Artist Spotlight: Jazzie Young

Jazzie Young: Both my parents were musical when I was a kid. My mom played violin, so she put us in violin and piano classes when I was younger. I grew up around music and artistic expression my whole life.

JY: It was when I was fourteen. My dad gave me a guitar that he had given my mom and taught me four chords. After that, I wrote my first song with those same four chords. I had always written, but it was more my way of expressing things I felt uncomfortable expressing in real life.

I also had pretty bad stage fright, so I [was unsure] if I actually wanted to pursue music. I ended up going to college for business and environmental studies. Neither was really my passion. What I did learn, though, is that you have to give presentations, you have to be in front of people. So I figured I might as well do what I actually want to do. It was like exposure therapy! Once I graduated, I moved to LA to start pursuing music, and ended up living there for almost nine years.

JY: Totally. At that time, I had written a lot of music by myself, but I had never written with other people or heard myself recorded. And hearing yourself recorded for the first time can be a really traumatic experience. It took a lot of trial and error to get to a place where I actually liked hearing it back.

Then, in 2021 and 2022, I made two EPs that were done very differently. One was at the beginning of COVID, where I had written songs and had people working on it remotely. It was kind of a hodgepodge collection of songs, and that was the first body of work I put out. Then, I worked on another EP with a producer where I had again written things by myself, but we were in the studio together. That was a completely different experience.

JY: Through email, I think. He had a studio in his backyard in LA called MooseCat. I had never worked in a studio like that with a producer before, since my other stuff had been kind of long distance in a way, so there was a lot of growth in that.

Then I did this podcast, which was the first podcast I'd ever done, and I talked about wanting to work on a full length record for the first time and looking for producers. One of the guys was like, meet this producer, so I ended up meeting him and working on my first full length project. That was the first time I really wrote with other people.

JY: I was obsessed with it. I would love to do it all the time. It depends on the person, though. You have to learn how to stand up for yourself without coming off too intensely, because then people get sensitive. You have to find the right people you actually click with. When it is good, it's the best thing! You always end up somewhere better than you originally thought, and having someone else's brain to work off of is so great.

I also got to write with a woman for the first time at the very end of that record. There are so many guys in the industry, so that was my only experience up to that point. When I wrote with my friend Grace, though, [she] just got it so much quicker. The shared experience, you know?

JY: Yes. That's something I'm trying to do more of here. I want to meet women artists and just write together.

Anyway, I put out that album at the end of August last year. It was really fun, and I did some live shows with an all-girl band, which was great. I came to New York a few times for album press, and I also have family here. I’ve always just loved the energy, and on top of that, things started to feel a little stale in LA. So, I subleased here in December, found a spot in the middle of March, moved in April, and now I've been here a little over a month.

JY: I've done two sessions with Doug Schadt. It's always interesting working with someone for the first time. As a singular artist, you're so heavily influenced by the producer and their style. They kind of become the band when you're writing with them. You're trying to learn how they like to do things, and then figure out how you meet in the middle.

I've noticed it's really easy when the producer is also an artist in their own right, like Day Wave, who co-wrote and produced "Waiting on You" for my last album. He already has his own style, and if you like [their style], it's so easy to get on the same page.

JY: I think writing with anyone new shifts things, but I do think the energy and the fact that I've shaken up my life so much with a cross-country move has given [me] a lot of emotions to work with and a lot of inspiration.

I also think the way music works here versus LA is different. LA is a lot more industry-oriented, and here there are a lot more indie people just doing the thing, which is really inspiring. People are more open to collaborating, more open to trying things. It's been nice to come from LA, though, because I understand the structure of what's like to be in [that environment].

JY: Yes! I worked on [the single] with Day Wave this past winter. When I came back to LA knowing I was going to move to New York, I texted Jackson. He's so easy to work with. He's such a cool guy and so talented. We also have similar tastes, so it's really easy to get on the same wavelength. We've only written two songs together and I love them both.

We worked on it over the course of the winter, and I'm really happy with it. My goal was to have a finished song I could take to New York so I had something concrete to build around when I met people here. It's given me a way to meet collaborators, [try to] find my team. Without that, I'd kind of be starting from scratch on everything at once.

JY: I think I'm keeping the core of what I enjoy, but also trying to expand into things I've tried before that didn't quite work. For the "Everything Changes" cover shoot, everything was shot on film, and we got 16mm film for social content and visuals. I'm keeping that. I love storytelling and I love indie film, so however I can make my visuals feel more like that rather than a standard music video, that's always my inclination. I always build Pinterest boards when I'm writing a song, and there are a few specific shots for this one I've had on my board forever.

The new song is called "Small Hours," which refers to that window between 1-4 AM. The cover shoot was around blue hour, that stillness when the sun's coming up. [The song] lives in the moment when you're really tired with someone new you're seeing. You're having these vulnerable conversations in the quiet, and your mind feels busy. The shoot was very reflective of that. It was romantic, but with a little nervousness and quietness underneath it. I haven't even seen the photos yet, and I'm really excited to take that world and expand it into a music video.

JY: I bought a Sofia Coppola book recently. I love all of her discography, her process, and the beautiful pictures throughout. "The Virgin Suicides" is one of my favorite films. Just visually, the coloring, the shots, the feel of it, it's perfect. I always go back to that in some way. I love that bittersweet melancholy, there's something that's really beautiful and also kind of painful. I specifically bought the book to visually inspire me because I figured there are probably pictures in there I hadn't seen yet on Pinterest.

JY: She gets it.

JY: It felt really cool. That was the last full-on music video we did for "Everything Changes" before the album came out. The concept and a lot of the directing came from me, and then my incredible friend Shelby helped with a lot. She directs, acts, does DP and color.. she is such a Renaissance woman. She has this great technical knowledge that I do not have, and she's really good at taking your idea and figuring out how to execute it with no ego, which is so rare. She is such a talent and such an angel at the same time. My friend Kasusha who lives part-time here was also involved. It was such a beautiful group of women creating together.

On the day of the shoot, it was just so easy. Everyone was so kind, the edit and the color came together really easily. Obviously, when you're looking at yourself and something that came from your own brain, it's hard to be objective. There were times when I thought my face looked weird in one shot, and the whole video was ruined. So I thought it was good, but I was also just so close to it.

Because it came out so close to the album, I forgot about "Mr. Casual" for a while. This winter, though, I submitted it [around], and it's gotten into quite a lot of festivals. It's also either been nominated or won at least half of them. I thought to myself, wow, people really like this! I think that reaffirmed what I imagined, but it's nice to see it reflected back. It gave the video new life and made me appreciate it more.

JY: The amount of times we had to shoot that closing shot was crazy. We used one of the guys on the crew to send the texts, so we had to put his name as "Mr. Casual" and have him send things. It wouldn't send for a bit, and then five would show up at once. Thankfully, eventually we got [the shot] we wanted.

JY: I'm a big supporter of therapy. I've been in it on and off since I was about 26. When I need the tools, I go, and then I take a break when I feel okay. I recently got back into it and tried EMDR therapy, which was life-changing. It's really hard, but insanely beautiful.

I definitely have anxiety. It’s more generalized, but always buzzing below the surface. I also have depression, which has always been part of my life, but more in waves. I've learned that [the waves] happen a lot more when I'm not expressing myself. I have a tendency to keep things in. I don't want to bother people, and I don't want to be a burden. So when there was a lack of me being able to say how I felt, I would become depressed. At least that's how the cycle worked for me.

JY: Songwriting helped a lot. I had so many feelings, and I would feel very lonely and sad and disconnected from the world, kind of on the outside of things. Writing was a way for me to connect to myself when I didn't feel like other people could. It was like my coping mechanism and my therapy outside of therapy. It still is, but actually having access to therapy as an adult, being able to learn tools and learn myself more has helped a lot.

JY: It’s true! Songwriting is almost a way for me to expel the shame of what I'm trying to talk about, but it also feels slightly separate from me, so it's a little less scary. Even though you're showing it to more people, it feels like its own thing. When someone else relates to it, you feel less alone. Everyone feels that way, but when you're in your head, it can feel like [it's] just you.

I'm also learning to write things that feel happier and still authentic to me. We're growing. But most of the time I still write about harder things because it feels like a way to expel the shame around them.

JY: Happy can so quickly feel generic and cheesy. The songs that feel the most authentic to me, even when they're happy, always have a tinge of something. There's always this juxtaposition, and that's where I've landed. If I'm writing something upbeat, it's still going to have a little bit of something underneath it. Otherwise, it just doesn't feel like me.

JY: Totally. You can't see it when you're in it. Afterwards, you have perspective.

JY: I've been listening to the new Noah Kahan album on repeat. I've loved him since his first album, but this one is so sad and so beautiful. I'm obsessed with his writing. I kind of go through phases where I'm not listening to music at all, and then I find something and listen to it over and over. That's been my hyper-fixation lately.

Also, I think her name is Maya J’an, but I’ve been loving her song called "new june”. I heard it on a playlist and thought it was really cute. I love Day Wave, too. He’s the producer I’ve worked with a lot, and he also just did an EP with this artist named Lola Blue. Some of her music is really cool!

JY: Definitely hoping to play live shows. Right now I'm in the process of wanting to write new music so I have more to play, and also meeting musicians here. I'm also getting more into the visual side of things. I would honestly love to direct other people's videos, or work as a creative director in some capacity. I just love visuals so much. I want to do that for myself and potentially with other people, too.

Making more art and building community in whatever way I can is my focus for 2026. Any art I can get my hands on and create, I want it.

JY: It's still very much in the indie world, but there's acoustic guitar, and it's more of a vibe-out song. When I listen to it, it actually puts me in a better mood even though it is kind of sad, which is funny. Lyrically, it really hits that push and pull of when you're in a relationship and getting to the point where you realize you actually care about this person, and you're not sure whether to go further or let go. That weird tension point where you could tip either way.

I've been finding it really interesting to write about those in-between spaces lately, because they happen all the time and they're so often passed over. This song really does encapsulate the hours between one and four in the morning so perfectly. It’s incredibly soothing, soft, sweet, nurturing, nostalgic, and a little painful. We really caught a very specific vibe with it, and I'm really, really excited for people to hear it.

JY: I’m writing that down. I need more movies that are set in New York now that I'm here. I remember being in LA and watching something and loving when I’d recognize a spot near my neighborhood. It's just fun to have that. Thank you, Spencyr!