Jess Day has released a punchy and anthemic new single, Gravity that is noticeably different to her previous tracks.
Although the tune is still just as impossibly catchy (phew!), Jess Day’s Gravity is not your usual tumultuous breakup song.
Instead, it is about finally feeling like you can fall in love with someone because you have the right person to hold your hand through it all.
To call Gravity ‘sweet’ would be an understatement but somehow, Jess has managed to get into all those gooey feelings without losing a single ounce of her cool.
HAPPY: Hey, Jess, how are you?
JESS: Good, how are you going, Chloe?
HAPPY: Good. I’m good, thank you. Let’s chat about this new single, Gravity.
JESS: Awesome.
HAPPY: It’s so fantastic. I’ve got it stuck in my head. I’ve had it in there for days. So, I think you’ve really perfectly captured the story arc of the lyrics in the actual production and your vocals. You can feel this hesitance in the verse… this hesitance about relationships and starting something new, but it’s just quickly destroyed by this almost anthem-like feeling in the chorus and saying, ‘no, it’s all good when you’re with the right person’. I don’t want to sound hacky, because I feel like it’s a silly question, but I do want to know do you write your lyrics or your music first?
JESS: I actually wrote the guitar riff first. That came first, and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s giving me… it’s very 1975 esque. And then it was kind of giving me an 80s vibe. And I think that 80s vibe kind of made me feel a bit like… not to compare myself to Springsteen or anything, but like I wanted to write, like almost like a corny 80s song that I tried not to make corny, so I think it was the guitar riff that led to the vibe, and then it sort of went from there. Usually, I get the strongest ideas with my guitar because that’s my main instrument. And then if it’s an emotive guitar piece, then everything else comes along pretty easy. But the lyrics came before the melody.
HAPPY: OK, interesting. You get vibing and you’re like, ‘This is what it’s about.’ Very cool. And you said yourself that Gravity is about needing to find the right person to get rid of that fear in a relationship. Is… I don’t want to pry, but is there anything going on in your life that’s made you feel all of those nice feelings? Or was it just…
JESS: It was the first time I’d been in a healthy… not the first time, but the first functional time I’d been in a healthy relationship. Because the first time I was in one, I actually sort of inadvertently burnt it to the ground because I was uncomfortable.
HAPPY: Haha, oh yeah, that happens.
JESS: I like the chaos. And then I was like, ‘I’m not doing that again. I’m gonna really do some soul searching’ because clearly, I’m really into this… like my nervous system is like used to this. So normal, healthy love feels boring and it feels like there’s no spark. But my psychologist, she was like, ‘OK, if you’ve got a bad attachment problem and you go for toxic people, I think you need to look at love as just finding someone you like and then have similar interests with. And if you just give it enough time, it should just flower into something really nice.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh OK, boring. But alright.’ And then I did that, and then I tried to burn it to the ground again.
And the guy I’m with now, who I’m living with now, years later, he was like, ‘I will wait until you sort your shit out. I will just be here to support you. I don’t think you should throw the baby out with the bathwater and just give it a bit more time.’ Yeah, and then I did, and it was great. And it really was sort of like someone just like dragging you through the mud and you’re just like, ‘Argggghhhh’ and then I got to the other side and I was like, ‘Oh, wait, this is actually so nice.’ And then I got those like big, anthemic feelings of like love and stuff once the fear was gone and my nervous system was like, ‘Oh no, this is normal. This is cool. We like this.’ So it’s very much about that person.
HAPPY: Yeah, that’s so nice. That’s really cool to hear. There’s a line in the song that’s sticking out to me. It’s like, ‘Can you see the light in me?’ And I see that. That’s very cool. It’s such a nice feeling when you see someone falling in love or just being happy in love and like you said, healthily. They are glowing, right? It’s so cool.
JESS: Yeah, it was the first happy song I’d written and I actually wasn’t going to wasn’t going to show management or anything because I was like, ‘Oh, this is so pop. It’s so, so sickly sweet.’ And even that felt really weird to me. Yeah, it was just I wasn’t used to it and I didn’t want to show anyone because I didn’t want to be cringe, but then I was like, ‘This is a really good pop song, just in its core’ and pop sometimes is cringe, and that’s why it’s great. And now I quite like it. But at the time I was like, ‘Oh, is it on the nose? Is it a bit too sickly? I don’t know.’
HAPPY: Well, I think you nailed it because it doesn’t… it’s beautiful. It’s nice. It’s a different kind of vulnerability to be like, ‘Oh, I’m actually happy.’ Cool. Did you show your partner when you first wrote it, like before you were planning on releasing it?
JESS: No.
HAPPY: Haha yeah. I mean, that would be more difficult, I imagine. Just like, ‘sit down, babe, I’ve got a song for you.’ OK. So, many artists can make a lot of catchy songs or a few catchy songs, but that tends to be like a bit of a lull. And I find in your music, there hasn’t been that. Every song is so catchy, but it’s also got its artistic integrity, it’s so technically superb. It’s really cool and I’m not to try and blow smoke wherever or whatever, but it’s a really great skill. And I’m just wondering when you’re writing, do you have a purposeful time that you go and sit down where you’re like, ‘this is my writing time’? Or are you the kind of person that’s just like running to a pen and pad or your phone or whatever to get the idea out straight away?
JESS: Thank you, firstly. But secondly, I reckon… it’s been a bit weird over COVID, because that sort of momentum you have where things are happening that inspire you to write, that doesn’t happen naturally because everything’s just not happening. So I would usually be spurred on by my own new experiences, and then I just want to write, or maybe oftentimes I’ll write a really good song if I’ve been inspired by another artist that I haven’t heard before. Yeah, but I haven’t…I’m sure there’s good music out there, but I haven’t been able to find it, probably because I haven’t been trying as hard to find new music, but I haven’t been inspired in a while. And so that makes it hard as well, just because people aren’t releasing as much music at the moment too. But I really had to force myself to just be like, ‘OK, I’m going to give myself an amount of time to just not put pressure on myself for writing, and then I’m just going to have to start writing again. And if it’s crap, it’s crap.’ And I just recently started writing again.
But before that, it wasn’t something that I had to schedule because I just loved doing it and if I had a song I really liked, it had to get fleshed out, or I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I would write things in my notes, on my phone and stuff, mostly. But I’ve got literally… I think I’m up to 1200 voice memos in my phone. I had to almost buy a new phone because of running out of memory. So, yeah, that’s sort of the predominant thing I use is my notes in my phone and then voice memos. But yeah, I definitely had to make a conscious decision lately after COVID to sit down and be like, ‘OK, this is my writing time. If I get absolutely nothing out of this, that’s OK’ rather than having an idea and then wanting to flesh that out, that’s been kind of weird. But yeah.
HAPPY: Yeah, of course. It’s a weird time. It’s nice that you’re being kind to yourself because I think that’s important. With those voice memos as well, do you think that you’ve actually gotten through them all or you’re just…
JESS: So I tried, and it was kind of nice because some of them are from my backups from 2017 and listening to them, I’m like, ‘Oh wow, I really thought I was like on to something’, and I just can see how far I’ve come in my songwriting. So it’s kind of nice. I just keep them there in the voice memo graveyard to remind myself I have tried to go through them before and I think I got through like 200 and then I just like… Yeah.
HAPPY: That’s fair. As you said, if it’s really sticking out, you’ll flesh out the idea anyway. So, yeah, cool. So you are self-taught. Now, I want to know what it’s like when you’re collaborating with other musicians. I can imagine they’d be quite jealous.
JESS: I actually haven’t collaborated with other musicians. I’ve never really done any co-writes before. And I teach my band the parts that I write. So I don’t really ever collaborate, so I’m a little bit nervous to see how that would go. I’m not used to having… I’m not a control freak, but with my music and my creative vision, I think I find it hard to relinquish control unless I really, really admire and trust somebody. So if I was working with someone, I’d have to really, really admire them, I guess. And then I’d be like, ‘OK, I really trust you, but…’ Yeah, I haven’t co-written before and I haven’t really collabed with anyone.
HAPPY: Yeah, okay, that’s interesting. I mean, I guess you don’t have to. With the band, though, when you teach them your parts, like the parts that you wrote, for anything else, are you just happy for them to just do what they do best?
JESS: I mean, pretty much all the songs we do are fleshed out. So I’ll teach them the guitar parts and I’ve got the drum parts in the demo. So they just copy them. But they also do just… I guess, add their own spice onto it, because they’re all really good musicians themselves, so it’s kind of like, if you taught that to a bad guitarist, it would not be great, but they’re all amazing musicians. So they add things that I wouldn’t usually do. Pedal changes and effects and flourishes here and there. So they add a little bit of spice, which is good, and I trust them to do that.
HAPPY: That’s cool. That’s very cool. And that is awesome to have that amount of creative control as well. It’s great. You must feel proud because what you’re putting out, you’re like, ‘I did that!’
JESS: Yeah, it is nice.
HAPPY: Good. OK, so I want to preface this by saying that everything you’ve done since has been amazing, but when you got the spot of Triple J’s Unearthed Feature Act, did you feel any pressure after that for the next music you’re putting out? Or were you already sitting on some amazing stuff and you’re like, ‘Just wait.’
JESS: Was that after Why is She So Beautiful? I think it was. I didn’t feel pressure, I felt excited because I had already written more songs and I was just waiting to release them, so it’s like, ‘Oh, cool, I’ve got maybe even some better songs, but people… it’s not going to fall on deaf ears’, so it was really comforting, actually.
HAPPY: Awesome. That’s really cool. I also heard that you have quite a bit of a green thumb. I can see a plant behind you…
JESS: Don’t look at the plants! They’re all dying.
HAPPY: Haha oh no! What’s happened?
JESS: It’s just been hot and I haven’t been watering them. And it’s just… Yeah.
HAPPY: Do you have much of a garden?
JESS: I do. Yeah, I’ve got a beautiful backyard out there. I’ve planted sunflowers and stuff. Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of gardening. I’ve also been doing a lot of potting like, I’ve been making pottery. I’ve got a little pottery wheel…
HAPPY: Oh that’s awesome!
JESS: …and I’ve just been making pots. I mean, I should probably be writing songs, but I’m making pots.
HAPPY: It’s fine, whatever you have to do to get you through it all, right? Yeah, that’s awesome. Do you feel like you spend a lot of time in the garden? Because I don’t know… you seem like a bit of a romantic, and I think that gardens are quite a romantic place.
JESS: Yeah. Well, I love nature and being outdoors. I do spend a lot of time in the garden. Actually, I could spend probably days out there, if it wasn’t for mosquitoes. Yeah. No, I love being outside in nature. It’s one of my favourite things to do.
HAPPY: That’s so nice. You’ve just got to get yourself a tent and then you can sleep out there.
JESS: Yeah!
HAPPY: Perfect. And I guess to wrap things up, you’ve got a tour coming up super soon. That’s very exciting. I saw that you’re going to be ending the tour in your hometown. Is that right?
JESS: Yeah, I think so. I’m pretty sure. Yeah.
HAPPY: Will you spend a bit of time there or just kind of pop in and out?
JESS: So I’m sort of living in Adelaide at the moment. So I guess I would be ending it where I started, but I’m quite excited to go everywhere else because I haven’t travelled in so long. So that will be really nice. And I’ve got some friends in Sydney and stuff that I want to catch up with. I don’t know how much time I’ll have to spend there.
HAPPY: Fair enough. That’s all very exciting. I cannot wait to see you live and get the live shows back on the road. Yeah, we’ll wrap things up there, but thank you so much for talking with me.
JESS: Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Jess Day’s National Gravity Tour Dates
Friday 20, May – Sydney, The Vanguard
Saturday 21, May – Brisbane, Black Bear Lodge
Friday 27, May – Melbourne, Northcote Social Club
Saturday 28, May – Adelaide, Jive
Gravity is available on all streaming services now.
Interviewed by Chloe Maddren.
All photos: Jackson Thornbury
