on NPO Radio 2, at number seven on 9 August, nine days after release. It moved to five, then two, and reached number one on 30 August.
In between, on 21 August, NPO Radio 2 named it its TopSong. Monsou was moved when he heard the news that Friday morning. It is his second single of 2026, after Middle Of The Night in January.
But the run to that point started early. He wrote his first songs at ten and had music out on CD by twelve. At fifteen he became the youngest student ever accepted at the Herman Brood Academy. His recorded catalogue began with the single Never Fall In Love in April 2024, followed by Telephone and a debut EP, Idolizer.
Wrecking Ball shows what all of that was for: one player, one basement and a chorus that a national radio audience took to within a month.
AltPop.News curator team: “The title promises destruction and the song hands you a love letter. That is exactly the kind of misdirection we like in pop, and the chorus makes it land.”
Stream Wrecking Ball on Spotify and Apple Music. Follow Lenny Monsou across platforms: the Spotify artist page, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, his YouTube channel and his official website.
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