It seems we’re starting to come out of darker times, it’s been overdue as has new music. In this whole process RCA studios in Nashville has become my new home, where magic just keeps pouring out and into the music. I’m holding on to the album for a few months longer but until then I have this EP for you, a collection of my favourite songs I performed live at RCA studio A earlier in the year.
The singer-songwriter debuted her live recording of “The Bends” track at RCA Studios in Nashville to mark the release of her new live EP, “RCA Studio A Sessions”.
Jade Bird shared her hauntingly beautiful cover of Radiohead’s Black Star this week.
I wanted to release the video of us playing Black Star as I know a lot of you may have seen me playing it in your venue, in your city, and I appreciate you always took a minute to be silent and listen. The lyrics are so beautiful in this song.
Cover of Radiohead’s “Black Star” performed by Jade Bird at RCA Studio A, Nashville.
UK singer/songwriter Jade Bird is back with a warm, tender new song made with the great producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, etc). “I’ve loved the word/concept for a really long time. All of a sudden, it seemed to be the perfect metaphor for the figures who had left my life in the past,” Jade said of “Houdini.” “I had no control or choice on their appearances and disappearances – sort of like the man himself.”
Taken from her forthcoming second album, which is due to arrive next year, the singer-songwriter’s new track was produced by Dave Cobb and follows on from the recently released ‘Headstart’.
Using famous magician and illusionist Harry Houdini’s name as a metaphor, Bird recounts the disappearance of someone from her life, revealing that she always knew they would leave without having a reason.
The charismatic English singer-songwriter Jade Bird found her inspirations in the classic acoustic country rock music of the past (Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen). She transformed the style to the present through her youth (she’s only 21) and creativity. She’s also following in their footsteps by touring heavily and connecting with audiences through live performances. The ever-smiling artist conveys intelligence and heart. Sometimes that grin is a hidden sneer. In some songs, romance is just a knife.
Bird also puts the rock back in roots rock. She has a voice that sounds young and innocent, with an unsteady bottom that suggests experience and pain. Songs such as “Uh Huh” and “Love Has All Been Done Before” reveal her strength while others like “17” show the power in exposing one’s vulnerability as a singer. Jade Bird’s voice may be her greatest asset. However, this is not all she’s got. Bird also writes literate and dramatic material and plays her guitar and piano with energy and bravado. These elements combine to make her an outstanding new talent.
In April, Jade Bird released her self-titled debut album. This album is the perfect example of Jade Bird’s astonishing talent and unique perspective. She proves that stripped down can be powerful, and genre is not the law. Pair it with a shot of whiskey and an ex-lover on any night of the week.
Jade Bird is fast becoming one of the most exciting new British voices. With her debut release the ‘Somewhere American’ EP and 2018’s follow-up breakthrough single ‘Lottery’, Jade has won the hearts of people across the globe. She has already preformed on ‘Later with Jools Holland’, ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ and ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’
Jade Bird. Already a recipient of the Reeperbahn Festival Anchor Award, this London-based songwriter took SXSW by storm, charming all who saw her with her clear voice and fetching songs. When she was barely a teenager, Jade learned to play guitar and started writing her own lyrics, eventually settling into an intense song-a-day pace. Some were good, others better left forgotten, but the process sharpened her chops and shaped her approach to songwriting. Her debut EP, Something American, is out now.
Jade Bird’s debut EP Something American – was originally released in 2017 gets a limited physical release. Across the 5 tracks, her voice has arrived like a total breath of fresh air in the current musical landscape – putting her own positive, refreshing spin on a richly complex personal and musical heritage.
Jade Bird performs Lottery on Later… with Jools Holland on BBC Two
Within the EP, Jade manages to twist huge themes including disillusionment, divorce, cheating and sorrow into the realities of an independent-minded modern British teenager. Produced by Simone Felice (The Lumineers, Bat For Lashes etc), the EP was recorded at Clubhouse Studio in Rhinebeck, NY and features Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley, St Vincent) on drums, Will Rees (Mystery Jets) on guitar and Sara Lee (B-52’s) on bass.
“I’m just an ordinary 20-year-old girl,” Jade Bird says with a shrug. “There’s nothing you can’t connect with about that.”
A quickly-growing audience seems to agree. The English singer-songwriter’s debut EP, Something American, arrived last July on Glassnote Records, the indie label that launched Mumford & Sons, Phoenix and Chvrches in the U.S. Her previous single “Lottery,” a heartfelt romantic plea (“You used to tell me that love is a lottery…Are you still betting on me?”), It hit Number 1 on Billboard‘s Alternative Songs chart in April, and its video has earned half a million views on YouTube. This summer, Jade Bird is in the midst of a long festival run, which will lead her into a headlining tour in the States.
Her story-driven songs, which veer between Americana, punk and soulful indie pop. Country fans have begun to gravitate to Bird thanks to her evocatively imagined narratives about broken relationships, fledgling love and marriages that end before they can begin. She says she’s happy to be simply alternative or maybe whatever Alanis Morissette was called.”
Jade Bird, who now spends her time in south London when not on tour, was born in Hexham, a small town in the far north of England, and jumped around the U.K. throughout her early childhood as an army brat. Her parents’ divorce sent the singer to live with her mom and grandma in South Wales as a teen. She’d taken piano lessons earlier on from a Russian teacher (“She taught me discipline,” Bird quips), but it wasn’t until she taught herself to play guitar at age 13 plucking her grandma’s old acoustic until she found the right sounds, inspired by Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – that she found the right outlet for her feelings. “Songwriting really kicked in with the guitar,” she says. “I was going through a lot as a kid. There had been a lot of transitions in my family. So it just became a total therapy, like most artists. I think that’s why I did so much. I used to write so many songs.”
Bird remains a prolific songwriter, constantly jotting ideas down on her phone and in a Moleskine notebook. Every few months, she heads into a London studio with an engineer to lay down demos of everything she’s got ready. Most sessions yield 13 to 15 new tracks, all in a visceral, imperfect form. “I kinda just bang through ’em,” she says. “I’m not really precious about it. It’s just me and my guitar. How much perfection do you really need?”
Bird recorded Something American with producer Simone Felice, formerly of the Felice Brothers, in upstate New York. The five-song EP is full of heartbreak songs – see elsewhere “Cathedral,” an acoustic ballad about broken vows – and echoes of her hero, Patti Smith (particularly on the raw, piano-led number “What Am I Here For”). Her newer songs, including “Lottery,” “Furious” and “Uh Huh,” unfurl in notably varied ways, with tones that range from languid crooning to snarling punk.
As Bird finishes up her full-length debut, expected out in 2019, she wants to explore all facets of her personality. “No artist is one-dimensional,” she says. “I get the sense that if I push myself now and if I create a million different-sounding songs – I just feel that’s going to be such a set-up for my ability in the future.”
Instead of looking to professional session musicians or label executives for guidance, Bird tests her new music on her fans, either at live performances or in snippets on Instagram (which is how “Furious” came to be). “I’m hoping to write the album 100 percent by myself,” she says. “Which, nowadays, is quite a rare thing. The artists I love, like Elliott Smith, they wrote their own songs, and the imperfections make a perfect album in the end. But you only get imperfections by people who don’t point out your imperfections and go, ‘Maybe we should rewrite that.’”
Adds Bird, “I feel pretty perfect. I feel pretty in it, pretty ready to stay in it and keep working like bloody hell and releasing new music.” She grins. “Yeah, I feel good right now. And that’s not to be taken for granted.”
Something American is the debut of an impossibly confident artist and a distinctive new voice. With the powerful impact of a full album and the fine nuance of a novel, these five songs reveal a songwriter who emphasizes melodic craft and emotional subtlety, a singer willing to push her instrument as far as it will go, a personality defined by its contradictions: sharp-witted yet vulnerable, dead-serious yet often drop-dead funny, young but incredibly wise.
The London-based singer-songwriter has been working on Something American for most of her life. When her parents divorced, she settled in South Wales with her mother and grandmother, but she had already absorbed so much of the world, transforming her experiences into lyrics and songs. Barely a teenager, she learned to play guitar and started writing her own lyrics, slowly at first but gradually with more determination, eventually settling into an intense song-a-day pace. Some were good, others better left forgotten, but the process sharpened her chops and shaped her approach to songwriting.
To make her first record, Bird flew across the Atlantic to work with Simone Felice of the Felice Brothers, an admirer of her songwriting
Watch Jade Bird charm SXSW attendees at the PledgeHouse day stage.
British Singer-songwriter Jade Bird follows up her ‘Something American’ EP with new music, including the infectious new song “Lottery.”
Songs performed Cathedral, Uh huh, Anniversary, What am I Here For, Lottery
Jade Bird could have you fooled with her accent. Her Southern drawl translates well into her crystalline power ballad “Something American.” She’s so convincing she could be mistaken for a Southerner. It’s also a testament to how well she blends into the Americana folk scene despite being a UK native.
Jade Bird is 20 years old but her passion for music has been embedded in her since she began playing piano at seven years old. Her mom gave birth to her at 20 as well, and Jade spent her formative years moving from place to place as an army child. While she doesn’t go into too much detail, she says she’s been in a lot of serious situations where she’s found comfort in the catharsis of music. “It’s very embedded in my experience,” she says. At 12, her parents divorced and she moved to Wales. Her mom found romance with a new partner who played guitar. “There was something quite magical about it,” she says of the instrument. She became immersed in songs her mom’s partner would play by Mazzy Star, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Bob Dylan and eventually started writing songs herself. It became her gateway to Americana and country music.
Her education began at 14 with the now defunct Civil Wars. “I remember seeing them, and I lost my mind,” she exclaims. Their breakup still has an effect on her. “It really upsets me,” she says. But it was Chris Stapleton’s “You Should Probably Leave” that made her contemplate classic country songwriting, which led her to LorettaLynn and Dolly Parton. She was attracted to their wry humor, but also how they overcame hardship, she says while citingCoal Miner’s Daughter. “I think I’ve always been inspired by country music stories, because these women have to find a way to work despite [country music] being conservative and white male-oriented,” she explains. “I’ve been hugely inspired by their struggles and how they weren’t given anything and it didn’t come easy.”
Despite her affinity for Americana and country music—something she showed off on her 2017 EP Something American—she’s found herself with some pop tendencies. She’s been compared to everyone from Stevie Nicks to Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick and Alanis Morissette. Needless to say it’s hard to pin Bird down. In January she released “Lottery,” which had pop undertones because of the albums that have influenced her, the ones she’s nostalgic for. “Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill is the one I always go back to,” she says fondly. But Bird doesn’t want to be boxed in genre labels. She wants to write piano ballads as much as she does Americana tracks and pop songs. “I always respected country music for its narrative and how it’s so solid, you can get the picture in your mind,” she explains. “I feel like song structure is a real ode to that emotion.” For Bird, that emotion stemmed from the breakdown of relationships in her life. Instead of falling out of love with her boyfriend, it was witnessing her parents and both sides of her grandparents split. Because it’s so intricately detailed with her experiences, her songwriting isn’t generic. “There’s not a line I think you can miss,” she says.
The emotional maturity found in her songwriting comes from having strong women in her life, like her mom who she refers to as her “best mate.” “We’re only 20 years apart, so I’ve always been treated like an adult in my life up until now,” she says. When Bird was very young and her dad was away in the army, her mom worked night shifts and babysat her during the day. Bird and her mom had to move them twice—something she credits her mom for doing all by herself. Her grandma also had a profound influence on her when Bird when she moved in with her in Wales—she witnessed her grandma move forward after her grandfather left her. It’s the women closest to her like her mom and grandma that have impacted the types of narratives she wants in her music. “I don’t really get inspired by landscapes that much, it’s all people,” she says of her inspiration. She aims to emulate and admire the women she grew up with in her craft. “I’ve been surrounded by incredibly strong women: incredibly, unapologetically strong women, and I guess that for me has just been the biggest inspiration,” she says. “It’s just been a total pleasure to grow up with my mom.”
Jade is hoping to get her debut album out this year or in early 2019. If all goes well she says, maybe she’d get Jack White to produce her next record.
The London-based singer-songwriter has been working on Something American for most of her life. When her parents divorced, she settled in South Wales with her mother and grandmother, but she had already absorbed so much of the world, transforming her experiences into lyrics and songs. Barely a teenager, she learned to play guitar and started writing her own lyrics, slowly at first but gradually with more determination, eventually settling into an intense song-a-day pace. Some were good, others better left forgotten, but the process sharpened her chops and shaped her approach to songwriting.
To make her first record, Bird flew across the Atlantic to work with Simone Felice of the Felice Brothers, an admirer of her songwriting and her unique sound. At his studio in the Catskills, just outside Woodstock, New York, the pair corralled an expert crew that included producer/engineer David Baron (Bat for Lashes, Peter Murphy), drummer Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright), and Americana legend Larry Campbell (Tom Petty, Bob Dylan).
The Fat Angel Sings 