Jessy Lanza

0:12Hello and welcome to the special episode of the Monaco Weekly. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco, and for today's show I speak with Canadian singer and DJ Jessie Lanza on her new album Love Hallucination. Let's have a listen.

0:36Jessie Lanza, welcome to Monaco Radio. A pleasure talking to you. Love the new album Love Hallucination. I mean, even the title, I have to say, is very good. But first of all, you know, tell us what's the vibe of this new album? I mean, listening to it, it felt quite, you know, clubby, summery at times as well. But perhaps give us a light introduction to Love Hallucination. A lot of this album, I actually started as songs that I was writing for other people. I wrote, over the pandemic, I started writing a lot of material for other artists. and I think that really allowed me to get into a side of my voice as an artist that I haven't explored before.

1:22And so some songs were rejected inevitably and a lot of them I thought were, you know, good enough that I should just, I liked them enough that I wanted to put them on my own album. So I think I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone a lot on this record and doing that gave me a lot of confidence. So it feels like a confident record to me, more so than the ones, my previous albums.

1:56I love that. And I can see, you know, there's a lot of kind of different genres. So, for example, in Midnight Ontario, of course, this R &B, I thought a lot about kind of Janet Jackson, but feeling a modern Janet Jackson track, if I may say. am I correct with that vibe there? Yeah, that's one of the biggest compliments you could give me it's very, very sweet and definitely she is always on my mind somewhere because I'm such a huge fan but yeah, I could hear that for sure And tell us about perhaps some of your favourite tracks one that I loved because of course I love the synths in it Limbo, I think it was quite a cool track and I can certainly see myself dancing in a club but tell us perhaps about Limbo or any of your other favorite tracks.

2:49Limbo is, I love that one as well. I wrote that song a couple of years ago and I couldn't finish it for whatever reason and I was sharing it with friends trying to get somebody to get on board and like help me wrap it up and there was a while there I wasn't sure it was going to get done But I sent it to Ten Snake, who I worked on another song of his with. We basically did like an album trade, a song trade for our albums. And he worked on it with me.

3:33Another favorite song is Marathon on the album, I think, because it's so different from anything that I've ever done before. There's sax on it and I rap on it, which is not... That's a song I wrote for another artist and I liked it so much that I wanted to put it on my album. Amazing. No, Marathon is definitely a good one. And so, of course, Don't Leave Me Now, which is the main single as well, right?

3:59Yeah, I'm really proud of that one too. I was super excited for that to be the lead single. Jesse, a question for you. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, where you moved to LA kind of recently. I don't know if you made the album in LA or not, and if that somehow influenced, actually, this album. A lot of it was made in LA. A lot of it was made in San Francisco as well. But yeah, it's difficult to say, I think, right now, because I'm so close to the album. And for whatever reason, I have this habit of disassociating from what is i think in two years i'll be able to see much more clearly how la influenced this album i mean certainly with the the artwork my husband winston case did all the art direction for the for the record and like it's basically me emerging out of a palm tree on a cherry picker and that's very LA that's very LA so I know he is very dialed in to the LA influence but I think emotionally like with the content of the songs I'm not quite there yet but I know it's there I just need to reflect on it well we should just wait for the new album as well and then maybe we're gonna see it better.

5:26What about touring for the summer? I know you have some concerts like later in the year, like around November and you also have, you know, you do collaborations. I know you tour sometimes with Yaiji, which I mean, I'm a huge fan as well. How is it working with her? She's amazing. I've known her since 2015. Actually, she came up to me at a festival in Pittsburgh and told me that her name was Kathy Lee, which is the title of one of my songs. And it was just a funny coincidence that I have a song named Kathy Lee and her name is Kathy Lee. She was just really sweet. And we've been friends ever since then.

6:08So it was really fun to go on tour together. And actually the show in London at the Roundhouse is with Yeyichi on November 11th. That's fantastic. Well, I look forward to go to that one as well. I want to talk about another track and I just want to confirm I mean I think drive is very cool and I don't know do you think it's about the pleasures of driving and again I'm associating this with LA but I thought it was very very nice track thank you yeah I like that one a lot too

6:43yeah the city that I'm from Hamilton is similar to LA and that I mean it's just like kind of a suburban place where you just have to drive and I got my driver's license when I was 16 it was like a yeah you just couldn't you had to rely on other people a lot if you didn't drive so that song was definitely I was thinking about driving around as a teenager and all the the memories formed in that time. Jesse you mentioned we're talking about Janet Jackson how is it a compliment for you what are actually your music influences I mean do you look a lot to the past or do you kind of keep on track of what's happening with the music scene today or perhaps both yeah I love listening to new artists one of my favorite parts of the last couple years is getting these offers to write for other artists and being able to it's really fun to picture like what would a song from this artist sound like and like reading their interviews and like listening to all their music and yeah seeing where that goes but I definitely keep up on new music I love I love discovering older music as well I think R &B is at the foundation of everything for me yeah absolutely I can like well I can sense that when you write to other artists do you feel protective of your song I don't think so because you told me that some of those tracks that were meant perhaps to other artists actually you're including on this album right yeah yeah i um i think that those feelings could could come up feeling protective of the songs that you write but it was it was just so uh fun for me to do to do it and it it made me feel really good to um be able to like come outside the shell i guess um because i can to be really guarded sometimes and I actually think in the end it it turned Love Hallucination into an album that there was just much more of me to connect with for for people and like being able to write for others allowed me to do that.

8:47Listen Jesse a pleasure talking to you thank you so much for being here on Monocle Radio.

9:02That was Jessie Lanza and her latest album Love Hallucination is out on the 28th of July. The show was edited by Callum MacLean and I am Fernando Augusto Pacheco.