Spotlight On... Possibly Jamie

With his moniker inspired by Björk, Jamie Rees's music as Possibly Jamie is far more dancefloor-ready than her 1995 single Possibly Maybe. Described in his press release as 'Glasgow's premiere pop provocateur', those four words are pretty hard to argue with. Past singles like 'i love you, you stupid fuck!', 'so you're thinking of breaking up with me' and 'Love, to all my boyfriends' have all been pure pop bangers, with a little bit of spice thrown in for good measure, and his latest single Want is no different.

We're definitely long overdue a catch-up with Rees; with Want out now it seemed like a good time to get to know him a little better, as well as finding out more about his latest single and what's next for Possibly Jamie.

Can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, how you got into music-making and who/what influences you as an artist?
Sure! I grew up surrounded by classical music, playing the piano and singing in choirs but I never really resonated with the institutions associated with classical music, always thinking they were bogged down by tradition. But I was a major music theory nerd and would write my own arrangements and pieces to perform with my choirs. Simultaneously, I was discovering music by great electronic art-pop pioneers, like Björk, FKA twigs and SOPHIE. I was always fascinated by the way they could synthesise such fascinating electronic sounds, and I started playing around with production software to try and emulate those artists. I essentially taught myself how to produce, and at some point along the way I started to develop my own style and techniques for producing which are probably not very traditional, but part of the fun of creating music to me is trying to represent the music I've created in my head in reality.

My main influences are the icons of electronic art-pop from throughout contemporary music, from Kate Bush to Tori Amos through to Charli xcx and Caroline Polachek. But I've always had a great appreciation for the mathematics of pure, uncompromising pop music. Prince's sprawling catalogue is a great source of inspiration for me, as is Carly Rae Jepsen's. I suppose the uniting factor is musical and conceptual maximalism, any artist who commits 100% to their ideas and sound is a source of inspiration for me.

I’d love to know more about Want. You say that when it comes to the instrumentation of the track, it was inspired by Azealia Banks’ 212 and Tori Amos’ Raspberry Swirl – how did you go about creating the music and using those songs as reference points?
They are very different tracks, but to me they represent an incredible instrumental intensity. With headphones on, the drums are right against your ears with such an energy, I find it hard to imagine they could be any bigger without the entire song collapsing in on itself. Want began as an experiment in recreating that kind of intensity. There’s a lot of layers of bizarre mouth sounds and vocal percussion in the drums to push them as close to the ears as possible. Everything else about the song cascaded from that point onwards, with the dirty bass being the next thing. The song was precision-engineered for chaos.

In the chorus of the song you sing about not knowing what you want, not knowing what you need, or what you’ve got – what inspired the song lyrically, and how did you build the verses around that hook?
I was in a real moment of purposelessness last year, where I found myself struggling to work out what kind of music I wanted to make or how I wanted to communicate my artistic ideas. It was the first time I was really sitting down and thinking to myself, "What do I want to do with this long stretch of time I have? Do I actually want to do this or have I just been told I want to do this by my parents? By society? By an influencer? What metrics should I be using to define the success of my life?" All of this was boiled down to the very simple, 'I don't know what I want!' which came to me immediately.

I wrote the verses much more slowly, over a period of time which represented a shift in my approach to writing. Rather than knowing what I wanted to say in the verses, I knew exactly how I wanted the words to feel in my mouth when I say them, when I sing them. The best pop music is engineered to feel good in your mouth and is never that concerned about its lyrical cohesion and I started to appeal to that much more over that time. So many of the words – 'Madrid', 'piss', 'feelings', and even the section performed in French (a language I am far from fluent in) – were about how they rose and fell with the melodies and how they felt to sing. The experience of writing the song opened up a lot of options creatively that has transformed my writing style.

You focus a lot in your music on challenging perceptions around queerness and masculinity – why is that so important to you? 
Recently I've been thinking a lot about the unique insight that being a gay man gives you into patriarchy. It's a system that has othered you for your homosexuality but I can't help but feel like I'm still a cog in a big machine that is propagating inequality across society. Queer men, just like straight men, can't help but police masculinity and enforce archaic stereotypes upon ourselves. It's an odd feeling being half-in, half-out of the system. This standpoint influences a lot of the themes of my new music. Want isn't overt in its addressing of these themes, but there is definitely a masculine lethargy and need to appear apathetic to the world, paired with a desperation for sincere human connection and life satisfaction within the song.

So many of my favourite female musicians have made incredibly touching and nuanced music on their experiences of womanhood, and I'm trying my best to communicate my own experiences with modern manhood in my music. The fact that my music is often layered thick with irony is perhaps part of the problem, there's definitely a metaconversation to be had there. I might get more sincere one day, who knows!

Image: Want cover art

Can you tell us a bit more about the spicy cover art for this single – what inspired you to go down this route? 
I honestly was surprised at the number of people who commented on the picture's lewdness! I honestly thought the silliness of the spaghetti would distract people from the clearly pornographic angle but I guess I was wrong. I always had the idea of using alphabetti spaghetti as a metaphor for the infinite options available to a person and the choice paralysis of modern life, but in the moment of the shoot I had this slightly perverse idea to shoot it from above. Of course, any attention and controversy it creates is by no means a bad thing, but it also never felt particularly controversial to me. I sense an increasing push towards sex-negativity in society, and it's a shame because sex is so fun. You guys should try it sometime!

Am I right in thinking this single is part of your future Jami-EP #3? Can you tell us more about that right now?
Yes! I've been recording furiously over the last two years and I now have a massive backlog of music that I'm ready to share. I don't want to give away too much but if you've been to a Possibly Jamie show recently you'll know I've really been drilling down on my sound. But my adoration of big synths and choruses hasn't faded and there will be plenty of good pop to sink your teeth into, unless you don't like the taste of alphabetti spaghetti, but I'll have probably moved onto another canned foodstuff by then.

Once this single comes out, what’s next for Possibly Jamie? Do you have any more live shows lined up, or more singles we can keep our ear out for ahead of the EP?
There is a whole world of Possibly Jamie to come and I can’t wait for people to hear it! I love performing but I don’t get to do it very often. This is going to sound so self-important and snobby but I do think that my performances can be a little intimidating for promoters who would be more comfortable getting a four-piece indie band to metaphorically finger themselves on stage. But when I do perform it’s the most fun and I can't wait to bring the Possibly Jamie experience to the rest of the UK when the opportunity arises!

Besides that, I’m also starting to work in a producer role with other artists, which has been so fun. My musical career has been premised on my inability to collaborate, which it turns out was just a certain stubbornness on my part. It’s been so fun making music with and for others and getting to help people find their sounds and I'm annoyed at myself for waiting so long to start doing so. Getting to be part of the rich tapestry of Scottish electronic music is such a privilege.

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Want is out now; follow Possibly Jamie on Instagram @possiblypossiblyjamie