To me music is like food, in that I don’t know if I would survive without it.

When I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is read the important emails on my phone and put my music on. I always select music to match my mood, but I do like to keep it relaxed in the morning so I’m happy and ready for the day.

Recently I’ve been listing to a lot of classic R&B and some soul. I’ve been going through my playlist on Spotify and killing my Joe and Maxwell tracks. It’s great to listen back to some old songs as you get ready, and I’ll sometimes sing along – but we won’t talk about the quality of my singing. (In fairness I do think I’m a good shower singer, but now I will always keep it in the shower.)

This bring me to the song I made while I was at Ajax.

One day I got a call from Dean Gorre who I was playing with at the time. He asked if I wanted to make a song with him.

Me with my big mouth said, “of course – why not.”

We then asked Bennie McCarthy and he also agreed, so the three of us began hitting the studio every day after training. I was always worn out by that point, so I ended up falling asleep there sometimes until we got the call: “Guys you’re up!”

When all three of us were in the booth, the only guy that was done quickly was my man Dean. He was really good and sounded a bit like Ice T, so after he was done it was an uphill struggle, especially for me. I tried a number of times and they kept saying, “well done Mario, do it again.”

I started to get frustrated, until some time later they let us hear the final product.

Of course the team started joking about us and calling us names because we started to perform the song in the Netherlands. We were on MTV, Telekids, and at the dutch legends show called Ivo Niehe. The last one was the big one because he interviewed a lot of international stars and he wanted us to perform live on his show.

The final blow came from our coach Jan Wouters. It’s funny now, but at the time we could of killed him.

He told us that his dog used our CD as a frisbee. We of course laughed, but deep inside it was a slightly different feeling, as I’m sure you can imagine. He then told us we had to stop performing. The song was beginning to get played in bars and clothing stores and we were upset because we had just entered the top 100 in Holland, but the team wasn’t playing well and we could see that too.

We gave it up and ended up saving the season by winning the Dutch Cup. But needless to say our short singing career was over.

Now I just do it in the shower, pretending that I’m the coolest there is.

That is until I bumped into my neighbour who asked me if I also heard some crazy drunk guy singing early in the morning, when people just want to wake up in peace.

I said: “Really? I don’t hear it.”

Now I put the volume up so they only hear the real artist, and my vocals are faded in the background.

#mmlove