Jocelyn Alice Hits The Jackpot After Her 'Popstars' Past

I’m on the phone with Jocelyn Alice and the only thing I can think is how different her speaking voice is to her singing voice. Her speaking voice is exactly what you’d expect from a bubbly, friendly 20-something year old, but when she sings she has a voice that’s anything but ordinary. It’s the kind of voice that singers want to have and producers want to work with, one of those that makes you stop and take notice. It’s a voice that seems to have the ability to be everything at the same time—powerful yet vulnerable, delicate yet gritty, raspy yet crystal clear, and soulful yet current. It’s a flexibility that Jocelyn herself is aware of, and has a lot of fun with: “I love being able to stretch my voice into different characters, and depending on the song be able to play someone different.”

Even her choice of words shows how deeply the art of performing is engrained into her, a quality that a choir teacher in elementary school picked up on and pushed a young Jocelyn to explore her potential: “Once I hit the stage, I knew it was where I was supposed to be.” Her journey took her all the way to the small screen as a 17-year old competing on a reality TV series, Popstars, right at the height of the early-00s reality talent show surge. While she finished in the dreaded second place, the show did offer Jocelyn a glimpse inside the world of pre-packaged pop that she knew she didn’t want any long-term part of: “On one side it allowed me into the industry in a real, tangible way. I learned a lot about booking shows and preparing sets and picking songs and writing my own material. But it was definitely limiting because you were only given a few songs to choose from and they weren’t the songs I would have ever chose. Something I really took from that experience was that I don’t want to make music with anyone else in charge except me. With those types of bigger platforms comes a lot of opinions, and that’s just not going to work for me.”

After a break from singing following the competition—“It was quite a bit for a 17-year old to be doing it as much as I was”—Jocelyn has continued to make music on her own terms, both as a solo act and part of the duo Jocelyn & Lisa, racking up over 500 live shows to her credit and some impressive achievements in the process. After spending time in Los Angeles networking and collaborating with other writers and musicians, she eventually landed a publishing deal with Secret Road Music Services, who are best known for managing Ingrid Michaelson. Her music has been featured in such TV shows as One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars and in the Lifetime movie Dear Santa. Just last year she recorded a cover of the 60s song “Reach Out of the Darkness” that was featured in a Target commercial and also released on iTunes. The track would eventually sell over 50,000 copies and hit #2 on the U.S. charts, giving Jocelyn her first commercial hit. It’s almost unheard of in today’s musical landscape, where people barely buy music, and when they do it’s not typically sought out from television or movies. It earned her the attention of management and record companies from around the globe and speaks to the potential appeal of her voice to a mass audience. She just dropped her latest single “Jackpot,” and as she prepares to release her debut album this spring, it feels like Jocelyn Alice is one the verge of something good.

Noisey: When did you start doing music full time?
Jocelyn Alice: About seven months ago I went full time. It’s pretty scary. Since going full time, I feel like I’ve been doing so much of the business stuff that the music has become even more of a treat. It’s an escape; it’s a safe and fun place. And it really is fun! But I’m definitely looking forward to hiring someone. There’s no right way to do it but I don’t want to be one of those artists that’s doing everything themselves. I want people around me.

Do you ever have any hesitancy about signing with a label, that it might limit you artistically at all?
I’m talking to a few labels right now. There are some big ones and there are some small ones. For me, I’m pretty open to however things are going to go. It’s more about meeting people and getting their vibe; I know right away if I’m going to want to work with someone or not.

Did you know right away with Lisa Jacobs, [one half of Jocelyn & Lisa]?
I did but it took her forever! But I love that about her; she’s very cautious. It was a year of us playing over 100 shows together before we even called ourselves a band. But the decision to be a band comes with great responsibility to each other, and that was something we took seriously.

How is being in a band different to your solo work?
It’s utterly different in almost every way, and I feel like I’m so lucky to have both sides. Lisa and I are a duo; we do everything ourselves and everything together. It’s nice to be with someone who I respect on both a musical and human level. I’m constantly learning from her, and also pushing her boundaries with songwriting and the things she thinks she can or can’t do on stage. And then on the flipside, Lisa is a huge reason I started exploring the solo side of things.

What can you tell us about your new album? What kind of music is it?
It’s soul, pop and hip-hop. It’s difficult to put a genre on it because I’m working with so many different producers so all the songs kind of stand on their own. There’s a classic R&B song, some more minimalist pop stuff. People ask me, “What’s your style?” and I usually just say it depends on the day, and the song. It goes back to that whole idea about playing a character with my voice.

Who are some of the producers you are working with and how did those collaborations come about?
Beach Season has a song on my album. He’s so amazing; I’m just so excited for him. I’m working with a guy in New York who I’ve never met before but we’ve written a bunch of songs together. I kind of just wanted the right beats and the right songs, so it didn’t matter where they were coming from. That's the cool thing about being solo—I can do anything I want. But I like that my record has that organic, personal feel. It’s got a really cool feeling—it feels like home.

What’s the worst part about your job?
Listening to my own music is torture. I listen to it and I think, “Who likes this?!” I’ve never been happy with anything I’ve ever put out. There are moments when I’ve thought something sounded good, but as a whole I am famously hard on myself. But when you do it for other people, it doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not making music to throw it in my CD player and jam out to myself.

Do you have any specific musical goals in mind for the future?
I would like to keep growing my audience. Be on the radio. Be working more in charity and working with youth. Eventually I would love to write for other artists. It’s a dying world because most artists write their own music now, which is amazing, but I write so many songs that they are kind of weighing on me. Sometimes I’ve needed to write five, 10 or 15 songs to get where I needed to get to. But it would be awesome to find a way to filter those through an artist who isn’t me.

Are there any albums out there that you drew inspiration from in making your own?
I don’t listen to full-length records; I just go hard on singles. I’m all about the song. I don’t really care what genre it’s in. Usually I’ll just log on to Billboard and study the top 10. I sometimes forget I can listen to music for any other reason than to make my own better. And in terms of listening to music for fun, I don’t really do that because I’m so busy making my own music that when I’m not, I just want quiet.

So you’re actually inspired by pop music? That’s surprising, because I feel like a lot of artists turn their nose up at pop music.
No way. In my opinion you can fake everything—being famous, having a following, even having a good voice. But you can’t fake a good song, and when millions of people feel some type of way about a song it’s the most powerful thing you can possibly be a part of! It’s like when I sing Lorde’s “Royals” at my live shows. I don’t really understand exactly what it is about that song, and trust me I’ve studied that song for hours, but when I stand in front of a crowd and sing it, it’s like magic. When you can actually make a crowd of people stop what they are doing when they hear a song—that’s the whole reason I do this.

So you listen to a lot of Lorde?
Oh yeah. She is such a good writer. I’m listening to a lot of Taylor Swift. I’m so stoked that she went so pop. And it’s funny because you can say what you want about her, but she has sold hundreds of millions of singles and for her to go pop from country must have been a huge risk. I also love the collaborations with big DJs who team up with vocalists, like Calvin Harris and what not. That’s the world I would like to live in.

I honestly did not expect you to say Taylor Swift or Lorde inspired you.
Well, actually the reason I started songwriting was because of Amy Winehouse. I was told by a lot of people and myself that I couldn’t make the music I wanted to make because I was a white girl from Canada who should just be making country music. I wanted to make dirty, grimy soul music. She stands for a lot of that; I think it’s super rare to find an artists who is that honest. And then Adele came out and was similar in that she would go places vocally where others wouldn’t. I kind of want to sit somewhere in there where I go darker than Adele and lighter than Amy.

What’s next for Jocelyn Alice?
Well I have a few shows coming up. I have a night called Hush Hush at Commonwealth in December, and after that at the Ironwood in January. And then my album will come out in April or May, I hope. My biggest goal with this record and music generally is to just bring people together. I want to allow people to see into my story and see that I’m here struggling just the same as they are. If it can help or inspire people or change people’s views on things, then I couldn’t ask for more. I feel that regardless of what we are into we should all be trying to inspire each other every day with the way we live. I’m aware that I have a voice. I’m blessed but I also work hard vocally, and I want to use it for something that seems bigger than me. When so many people connect to the same thing, what’s not amazing about that?

Josephine Cruz is a writer living is Calgary - @jayemkayem