You recently released a new single, ‘Look At Me Now’. What was the biggest challenge you faced while creating this track?
Several things spring to mind, but first and foremost I’d say my imposter syndrome is the main thing that held – and continues to hold – me back. I do everything myself and I don’t have a background in production. I’ve barely even scratched the surface when it comes to mixing and that can be incredibly intimidating when you start comparing yourself to others.
When you work on a mix, you naturally know and understand it intimately. You hear all the tiny mistakes and you know to the millisecond where something just isn’t quite right. The thing is, you think everyone else knows the track the same way that you do – so they’re hearing all these things too. It’s really hard to remember that they don’t.
From a different perspective, getting people to actually care about your music is a whole other challenge. Social media is not my strength – I really struggle to stay consistent. You can’t expect people to listen to your music if they don’t connect with you as an artist, and they can’t connect with you if you’re not nurturing your online presence (unless you’re gigging frequently, which I’m not).
Some days, I let all of the above get to me and I want to quit. Other days, I think, screw it. I enjoy it, who cares – I make music for myself at the end of the day. It’s a cycle, really.
How do you fight this urge to quit?
It’s one of those things where you ask yourself, “if no one listened to this, would I still make it?” For me, the answer is yes. I will always make music because it’s a way of understanding myself and it’s a truly cathartic practice.
I personally believe that those who create art do so to make sense of their lives and the world around them. Perhaps it’s all in the hope that someone will relate to it and they can connect on that level. That’s especially the case with music – it connects people on both a collaborative level and a resonation level.
There’s something quite beautiful in the thought that everything we do is ultimately to connect with others. No one wants to be lonely. It makes me feel like we’re all in this together. And that makes me want to carry on.
What’s ‘Look At Me Now’ about, and can you describe the songwriting process for this track?
I don’t know if other artists feel the same way, but I personally hate the questions of “what is this song about?” or “what kind of music do you make?” because I never actually know what to say. Of course, I have my own meanings behind it; I know what it’s about. But I feel that writing it down and giving it one concrete subject takes away from personal meanings that others draw from it.
A song that I really love is ‘Taken by the Tide’ by Mystery Jets. They addressed the same idea when talking about this track. In an interview with Dork in 2020, Jack Blaine said:
We have a song on Curve of the Earth called “Taken by the Tide” and that’s a song which was about Kai [Fish, the group’s old bass player] leaving the band. But actually I never really talked about that too much. And as a result of that, we’ve had messages from people all over the world saying ‘this song spoke to me and in such a way because of my experiences’. I think if I had come forward and said, this is what the song’s about, this is what I want you to be thinking about, those people wouldn’t be able to find themselves in that music.
Jack Blaine, Dork 2020
As I said before, art is all about finding connection so that’s why I cherish when people can find something personal to them in my music. What I will say is that this song really helped me to process and let go of a lot of negativity that has been ruling my life for way too long.
As for the songwriting process itself, I remember journalling one morning and thinking, “I really want to write a song like BANKS”.
I really like challenging the traditional song structure because music and art generally naturally rejects conformism and sticking to a rigid method. Art is all about playing around! BANKS has a song called ‘And I Drove You Crazy’ from her debut album Goddess and she just repeats this one line throughout and it underscores the chorus. I find it so impactful and I wanted to emulate that kind of vibe on this track too. I ended up using vocal layering and repetition as a sort of ‘chorus’ instead.
I had tried to channel her writing style but the overall energy turned out quite different. It’s cool to see how drawing inspiration from artists you respect and admire turns into something (sometimes completely) different and uniquely your own.
How do you feel now that the song is out there?
There’s always nerves around a new release because even though you preach about making music for yourself, nothing else matters, yada yada yada, that’s never going to be 100% the case. You want people to like what you make – especially when it’s so deeply personal and you’ve put everything you have into it. So I want people to like it.
But I’m so proud of this track in particular and the way that it makes me feel – it’s like a new era for me, in a way – that I’m more excited now that it’s out there. I’ve been working on it for about a year so I’ve listened to it thousands of times, I’m glad it’s out before I could truly get sick of it!
As an emerging artist, how many songs do you plan on releasing this year?
It’s a hard one because as I’ve already said, I struggle with consistency. And for artists at the start of their journey – in all creative fields – consistency really is key. For musicians, consistency is imperative to keep people engaged with your portfolio; there’s only so many times people can listen to the same song. On top of that, it’s hard for people to care about your work if they don’t, on some level, care about you.
I’ve seen artists set themselves the challenge of releasing one track per month. This work ethic and creative output is insane, it’s really admirable. I don’t think I could do this.
When I was writing my goals for 2024, I wrote that I will make and release at least four songs this year. I hope it will end up being more than that, but I had to set myself a baseline target. One down, three to go.
On that note, what’s cooking? Do you have any music on the way?
There are so many tracks that I have been working on for a while and I wonder whether they will ever see the light of day. I travelled a fair bit last year, and have written a song for each place I visited; I’d like to release an EP with these tracks at some point, but we’ll see.
There is one song that is nearly finished, but it would really benefit from some instrumental talent that I simply don’t have, so I’m reaching out to a good friend for some help there. I can’t wait to see what they come up with – it’ll be transformative, for sure. I hope that my next track will be out before my 24th birthday, which is in May. Now that that’s officially out there on the record, that’s my next deadline.
