ONY Returns With ‘Take My Hand’ as He Builds Toward a New Album

ONY still remembers the guitar. He was nine years old when he found his mother’s old nylon-string instrument tucked away in the attic, and something about it stuck. He started writing lyrics and working out his own melodies almost immediately. By eleven, he’d formed his first band. Decades later, that early pull toward music hasn’t loosened its grip.

The Norwegian singer-songwriter and producer, born Øystein Nybøe, lives in Ålgård on the country’s south-west coast. His recording career stretches back to 1993, when he released his debut full-length album, “Aktive skjerma,” in a duo with pianist Trond Fykse. Albums, singles, and collaborations followed, and in 2011 he wrapped his Relation Trilogy, the last of his physical releases before he moved to digital. Alongside his own records, he’s built a reputation as a producer and composed pieces for the municipality of Gjesdal, Stavanger 2008, and companies including SR-Bank and Aibel.

His influences don’t sit in one lane. AC/DC and Judas Priest shaped his guitar playing as a kid, but the list runs straight through the bass and drums of Madonna’s records, the melodic instincts of the Alan Parsons Project, and newer names like Sabrina Carpenter, Goldie Boutilier, Jason Mraz, The Weeknd, and John Mayer. Melody is the common thread. His own sound is positive and uplifting, alternative pop built on mid-tempo grooves, and those reference points are all in there.

Then there’s the Guinness World Record. In 2010, ONY conducted the largest Lucia torch-lit parade ever staged, and the same year he flew to Los Angeles to perform at a conference for artists and producers. It’s the kind of detail that tells you he’s never treated music as a purely studio-bound pursuit. These days he balances it with academic work as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Stavanger.

His latest single, “Take My Hand,” arrived on August 7, 2026. It’s a quiet, narrative song about a child guiding a younger girl home, and it’s the newest piece of “When Now Meets Then,” the album he’s writing, playing, and producing entirely in his own studio for a November release. Seven songs from it are already out, with more singles on the way.

For ONY, the numbers were never the point. He talks about music as a gift, something you make because you love it, and about how a song written by one person can reach someone on the other side of the world. That belief has carried him from an attic in Norway to a career three decades deep, and it’s still where the work starts. You can find him at his official website or follow him on YouTube.