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To celebrate the release of Chelsea Jade's long-awaited debut album, Sam Brooks asks him about his music (and that of others).
It is the rare sunny morning of Auckland when Personal Best drops. I'm sitting in front of a tall building, waiting for an interview, a long flowing coat, big sunglasses, and listening to the album from start to finish.
A song of the number nine song ("Over Sensitive") stands out from me:
I want to make the most of you, my boy
Just put yourself together because I do not want to play with you
This is the perfect lyric of Chelsea Jade – it's a person you can see playing with a broad smile, knowing that his audience is in his own joke, and knowing that this smile comes after many proud tears.
I'm listening to the track again, and lip-sync next to that – it's already in my brain, because like the best lyrics of Chelsea Jade, it was somewhere in the soul of any wounded millennium.
Chelsea and I have a coffee at the gentrification-as-artform coffee shop Entre, located in the bizarre dead zone of K & # 39; Road that exists between the cemetery there and Queen Street. It's just a week after the Silver Scrolls – where 'Life of the Party' was a finalist. "It was fine, I had a fusion of endorphins when Tiny Ruins was playing my songs, I was crying literally."
We start by talking about the music that she listens to – he There's something about what artists listen to that validate me and my musical choices – and she listens from the beginning to mid-00 R & B, specifically named "Do It To It" by Cherish.
The conversation turns to her work and her time in Los Angeles, widely spent in various producer studios, writing songs for her and others, ] others. "I have the impression that my two lives are to be an artist and to be a songwriter." The trajectory of me being a songwriter is that I want to help people to say what they mean, and write the songs that they want to write in. But my artist project is totally based on the ego.I want to serve my project. "[19659003It'sahecticlife-alifespentinmanyUberpoolswhichisexactlywhatyouthinkitis-andthatgeneratesahardwareshittonThisisnotnecessarilyabadthingaccordingtoher"Youcanwrite50songsinayearlikeasongaweekor365songsinayearandmaybefourofthemaregoodWellit'sstillfourgoodsongsIdonotthinkyoucangettherewithoutwadingintothemudpit"
" The thing that fears, is when someone says, "Well, then write a hit." the reason you say it's because of you have heard, not because of what's really going on in your brain.you think what the last shot was and how to relate what you're doing with that, and I think it's almost impossible to get anything good about it.If you're just deferring your thoughts to try to match someone else, so I think it's going to be mediocre. "
The album art for" Life of the Party ".
While the life of Uberpool seems terrifying to me, it seems to be reloading Chelsea, who like me, can not drive. "It's an interesting thing in Los Angeles – there must be so much intention of meeting people, because there's no pedestrian culture. You need to know where you are. go, and so there is no chance meeting, but the application of Uberpool stands out a little bit.
"The basis of songwriting is that you draw things that happen in your life, so things must happen in your life. You can not just bleed a stone, you must continue to fill it. "
The interview ends with us talking about Carly Rae Jepsen, the pop warrior who reigns over a no-mans-land between mainstream and indie pop -" it's the pop world in which I want to live, in her pop world where she's not afraid "- and it lands on something that lets my brain absolutely buzz, to use this phrase for the first time in my life.
Meme it few female producers, and apart from any politics, there is a whole world that we have not heard yet, and I find it very exciting, that there is this whole plane that we do not have. We have not exploited yet.There are so many avenues that have not been touched. "
*
Our next interview is at the Little Easy Bar, which looks like it's not going to be there. New-barely-rich spirit of the Viaduct that sits along the inaccessible candle middle of Ponsonby Road. Two vodka-sodas, a dubious phone recording and we still talk about music.
Again, what is she listening to? "Sticky" by Raevyn Lenae. When she talks about the song, she does it with enormous enthusiasm for the technical things that make up pop music – and she has the knowledge to confirm it: "I like interesting vocal production – I do not care about nothing else – and [Lenae] basically does what interests me. What does not necessarily respect the boundaries between the main voice and the backing voice, that's something. It's the perfect marriage of oblique thoughts and pop, which is the most interesting thing in the world. "I think that's what everyone is trying to do: do original things that are still appetizing, and I think it. It's like a Minnie Riperton." is so good, and it's weird because this song sounds a bit lo-fi but somehow it does it hi-fi. "
Conversation turns to his memories from Wondergarden. Everyone I talked to about the New Year's festival in Auckland's Silo Park talked about the Chelsea Jade Plateau
"When I arrived, I was really overwhelmed by the The scale of the scene and even the night – a lot of people – there were like three thousand people, which is not usual for me – I have not really played much in the last three years, so it's pretty hard to tell yourself: "Second time with this show that I did! In front of three thousand people! Here I go! "
The album art for" Personal Best ".
His live show is closer to the art of performance than any pop music that I saw there is choreography, and there is a very clear visual design, something that my friends – pretentious theater and dance – raved about, when she talks about her show, she tells the story of Belgian dance legend Anna Theresa De Keersmaeker, whom Beyoncé wrote for her clip "Countdown"
"Growing up, my parents really supported my desire to dance, so I did a lot of dance classes. Then I abandoned it when I was 16 and I made music. So, I think now he is fusing dance and music into a show that is … a truly gestural music show. It's a pop thing to be able to relate to a moment in a pop song, but by applying it to a movement. "
As the conversation draws to a close – Little Easy is not really the best place for an interview, and I look like we would be more comfortable somewhere quieter, darker and less inclined to craft beer – we come back to new pop sounds that we have not heard yet.
"I think I'm reacting with – what was very talented women having to bend to from other people, and maybe that was a bit condescending and alienating. I do not think that's necessarily true anymore. As if we had Lorde and I feel as if she was the beacon of light. But it's the school in which I want to be, the people who feel – I do not mean empowered, but emboldened … not feeling reprimanded for listening to pop music, you know ?
"Many of my songs start talking about women talking to other women.Many of my songs talk about love interests, but I played three songs not about it – the ones on the way I want to be in touch with other women, and I feel so good at playing those songs, I hope people really hear or hear that, you know? "[19659012] "I really want girls and young women to like to feel like they have someone on their side."
*
When I finally get to see Chelsea live, that's Is an unusual circumstance – a unique performance in the midst of a fashion festival.
Image: A rainy morning in downtown Auckland. A decrepit scene set on Commerce Street – on the odd paved road – streets that make up an increasingly important part of the CBD
The rain is intensifying a bit, I see friends – some of My cool friends – the kind of friends I usually met at opening nights or in good cafes, and I know I'm in a place to be. Cool people like Chelsea Jade, because she's cool music, but also anyone who loves pop music like Chelsea Jade, because she's very good pop music.
Jade is a magnetic artist – the gestural choreography she talked about. The interview is surprisingly effective in creating an atmosphere, and she has a crowd here who is there for her to create that mood. They know all the songs – they know the choreography, and they are waiting for the now iconic moments when Chelsea Jade enters the crowd. It is not the crowd surfing on the narcissism of a rock star, it is the equalization of "we are all in this mood".
Chelsea Jade occurs in downtown Auckland. Photo: Me, a really professional photographer
She goes through her set-set of mostly familiar songs, and one that was yet to come out: "Laugh It Off", which opens with a riff of the ree-esque that sticks in my brain every time I listen to it. She ends with "Life of the Party", with the now famous and copied choreography. The crowd is as wild as possible at 11 o'clock on a rainy Saturday morning
The show ends, she leaves the stage, the crowd is scattered next to a group of fans near the scene waiting for that. she goes down, literally right in the street, to take selfies.
In this scenario, it is clear that his presence and performance as a pop artist do exactly what his music does – it evenes. You have the impression of being in communion with her when you listen to her, in an almost sectarian way, and you also have the impression of being in communion with the rest of the population. It's not the feeling that you have when you go to a bigger concert, where there can be levels of fans ranging from the occasional radio listener to enraged mercenaries, where the relationship between l & # 39; The artist and each spectator is as unique as the snowflake. 19659003] Chelsea Jade creates a communion with her audience. And that's the reason why his songs strike as deeply as they do, and stay in your instinct as long as they do it
Our third and last talk is a discussion on Facebook. A few days ago. When I say that two days ago before the release of the album, she corrects me and tells me that there are four days. She is on the other side of the world, of course, and I am also quite wrong.
Between our second interview and now, the video of "Riez-moi & # 39; went out. It's beautiful, haunting and pushed his aesthetic into a place between the mid nineties work of Tori Amos and the Instagram generation. In short, I love it
How does it feel about the imminent release of the album?
I oscillate on a raw nerve that might be perceived as anxiety or excitement according to the minute
feel the desperation of not knowing if I'm not sure. did everything I to inaugurate it in the world.
I do not want it to be mine to keep it
the anticipation you mentioned that I feel immense guilt
because it took so long
When I note, to be definitely more of a dick than I wanted to be about it, that it owes music to no one, and not on anyone else's schedule. , she rightly corrects me:
I owe nothing to anyone, that's right. but people put their heads on your shoulder and you do not want them to think that you do not want to hold them anymore
I ask him if the album feels final after this lapse of time , and she sums up the title of the album – and the apparent thesis of the project – as succinctly as I can imagine.
I guess the purpose has an air of summit, as it is as good as it will happen
is the opposite of my mentality
"best staff" as an expression is a moving target
you still measure yourself against yourself
but there is no outside competition
if that makes sense
there is always more to learn and to say
I think that there is also a romanticism
*
The final album on the track is "Speedboat". This is an absolute 3 hour stormer on a track – one that you would play to finish one night before leaving on the night with whom you want to leave with that night – your friends, your new handsome, or the one you want. you have run into who you really should not go home with. Jade encompasses all these scenarios, and draws that anticipated nostalgia from somewhere deep inside.
And when the wrinkles fall again
They want to carry me where you are now
Like a voice that resonates
Give them hell, give them the l & # 39; Hell, give them hell.
I end up doing the timing of these lyrics on a second listen – Jade is not just one of our best lyricists, but one of our best warrior poets – and I remember it. a seemingly throwaway answer to a question about her writing process, and I realize that she applies just as much to listening to her music:
every song was like being invited A Friends Lounge to Talk About My Feelings
This piece (along with some songs from "Personal Best" from Chelsea Jade) was made possible by NZ On Air and, like all the content musical score of The Spinoff, by Spark. Listen to all the music you love about Spotify Premium, it's free on all Spark's Pay Mobile packages. Register and start listening today .
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