Jo MacKenzie on the sound fiscal policies of radiance, girl
Jo MacKenzie. // Photo courtesy the artist
We’re big fans of musician Jo MacKenzie here at The Pitch.
Be it her work as part of the duo Baby and the Brain with Dia Jane or her many solo releases, she’s a musician for which we’re always excited when there’s new music on the horizon.
Her latest EP, radiance, girl, is out today, and we hopped on the phone with MacKenzie to discuss this latest collection of pop gems.
The Pitch: Love the fact that you have put out a lot of music in the last year.
Jo MacKenzie: Oh my goodness. And I just was thinking about that a few weeks ago, looking back and just being like, “Oh, that’s a lot more than usual, and I don’t know what happened, but yeah, that did happen.
In addition to putting out your own music, you are one-half of Baby and the Brain. Because this comes after BrainBaby, how did working with a partner to create music affect how you created music on your own?
Until I met Dia, I mostly created everything on my own in my bedroom and all that. The two EPS after BrainBaby, which were Tourists and then this upcoming one, radiance, girl, I still did a lot of the stuff myself, but there are definitely more collaborators in it–not Dia specifically, but I think it just increased my appreciation and interest in having other collaborators and also just my ability to find those people.
Before, I was a little bit more reticent and afraid to include others or if people even wanted to work with me. Having that experience with Baby and the Brain helps me reach out to more people and future projects like the ones we’re talking about now.
radiance, girl is a combination of exuberance and a little bit of sadness. We hate to ask people, “Are these songs about a real thing?” but what is the inspiration behind these five songs?
It’s kind of weird because some of the songs, I wrote a year ago and then some of them, I wrote a few months ago. It’s funny, because like the ones I wrote a year ago honestly applied in my life just as much as the ones that I wrote recently. Some of the songs draw on real-life experiences, but they also about emotion, even though some of the songs are drawn from real experiences.
The main thing from when I’m writing songs is that the emotions come from real experiences and the stories don’t necessarily have to be true. For example, I say “cigarette” a lot in my songs and I don’t smoke, but it raises many things and paints such a good picture. So there’s that, but there’s real emotion around the way that we fit the story and the pictures you paint. Those emotions are real, even though maybe the story isn’t.
What has really been the catalyst for all of these songs as of late? Is there anything you can point to as what brought all these songs out?
To be fair, I always feel like it’s kind of like when there’s a new president and the president before made all these economic decisions, but the effects of them don’t show until the next president comes on because it takes such a long time for those economic policies to affect the stock market or interest rates or whatever.
I feel like it’s similar for a songwriter or a writer or producer, because it takes such a long time to finish a project that you don’t see those outputs until like a year later or years later. Almost every song on Tourist I wrote in the summer of 2021, which is the same time I was writing all the Baby and the Brain songs. Two of the songs on radiance, girl were written a year ago in March. The other three songs, though, were written in the past few months, which is actually very unprecedented for me because I had collaborators to help me. I could point to that as one of the reasons I’ve been able to be more productive–just the presence of more people to help that creative process along.
Obviously, I have immense gratitude for those people but also I feel like I’ve been saving it up for a long time, and those economic changes from those economic policies I put in a year ago are now finally being given life.
Jo MacKenzie’s radiance, girl is out now.
