{"id":2226,"date":"2023-03-08T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T00:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/?p=2226"},"modified":"2023-03-08T17:01:26","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T17:01:26","slug":"jensen-mcrae-interview-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/articles\/jensen-mcrae-interview-2023","title":{"rendered":"Power in Vulnerability: Jensen McRae on Black Femininity in Folk Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was never a time for Jensen McRae where she wasn\u2019t trying to make songs. \u201cBasically from the time I could talk I loved to sing\u2014 I just made a lot of noise,\u201d she said. The Los Angeles-based singer\/songwriter makes vulnerable folk-edged pop that can feel like an intimate look into Jensen\u2019s head. In some ways, they are. \u201cIt became my medium of choice when I had a big feeling,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the last few years, Jensen\u2019s been steadily releasing songs\u2014a couple EPs during her time studying music at USC, and then her 2019 single \u201cWhite Boy\u201d, which gained wider attention. After <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jensen_McRae\/status\/1349915442433851392\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a viral tweet in 2021 where Jensen joked about a fake song by Phoebe Bridgers<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/phoebe_bridgers\/status\/1350501584543731713?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1350501584543731713%7Ctwgr%5Ed86cdb9e5c49a29c8604671b5de3367ce1b2ad1b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelineofbestfit.com%2Fnews%2Flatest-news%2Fphoebe-bridgers-reacts-to-preemptive-cover-of-her-punisher-follow-up-opener\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">retweeted by Bridgers herself<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), the artist followed up with the song \u201cImmune\u201d, a fictionalized account of getting vaccinated that received nods from places like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/jensen-mcrae-phoebe-bridgers-parody-immune-1120140\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rolling Stone<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. With all that momentum, it came as no surprise that her debut album, 2022\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Are You Happy Now<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, was met with love from listeners.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Best of the Listening Room: Jensen McRae - Wolves | Sofar Los Angeles\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZenFTET3q6k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, the artist traded in LA sunshine for gray afternoons, spending a month in London as Sofar\u2019s Artist in Residence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI have this joke that all [American] teenage girls are either a London girl or a Paris girl\u2014you were either obsessed with something English, or took French in school and carried an Eiffel Tower tote bag,\u201d Jensen said. \u201cI was a London girl.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The month involved playing shows around the city, even debuting a few new ones. \u201cThere\u2019s something about when you\u2019re writing a song and making the demo immediately after writing it, where you play it the best\u2014I think it can be similar when you play a song live for the first time, because you\u2019re so conscious of it,\u201d Jensen said. \u201cThere are songs I\u2019ve played hundreds of times and they\u2019re sort of mechanical and I have to drop back into my body intentionally to connect to it. But when you\u2019re playing a song live that you\u2019ve never played live before, you\u2019re already dropped in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When she wasn\u2019t performing in London, days were spent writing, and the gray afternoons helped that process. \u201cIt felt like a nice cloak and support to process large feelings,\u201d Jensen McRae said. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t pressure to be outside soaking up sunshine, it was encouraged that I\u2019d be inside working at my piano.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sofar Stories:Jensen McRae&#039;s Love Letter to London\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uk-REx7vz78?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now back in LA, Jensen\u2019s working on a new collection, though it\u2019s not clear what the second record might be yet. \u201cI know I want it to be that\u2019s representative of my adult self,\u201d she said. \u201cI no longer want to self identify with the coming of age narrative, I\u2019ve come of age. I love to be the bookish girl, the outcast girl, these things that brought me to this point, but I\u2019m also curious who else could I be and who else will I be as I get older?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/articles\/neone-the-wonderer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read: Expand Your Mind: Meet NEONE the Wonderer<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Jensen it\u2019s not just about self-examination, but representation for others drawn to that same vulnerability. \u201cI want my work to be a tile in the mosaic of the Black female experience,\u201d she said. \u201cI really want to be an emblem of what it means to be a Black woman who makes folk music. It\u2019s a space that historically shut us out that I\u2019m clawing my way into, come hell or high water.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She continued:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI want to be an option for a role model for Black women who haven\u2019t been able to see themselves in the larger-than-life Black female figures that have entered pop culture. There\u2019s not a lot of room for Black women to be soft and vulnerable and sensitive and fragile. Black women are superheroes and strong and independent and they carry the world on their back. [But] sometimes we have the nervous breakdown, and sometimes we are just crying and have our head in our journal. I want to be that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Words by Sofar Editorial Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was never a time for Jensen McRae where she wasn\u2019t trying to make songs. \u201cBasically from the time I could talk I loved to sing\u2014 I just made a lot of noise,\u201d she said. The Los Angeles-based singer\/songwriter makes vulnerable folk-edged pop that can feel like an intimate look into Jensen\u2019s head. In some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[153],"class_list":["post-2226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-jensen-mcrae"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sofarsounds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}