The songs of local Phoenix singer-songwriter Taylor Jayne are provocations.
They provoke realizations about how pop culture affects everyone, and per Jayne’s suggestion, should be digested and analyzed through everyone’s own perspective.
Jayne says that there’s music out there that showcases what’s cool and what’s not:
“It gives us an idea of who we’re supposed to be,” Jayne says. “People internalize it whether they mean to or not.”
With “Breaking My Mind,” Jayne says she was going through many emotions and was feeling torn at the time she wrote it during high school.
Jayne was breaking her mind into different pieces about the media, as her song suggests.
Specifically, it is about how what the media puts into peoples’ minds can really affect them, such as with reality television, which she mentions in the song.
Having released her first EP “A Day After Rain” this year, Jayne says she was inspired by Jack Johnson.
“It was really happy. It was really hearted,” Jayne says. “It kind of looks internally, looking at the perspectives we have of life, like ‘Paper Window’ – everyone views the world through their own worlds. It’s one world, but it’s almost 1000 worlds. Everyone creates their own world.”
Jayne’s vocals are a mix of a Colbie Caillat and Ingrid Michaelson while her harmony and tune have a magnetic sound that contains a Bob Marley quality to it.
Although she’s performed to Chicago and Phoenix crowds, pink-haired Jayne is quite down to earth. She’s ready to have conversations with her fans about her music and listen in to their interpretations of her songs.
But as down to earth as Jayne is, she says it’s still intimidating trying to make it as an artist.
“It’s very unlikely anything will happen if you don’t commit yourself," she says. "The challenge is really knowing who you are as an artist, how you want to represent yourself. People will take you and try to transform you into something else and fit you into a box.”
Jayne advises other musicians in the music industry that it’s a matter of staying true to oneself in order to be successful in this industry.
“It’s difficult, but you must stay strong,” Jayne says.
Making music and writing songs comes as natural to Jayne as breathing. She says she doesn’t have a choice when it comes to producing. It’s what she does, as noted by her recent move from full-time student at Columbia College Chicago and part-time musician to full-time musician.
“I kept making music as a half thing: busy with school or work,” Jayne says. “I went through a weird transition. In high school, being a musician was a future thing.”
But in the end, Jayne says music is what she does for herself; as in high school, music was her way out – her space.
“It’s a lot of dedication and self-motivation,” Jayne says. “Once I started clarifying myself as a musician, I was like, ‘Oh, this [is] serious.’”
When committing herself full-time to music with her first management company, BravoArtist, Jayne says she had to get over the hill of being stuck because she now had to write. Writing songs isn't just a part of her life anymore: it's now her career.
“I just realized how it important it was, so I had to do it,” Jayne says.
Find Taylor Jayne on Facebook, Spotify, Rdio, Twitter, Youtube and Reverbnation.
For more on Taylor Jayne, check out her latest music video where she covers Adele's "Someone Like You," and for a free download of that cover, click here.
Reach the writer at nagonza1@asu.edu or @NoemiPossible
