Having broken away from her previous life as a trained opera singer, Jessica O’Donoghue is revelling in her newfound freedom as an experimental pop artist.
Her debut solo release Emerge was an artistic leap of faith, a trek into unknown worlds which she undertook with an artisan’s grace. We recently reached out to O’Donoghue, eager to find out more about how this twisted, tremendously powerful EP came together.
She ran us through Emerge track-by-track, letting us behind the scenes into her creative process and just how much creative force went into the crafting of her debut release.
Having shed her skin and found new artistic vision, Jessica O’Donogue knew she was laying herself bare by releasing her stunning album Emerge.
Parachute
This was my very first single release from the album. I originally started creating this song for a vocal trio that I was writing for at the time, but fell in love with the song and decided to turn it into a solo piece, sampling my vocals for the main texture throughout the song.
I wanted this to be a really dramatic pop opening to the album which showed that what was to come was not going to be your usual pop album. A lot of people say that Parachute would make an awesome Bond theme song which pretty much sums up what I was going for in this one!
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Not Alone
I usually write my songs on the piano, so I was looking for other instruments to write on to shake things up a bit. My uncle-in-law had recently found his childhood accordion from many years ago, so I decided to borrow (steal) it and have an explore.
The accordion is such an awesome instrument and this song really sprang from my explorations on this incredible piece of equipment. I wanted to put the accordion sound in a totally new landscape and really enhance the driving, gritty quality of the sound (rather than the more traditional folky sounds usually associated with the accordion).
So the rest of the song is quite an abstract, almost dirty bed of sounds that really brought to life the lyric of being pursued by one’s own shadow with no escape.
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Stay With Me
This piece is a really special, and very intimate song for me. I wrote it on the guitar (another instrument I don’t really play) but I found this meditative, almost hypnotic riff that I based this whole song on. My aim for this track was to keep it very minimalist, very raw and very vulnerable.
The lyric deals (abstractly) with an extremely traumatic episode in my life that I found very hard to recover from. I didn’t want this song to be over produced. I wanted it to be highly exposed in a way that reflected how I felt at that moment in my life when nothing but time could heal the wounds.
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Run Away
This is another hugely dramatic pop outburst on the album. I think this song in itself sums up who I am as an artist the most out of all the songs. It has the mix of dreamy melodic vocals in the verses over a catchy piano riff then explodes into an epic and anthemic chorus with really strong, dramatic vocals.
It’s really a “Fuck you world” song and is about throwing it all in and getting the hell out of there rather than being a responsible person and sorting out your issues like a mature adult!
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Lift
This is supposed to be a lighter song. I wrote it straight up after I finished meditating one day. It’s really an ode to the soul, a song to the better part of myself to say I’m sorry for not looking after you and that from now on I will strive for light and to feed that important part of me that has been neglected for so long. Onwards and upwards!
Again, musically I wanted to keep it quite simple, with the backing vocals like a female chorus of angels heralding this new perspective on life.
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Hurt You Too
This song comes as quite a shock at the end of the album. Definitely my sneaky, jazzy number that I couldn’t resist adding in at the end there! No apologies for the jolly and jumping track as it’s just another one of my many eclectic musical influences shining through here that I can’t seem to control.
This track is meant to be like one of those times when you’ve had a really mega fight with someone, you’re super pissed about it, you go home and crank the music and start dancing around the house like a crazy woman singing at the top of your voice in this weirdly ecstatic, yet highly fierce state!
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You can catch Jessica O’Donoghue live over the next few weeks, hitting a string of dates down the east coast. Head here for details.
June 29 – Oxford Art Factory Gallery, Sydney
July 2 – The Junk Bar, Brisbane
July 8 – Wesley Anne, Northcote
