JJ Wilde is on a hot streak. The Kitchener rocker burst onto the scene in 2020 with her debut album
“Ruthless”, achieving over 36 million global streams. That record won a 2021 JUNO Award for Rock Album of the Year, and Wilde became the first female performer to win in this category since Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill”. Earlier this year JJ released a stellar EP called “Best Of Me (Part 1)”, followed by several radio-friendly singles including her latest, a lethal little number called “Toxic”. The EP, singles and a couple of new tracks are collected on her brand new album “Vices”, and the singer, says the record documents her journey since she became a Nashville Cat.
“I’ve been here for the past two years so this record definitely has a little bit of that Nashville influence in it, whether intentional or not,” says JJ, calling from her Music City residence. “So much of my personal life and who I’m hanging out with kind of creep into the music. The album encompasses a lot of the experiences I was going through while creating it, which is kind of scary because it’s like reading a page from your journal. It’s not necessarily something you want to do but at the same time I feel that it was very therapeutic for me.”
So what was the biggest occurrence in JJ’s recent life that required healing? Getting dumped. “Vices” is an album she said she would never make because she felt she would never put a relationship before her music or herself. But then she went and got completely lost in someone, resulting in the breakup album she swore she wouldn’t write.
“I got dumped before a two-month tour across the states, and that was the catalyst to go deeper into my most vulnerable places, and heal. I’ve always had sort of a hard shell and a wall up when it comes to how far I let people in and what I share in my music. I think I had an idea of what people wanted to hear from me or what I was supposed to be as a woman in rock music. This album completely tears down that wall to expose a softer side.
“I had to go back to those places of hurt to draw out that feeling and work through it,” she continues. “I had kind of pushed all that stuff down but writing about it brought it all back up to the surface again. The break-up was the catalyst to the journey that created the album, the self-exploration and finding those little bits of yourself that you lost along the way in a relationship. It was about getting back to a healthy place in terms of the relationship with myself.”
Although the album is one of reflection and self-rediscovery, it rocks with a vengeance. JJ has a great set of pipes and on “Options” her voice soars over the pounding backbeat of the chorus as she defiantly tells her ex to “Leave the drama at home, I’m okay on my own.” It’s hard to imagine someone that forceful and defiant to be anything but a force when it comes to live shows.
“Actually, I used to have really bad stage fright,” she admits. “When I was starting my career my hands would shake so much I could hardly play guitar on stage. Even just singing in front of people was terrifying but I learned over the years to channel that nervous energy into something positive. I still get nervous, for sure, but once you learn to redirect it in a different way, it can be used to your advantage.”
JJ certainly channels all of her energy into “Toxic”, a take-no-prisoners rocker in which she shreds her ex. She’s incorporated the song into her festival shows this summer, including her recent appearance at the famed Les Étoiles Theatre in Paris, and the crowd has simply eaten it up.
“I’ve been to Paris five or six times now, and each time it just seems to get better. I was just overjoyed and overwhelmed with the response we had. We sold out the show and people were lined up down the street.
“Toxic is my favourite song to play live right now. It’s aggressive, it’s raw and it’s high energy. I can’t not get angry when I sing it, but I’m still having fun. There’s a distinct energy to that song when I do it live, which is very intentional. I don’t want to have anything that’s more powerful on the record than it is live. I know my guys were going to be able to give those guitar tones some meat and guts. I love it.”
JJ has learned some of her chops from the best, having opened shows for the likes of KISS, Pearl Jam and Motley Crue. (“I try and take away little pieces of every concert that I open. I feel that as a musician it’s the best form of research.”) She’ll be applying the fruit of that research during her upcoming Canadian Tour, where she’s thrilled to be doing all original material as opposed to some of the cover songs she incorporated into previous shows.
“It’s been a minute since I toured Canada,” she says. “It’s great when you’re the headliner and you can decide every detail, and have VIP packages before the show and get to meet the fans in a more intimate setting. And bringing the new songs to the show brings a new energy. It just freshens things up. But I have fallen in love with the Janis Joplin cover “Piece Of My Heart” that I have been doing, so I’ll probably still sing that on a couple of nights.” See all the All My Vices tour dates at https://jjwilde.com/tour
Although she’s a fireball live, JJ is also effective when taking things down a notch on “Vices”, as evidenced by the haunting ballad, “Perfect Stranger” in which she opens her heart, gently crooning the song’s message of heartbreak over a subtle piano refrain. The number is a testament to the fact that she has weathered her stormy relationship and is now able to put things in perspective.
“It’s all about how you can go from being everything to someone and then a few months later you are strangers,” she explains. “You don’t know where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re hanging with. It’s about the fragility of a relationship and how things can change so quickly and they just go back to being somebody that you don’t know. For me, that song was about closing the chapter and finally being able to put that to rest.”
Another stand-out track is “Mess To Make” in which she details her move from Kitchener to her new home where she has “nothing but a brand new mess to make”. JJ describes that move as absolutely liberating.
“I think there’s something so freeing about not only leaving your home town, but the country,” she explains. “You just feel like you can be anybody and you can do anything. I feel like you can get caught up in opinions. People, when they know who you are and whatever, can hold you back a little bit. To be able to break free completely from that was definitely a fresh start and a turning of the page for me.”
So has JJ made any brand-new messes in Nashville?
“Oh, there have been messes, that’s for sure,” she laughs. “But that’s where the fun is, that’s where the good stuff is.”
Open Spaces is a monthly column by Roman Mitz, covering the up-and-coming in the country music scene across Canada.
