Part 1

Name: Stacey Jackson
Nationality: Canadian-American
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, TV presenter, entrepreneur
Current release: Stacey Jackson's acoustic version of her song “Soldier” is out now via 3B1G.
Recommendations: Hamilton is still one of the greatest shows on stage.
I used to love the song by Motley Crue, “Home Sweet Home.” I mean, I just love it. It would be interesting to hear, like, what sort of young people today would think about a song like that.

If you enjoyed this Stacey Jackson interview and would like to stay up to date with her music and other creative activities, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

That's a good question because it really depends on the record. So, for example, the song I wrote where I ended up collaborating with Snoop Dogg was about a dream that I had when my late father visited me.



Literally, I was like the only time ever that my late father came to me in a dream and said, now it’s your time. Now it’s your chance to do what you've always loved to do.The message of ‘it’s never too late to live your dream’ came to me from an actual dream. Then this song ended up being a big record for me because I collaborated with Snoop Dogg on it.

It could be anything. I mean, I've written a song where I was literally walking on the streets and the click of my heels make a beat and I'm suddenly getting a melody in my head. It really honestly depends on the situation and most of my records are very motivational and inspirational. So it's usually about something that has inspired me in my life.

So even the sounds could be that as well. Like I try to pull up on the sounds of the 80s, because that was my era of music. So a lot of my records will have a bit of an eighties twist to it.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

That's like 50 50. I'll go in with some idea, whether I want to write a song that sounds similar to something that has inspired me or there's a message I want to say particularly so I do go in with some element of what we're gonna write about and what is it gonna sound like. A lot of my songs that I sit at the piano and start writing are almost like a rocky ballady kind of record and then it turns into a big poppy dance record.

I would say it's a combination of both. When you're in the writer's room, there is nothing like those juices flowing and you just don't know sometimes where it could lead you and that's part of the fun for me.

For the visualisations, it has to come from my heart, you need to be honest because writing it down, it removes the emotion to it, doesn't it?

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

No, no, no. I'm ADHD, so I'm all over the place as it is. I can't imagine being that organized with the song. And like I said before, I like where it goes creatively and I like letting those doors open because, you just don't know where it will end up and sometimes it's shit and you just pull it back and you're like, okay, well that's not working.

I like to try things. I like to try new sounds. I like pushing the button sometimes and sometimes when you go in with a specific plan, I find that a little bit restrictive.

I've written two briefs before where I had a soundtrack I was writing for a movie and there was a specific scene and the message had to be a specific message. So by definition, I was in a bit more of a box creatively because I had to write for something specific. I can do that as well, but you also sonically and guess what instrumentation gets used.

And there's just so many different things when recording that can happen and can make a track better, for the most part, but I'm not going to lie, sometimes it doesn't make it better. You have to go, you have to pull it back again.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

Definitely food.

You have to ask my producers, when I rock up to the studio, I have a duffel bag full of healthy snacks, hummus, crackers. I'm a muncher. I love grazing and I don't know, it just gives me energy and I'm jumping around while I'm writing and It's not necessarily a ritual, it’s probably part of my ADHD, which it's only coming out  now and it makes sense why I can't sit still. I definitely am jumping around a lot. I'm grazing. I'm doing other things. I'm not just sitting at the piano.

My brain works strange that way. That's what happens to me.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

How difficult is the first line of text? If it doesn't come to me right away and it feels unnatural or it feels forced, then I put it away. I start over, I'll do something else.

I need to have a flow. It needs to feel like it's coming from a special place, whether it's from my heart or from an experience.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

When I wrote “Flipside,” I had the melody going around and around in my head.



I went into the kitchen and it was just a melody and I was just humming it. Taking out the hummus from the, from the fridge , and it just came to me. I'll see you on the flip side. There's no wrong or right side. It literally just popped into my head and so I ran into the live room and I was like, I got it, I got it, I got it. Sometimes for me it's a real natural flow.

Some songs are different. Like when I did “Viral” with Dimitri, he said, you know, write a song about two people being in a club and that their love is going to go viral. And that was kind of the brief, it was okay. And then he said, and now write, a verse in French? It became like more instructional. It felt natural as well because the melody was there.



So it really depends on the scenario.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

Messages for the most part. Don't get me wrong, there are some records that I've written that are just fun, lighthearted, and very catchy. There are some great pop songs out there that have their biggest hooks of the la la la's and the na na's right. There's no words.

For me, I suspect as my journey with my musical career has been for the most part positive messages, inspirational messages, messages that make people want to feel happy, feel good about themselves and want to dance.

That's really what my mantra has been. Since the beginning, I try to stick with that. But it's not always the case.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?
 
That's the nature of every artist, right? Even through art history, you look at some of the greatest inspirations, and then how art has transformed over the years. Does life imitate art, or is art imitating life, like Aristotle argues. It’s not in the recording industry. Being a creative, you're always going to take inspiration from something. I pull on every era of music that I live through, some of my songs might sound a little similar to Pointing Fingers.

Is it truly original? How many chords are there? I mean, most of the greatest pop songs in the world are based around four primary chords. So how original is something is, that's a great question. I really don't know the answer to it.

When I was creating my fitness line of clothes and I was doing the bra tops, there really wasn't anything like that on the market. I had it patented, right? But I'm obviously taking inspiration because you wanted to get it on like a jacket. So I was inspired by a jacket that zips up. So you're obviously pulling from various things in your life.

I can't say that anything in life moving forward artistically is completely 100 percent original.

From your experience, are there things you're doing differently than most or many other artists when it comes to writing music?

I love collaborating and I think a lot of my writer friends love collaborating as well, because I believe that two heads are better than one, three heads, four heads. There's always so much creativity in a room, in a writer's room.

It's funny. I hit it off sometimes better with certain writers and it's like playing tennis, right? It's like if you're playing with someone not experienced and even if you're not really hitting the ball back and forth evenly. You can feel it. So when you're sitting in the room and someone's sort of like a novice at this, It could take longer, the process could take longer.

But for the most part, over my career, the songs that I have written, and I wrote with co writers,, we’ve always gelled really well, and we always did things similarly. There isn't anything that I can say that, about my style of writing is different to anybody else's, I feel.