Singer/songwriter Jillian Jacqueline finds her manner again to herself on the stunningly lovely ‘MotherDaughterSisterWife,’ a cathartic exhale that sees her totally realizing her imaginative and prescient and eventually creating the file she’s at all times dreamed of creating.
Stream: ‘MotherDaughterSisterWife’ – Jillian Jacqueline
“This is the album that I’ve at all times needed to make, however by no means thought that I may make,” Jillian Jacqueline tells me one September afternoon.
It’s a strong, emotionally charged assertion – and one which’s a very long time coming for the singer/songwriter. Jacqueline has been making music since she was 12 years outdated, when Kenny Rogers signed her to his personal label after listening to her singing in espresso outlets in New York Metropolis. Jacqueline has had many musical lives since. Forming the band Little Girls Band together with her three sisters, shifting to Nashville to grow to be a songwriter, launching her solo profession with Huge Loud, and at last changing into an impartial artist together with her debut file Actually in 2022.
This previous Friday, October 17, Jacqueline launched her eagerly anticipated sophomore album, MotherDaughterSisterWife (through Virgin Music Group). “This file simply seems like the within of my coronary heart, my mind and my soul in music kind,” she advised me once we spoke in September. If Jacqueline’s discography, then whenever you hear the brand new file, you’ll perceive what she means. MotherDaughterSisterWife is 100% Jacqueline. The songwriting, the preparations, the vocal manufacturing and the music are intertwined fully with Jacqueline the particular person.
Produced by Ian Walsh, Andy Skib, and Jacqueline’s husband, Bryan Brown, MotherDaughterSisterWife is an immersive expertise. On one hand, you’re feeling like Alice getting misplaced in your personal Wonderland, however on the opposite, there are some very darkish themes to grapple with – despair, melancholy, self-worth, motherhood, creativity, being a lady on this present interval, heartbreak and abusive relationships.
You throw round your emotions
And I dodge them like grenades
You make the room so heavy
And count on me to not break
And I do know that it’s not your fault
I do know that it’s not your fault
So that you may be the bull
However I gained’t be your china store
– “China Store,” Jillian Jacqueline
The songs “China Store” and “Extra” discover the darker realms of romantic relationships. With every track, the narrator grows in self-love and energy, who finally shakes off the shackles of both having to tip-toe spherical another person’s emotional outbursts, within the case of “China Store,” or on “Extra” the place the character has stayed far too lengthy in an unloving and emotionally abusive relationship as a result of they didn’t know they might need extra. An emotion we’ve got all needed to confront.
Or possibly there’s an excellent rationalization
For why you watched me cry within the bathe
And the way you at all times knew to show over in mattress
Proper after I was about to maneuver nearer
Individuals say hey, why did you keep
If it was so dangerous you actually didn’t must
However I didn’t know I may need extra
I didn’t know I may have extra
– “Extra,” Jillian Jacqueline
Jacqueline spoke about “nearly reverting again to childhood optimism” on this album, which you hear actually clearly on “Cult Traditional,” an ode to the romances of basic Hollywood movies. Jacqueline has even included a snippet from the movie ‘Penny Serenade’ starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. The track feels cozy and heat, like watching an outdated movie on a crisp autumn night. The optimism and magic are palpable with the tender instrumentation and Jacqueline’s silky easy vocals.
Typically it may really feel like
Wanna hit the rewind
Forgetting learn how to romance
Grocery store sluggish dance
You and I are a cult basic
Kinda die arduous cinematic
Hold you coming again by the static
Responsible pleasure within the attic
– “Cult Traditional,” Jillian Jacqueline
The lyricism on MotherDaughterSisterWife is exact in its execution but dreamy in the way it makes you’re feeling whenever you shut your eyes. “Stroke Of Genius” sees Jacqueline chasing a muse even when she proves to be inconsistent and harmful. The quickening of the strings and Jacqueline’s vocals create a spot the place you’ll be able to disappear into the track.
Operating down the halls of my thoughts
Scissors in my hand looking for
One thing left to say that’s worthy of my tongue
Solitary battle with a canvas
Solo flight making an attempt to land it
Married to a muse I can’t stand however
She’s all I ever need
The title monitor “MotherDaughterSisterWife” is the centerpiece of this file that pulls the opposite songs in. With out the title track, you wouldn’t have “Fantasy Woman” or “Extra” and even “Eyelashes.” “MotherDaughterSisterWife” is the place all of it started. In Jacqueline’s personal phrases, “I feel it’s so extremely unsettling whenever you begin to take a look at what all these labels make you’re feeling and the way you’re supposed to maneuver into these labels.”
As a lady, these labels are thrust upon us and we’re anticipated to know instinctively what is anticipated of us, and if we don’t, we’re “dangerous moms, daughters, sisters, or wives.”
How I’m seen on this world is in relation to which label I occupy at anybody time. I’m by no means Emily. Jacqueline is rarely simply Jillian. Our id is at all times wound as much as how we may be of service to others. Jacqueline says this quiet half out loud. Listening and mouthing the lyrics usually seems like a catharsis of types, an exhale after being submerged below the load of expectations for too lengthy.
A fish out of water
The third of 4 daughters
After I turned a mom
I nonetheless felt like a lady
From nowhere Pennsylvania
Straight into the vein of
The silent expectations
That I ought to maintain the world
After I interview an artist, there may be at all times a component of the unknown. How receptive will they be, how snug can I make them, will they be open to my questions. After I met Jacqueline on an early September balmy afternoon in her residence in Nashville, I instantly felt like I’d met a long-lost pal. We spoke for over an hour about her sophomore album, creativity, self-worth, love and what we’d inform our youthful selves. The next interview has been refined for size and readability. Learn our intimate dialog beneath, and stream MotherDaughterSisterWife, out now!
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A CONVERSATION WITH JILLIAN JACQUELINE
Atwood Journal: Firstly, thanks for agreeing to talk to Atwood Journal about your new file. It’s an honour. Listening to MotherDaughterSisterWife the overarching theme is what it means to be a lady and a lady. You additionally grapple with darkish themes – despair, self-worth, motherhood, being a lady on this present interval, heartbreak and abusive relationships. How did this properly of inspiration grow to be the album?
Jillian Jacqueline: This file got here from a really intense interval of progress. MotherDaughterSisterWife is the file I’ve at all times needed to make, however by no means thought I may make. This file is type of this reckoning of just like the loss of life of self, the self that I believed I had constructed. For the primary 30 years of my life, I used to be projecting this model of me of who I used to be going to be to the world. I feel lots of people undergo this of their late 20s into their early 30s, the place you might have this bizarre sort of shift, ‘whoa, am I nonetheless that particular person or am I presupposed to be doing one thing completely different?’ I had a whole lot of private {and professional} issues that culminated on the identical time. My final file, Actually, I used to be actually in the midst of all of that. I couldn’t fairly even course of what was occurring. I used to be making an attempt to create a bridge from my youthful self to the place I used to be on the time, however truthfully I felt like my eyes had been nonetheless closed somewhat bit.
I used to be really going to say this album sounds probably the most such as you. It’s not a departure out of your earlier discography by way of sound however rather more you, in a soulful sort of manner.
Jillian Jacqueline: It seems like an exhale. It simply feels, truthfully, just like the nine-year outdated me assembly the 36-year-old me and being, “oh, did we discover one another once more?” It simply seems like the within of my coronary heart and my mind and my soul in music kind. This file was my quiet, peaceable nook of creativity. It’s so me, it’s so private. It was very cathartic and intimate, so in that manner, even placing it out into the world feels completely different from any file I’ve ever launched.
As I’ve been going again and listening to the file, I can see little touch-points to your different information, however I stored pondering, ‘this seems like Jacqueline.’ From what I do know of you, clearly, by what I’ve learn or watched or listened to. I felt like your final file Actually, felt such as you however you possibly hitting the best markers you had been advised to hit?
Jillian Jacqueline: Completely. I really like what you mentioned in regards to the theme of womanhood earlier. Motherhood significantly sort of threw me into reassessing my relationship with my physique. I feel I ignored my nervous system and my feminine anatomy and the way all of that’s tied into your nervous system. If you get pregnant and have a child, you simply don’t function the identical manner anymore. It was the primary time I actually needed to get in tune with my physique and take note of what my physique was telling me and why I used to be feeling a sure manner at a sure time. I felt it introduced me this deeper knowledge of how every thing is synergetic and tied into one another. For those who don’t take note of that, that’s whenever you get anxiousness and despair, all this stuff I’ve struggled with for a really very long time as a result of I feel I simply suppressed a whole lot of what my physique was making an attempt to inform me.
This file is such an embrace of my womanhood in a way of, you may be all of your self now and also you don’t must neglect elements of your self to outlive, which, “Vibrant Eyed Child” touches on. I went into the music trade very trusting and pondering folks would handle me and other people would say issues about how they had been going to do X for my profession or what they believed about me. I actually used these as pillars of my very own self-worth. I didn’t spend money on ‘what do I consider about myself’ So when somebody’s taking a look at you as if in case you have all of the solutions and also you’re robust and also you’re assured, and also you’re not that for your self, how will you be that for someone else? It was all this stuff compounding and hitting me without delay. This file to me is, like I mentioned, a reckoning.
It nearly seems like a delicate awakening too. I don’t really feel like I’ve stepped into ‘I’m a lady hear me roar.’ Perhaps that’s like the following file. I feel I’m like determining that I don’t need to be the particular person I used to be anymore and I need to be someone new, and I don’t actually know who she is but, however I’m actually excited to satisfy her.
When did you begin writing for the file? Do you keep in mind what the primary track was?
Jillian Jacqueline: I technically began writing for what would grow to be the file within the Fall of 2023. “Vibrant Eyed Child” was the track I wrote that felt just like the catapult second into the mindset of making the album, in September 2023. Nonetheless, there are songs from way back to 2021 on the file as properly, like “Extra.”
I feel I’m a few years older than you and I do really feel like I’ve reached a sure level in my life the place I’ve began to face up a bit straighter. I can hear that within the songwriting and the vocals on this file. There’s a quiet confidence there that I don’t hear in your earlier information.
Jillian Jacqueline: It’s really bizarre you say what you mentioned, as a result of yesterday I used to be enthusiastic about what would I say to my 29 yr outdated self? Or what would I say to my 19 yr outdated self?
I wasn’t essentially taught or modelled what confidence regarded like in myself. I don’t suppose my dad and mom knew they had been doing this, but it surely was very very like, in the event you do this stuff, folks will love you. All of us, I feel, come to this consciousness as we become older, we begin going to remedy and enthusiastic about our childhoods and our dad and mom. We’re like, ‘oh, yeah, that was an fascinating strategy to do it,’ ? I’m getting extra conscious and assured of who I need to be on this planet, however in no way do I’ve the solutions but. I feel with that curiosity and that lifelong studying, I’m nearly reverting again to love childhood optimism. There’s undoubtedly a whole lot of uncomfortable messiness too, the place I’m like, ‘oh man, I actually thought I had it discovered and I had nothing discovered.’
Can you share what the recording course of regarded like?
Jillian Jacqueline: The recording course of for this file was very completely different from another file I’ve made. As a result of my producer lived in LA once we began working collectively, we did a whole lot of correspondence over the cellphone/ face-time/ work tapes/ voice memos, the place we constructed the sonic references for the album. I shared songs and musical influences, and he would take these references and mock up these tough concepts of every monitor that we’d then hash out and construct piece by piece collectively.
Hiring our gamers who did a whole lot of these classes remotely gave the file this type of puzzle piece feeling, however I liked how deliberate every alternative was as a result of we took a whole lot of time speaking about what we had been doing.
I made a visit out to LA in March of 2024 and that was then we began monitoring vocals on the primary 3 songs at my brother-in-law’s, Tofer Brown’s, residence studio. We paid a whole lot of consideration to which microphones we had been utilizing as I used to be actually wanting to listen to my voice in a extra intimate and uncooked seize than I had on earlier albums. We used an AEA R44 ribbon mic on a whole lot of the file which has heat and depth I actually liked on my voice. We additionally closely used cello, fiddle, upright bass and mandolin on a whole lot of these songs which is instrumentation I hadn’t beforehand explored in my music.
I needed the mattress of this file to really feel acquainted but cinematic. A lot of this music seems like one thing I’ve been listening to in my head for a few years and at last gave concrete form to it.
The title of the album is ‘MotherDaughterSisterWife’ (mom, daughter, sister, spouse); there is no areas between every phrase. I do know that will not be misplaced on a whole lot of ladies and women as a result of these are the descriptors which are given to us, or imposed on us, relying on the way you need to see it.
Jillian Jacqueline: I feel it’s so extremely unsettling too whenever you begin to take a look at what all these labels make you’re feeling and the way you’re supposed to maneuver into these labels. Girls are born with disgrace of their veins. The track “Fantasy Woman” touches on a whole lot of these themes. I can admit that after I obtained married a lot of the way in which I operated in my relationship was like somewhat child. It wasn’t like a lady who was certain of herself and certain of what she deserved. It was very a lot, ‘do you want me? Do you continue to like me now? Am I okay now?’
I used to be like working out of those very stunted emotional capacities and also you realise like, okay, I’m an grownup now and if that is going to be a wholesome, long-term relationship, I must personal my very own flaws, my very own errors. I must cease working.
It’s such an interior wiring difficulty, after which there’s additionally very dangerous companions who benefit from that insecurity, which is what the track “Extra” is about. “Extra” is, was, actually the ultimate nail within the coffin of closure for me with this very, very damaging relationship that I needed to work years to actually uncover the darkness of it of why this particular person made me really feel like I used to be so disposable, so unworthy of their love.
Sound smart, the file is actually textured. It feels very ethereal and dreamy and nostalgic, but additionally darkish and scary at occasions. For some motive, after I was listening to the title monitor, “MotherDaughterSisterWife,” it felt like I used to be listening to it underwater. Not that your music has ever been like one sort of style, however the entire file feels such as you had been pushing the style.
Jillian Jacqueline: Wow. I really like that you just felt that. This file is what I’ve desired and heard in my head musically for myself eternally. This file is actually like the within of my head, into music kind. My producer Ian Walsh and my husband, Bryan Brown, helped me make my imaginative and prescient a actuality. They had been really like… we had been in a submarine. I really like the underwater scene. We had been all in a submarine, and we had been driving it collectively, however I used to be the one determining the place we had been going to go.
I felt very free to try this as a result of my label Virgin is the one distribution. They’re not concerned in something inventive. I don’t also have a supervisor proper now. I don’t have anyone telling me what the targets are to hit or what we’re making an attempt to do. I didn’t even ask for suggestions. Even my greatest pals had been asking if they might hear the brand new music, and I mentioned no. As a result of I simply didn’t need any voices in my head. I solely needed to personal.
And so every thing, “MotherDaughterSisterWife,” “Cherry Blossom,” these had been the songs that after I sat down with my guitar and everyone, had gone away and I felt very alone and I felt like, ‘okay, I would by no means make one other file.’ I’d simply sit on this room in my home and I’d simply be like, ‘what’s popping out? What do I hear that I need to say?’
I hadn’t written alone in years, and I completed “Fantasy Woman” on my own and I used to be like, ‘oh, there I’m. Okay, this seems like me.’ I lastly discovered the sound that I’ve at all times been listening to in my head and couldn’t fairly determine learn how to make it work. This has been a very long time coming for me due to every thing I really like musically that I’ve listened to my entire life and all of the information that actually impressed me whereas I used to be making this file, I simply really feel prefer it all culminated into what this file appears like.
I really feel like with this file, there is a particular story line all through. If you get to the final monitor, “Gravity” which lyrically I feel could be very, very cool and sonically like a dirge, after which it sort of turns off with the strings. It is like a fast swap and you then return round to trace one, I feel that is actually cool.
Jillian Jacqueline: Thanks a lot. I really like that you just seen that. We haven’t even actually talked about this, however my voice, I really feel like my voice modified with having a child and so a lot of my artist pals which have had kids, we’ve all talked about this. My voice is deeper and my breath management is completely different and a whole lot of the melodies that I used to be writing after I had my son, I used to be exploring with my head voice extra and simply doing softer issues as a result of I may inform my physique needed to sort of try this extra. My voice didn’t need to push as a lot and pressure notes.
I spoke to Christina Perri, I feel you each have an analogous greater vocal vary, and she or he mentioned till she made her final file, nobody had ever produced or engineered her voice proper till she labored with a lady producer and engineer.
Jillian Jacqueline: Oh wow. How wonderful is that? Any individual having the instinct to know learn how to make you’re feeling protected in that and draw you out in that. I feel that’s wonderful. I’ve really by no means labored with a feminine vocal producer or producer in any respect, however I’ve to say the 2 males that I did work with on this file are delicate souls and really inventive.
How has changing into a mom affected your artwork?
Jillian Jacqueline: It’s actually fascinating how motherhood tells its personal story by the way in which that you’ll be able to talk after the actual fact. You’re by no means the identical. I used to be simply speaking about this with the artist and songwriter Luci Silvas as we placed on the MOTHER present, and she or he’s actually struggled after having her twins together with her vocal chords. There’s little or no medical understanding of how carrying a baby impacts your vocal chords. Via my very own analysis, I’ve discovered that your vocal chords are straight tied to your pelvic flooring, so when you might have a child, all of that modifications.
I need to begin advocating for this too, as a result of with the MOTHER present, we’re making an attempt to make clear the dearth of sources for artists who’re moms. But additionally, when your livelihood will get straight affected and also you don’t know the place to show to get solutions, that may be actually scary and debilitating. Your financial price is tied as much as your voice, actually.
Then there’s additionally how your price is seen by the trade. You begin to really feel the trade slowly backing away from you since you’re not a workhorse anymore and you’ll’t get on the market and leap within the van and play a present six hours away for 500 bucks. I need to discover methods for all of us to nonetheless be capable to present up in no matter capability that we’ve got to share our music and make our artwork.
As a result of that’s part of us that may die. That makes me so indignant. I’ve had so many younger artists who’ve reached out to me which are newly pregnant or simply had their child, and so they’re terrified they could lose all of it.
How do you’re taking a really distinctive expertise, that can also be very common however make it particular to you and your listener, with out watering it down or dropping the track’s essence to wanting it carry out properly for radio or streaming?
Jillian Jacqueline: For those who cease writing songs only for that feeling of expression, you’ll lose your instinct as a author of what really strikes you. I simply misplaced my voice for a very long time in that worry. I’d sit down to jot down songs and all I may take into consideration was, ‘are they going to love that? Is that going to imply one thing to them?’ It was identical to I misplaced the plot on why I even began writing songs, so “Stroke of Genius” was like my return to that instinct, the author’s voice within me.
A pal of mine who’s one other artist, she mentioned a number of months in the past once we had been speaking and she or he mentioned, “, we’ve got to recollect artists are like blue-collar employees. We’re seeing the 1% which are on the award reveals, however most of us, traditionally, the artists taking part in the present on the bar or on the venue, they’re not within the tour bus. They had been doing blue- collar work.” You get into this since you felt compelled to show your experiences into music and write lyrics.
I feel that when you’ll be able to see how a lot a track is streamed or what number of listeners folks have, it creates a body of reference entering into that actually negatively impacts the artists themselves as a result of I don’t must understand how many individuals have listened to the track earlier than I hear it. I simply need to hear the track.
I used to be pondering, given the political backdrop of what is going on on in your nation, I really feel prefer it’s such a strong factor that you just’re all standing there and asking why there isn’t assist for moms who make music? Why is not there the assist to allow them to provide artwork?
Jillian Jacqueline: Honestly, one of many largest issues that everyone knows is, intercourse sells, proper? Like, particularly for feminine artists, particularly in nation music, there’s nonetheless this undercurrent of in case you are not bodily interesting to a person or to anybody, in the event you’re not sexually by-product not directly, you’re not in all probability going to get on these larger phases and get the radio play. When you might have a child and grow to be a mother, it’s the most unsexy factor you possibly can presumably do, based on the trade. I do suppose there’s an enormous hole within the system the place that model of a lady will get to exist. Being a mom is a really badass, highly effective factor to be.
You mentioned there’s 4 extra songs coming in some unspecified time in the future, probably on a deluxe model of the file, are you able to go into element about that but?
Jillian Jacqueline: Not but! I’ll share extra quickly…
What do you hope listeners, significantly ladies and women, take away from this album?
Jillian Jacqueline: Oh, properly… one of many issues I’ve begun to know is that the older I get, the extra I’m not afraid to confess what I don’t know. I feel knowledge comes from staying curious… so I hope that anybody that listens to this, particularly ladies and women, will discover solace in the truth that my very own progress isn’t linear…it’s messy, fragmented, and doesn’t at all times seem like progress.
These songs really feel like I lastly let the little lady in me throw paint on the wall in no matter manner she needed. So there’s a freedom in letting go of who you’ve been advised you’re, and embracing who you actually need to be.
The roles we step into as ladies include a whole lot of preconceived notions, social expectations, pressures, and poisonous messages. We’ve got to search out our personal definitions of what these roles imply and the way we are able to really thrive in these areas. That’s what a whole lot of my journey with motherhood and artistry has helped me to outline, and this file displays a whole lot of the nuances of these private experiences.
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