Jessica Winter is recalling the questions she posed herself as she was making her first album, drolly called My First Album. “Why do I love pop music? What is it that makes pop great? And what do I miss in pop music now?”
“I was trying to hone in on exactly what it is that I love about pop,” she says. “It’s all the weirdness in it. And how far you can go within three minutes. I love having something really upbeat and fun and then juxtaposing it with a dark message. This whole album is celebrating pop music in general.”
It is, but in a very British way. Sardonic, smart pop has always been the tradition here, not the starry-eyed Britain’s Got Talent version. Winter has been in the industry for a decade, writing and producing for other artists as well as being a member of post-punk band Pregoblin, so her pop reinvention has a streetwise attitude. In fact, the entire album, she realised, has a narrative around being a woman in the music industry.
“It’s about these big dreams and longing for validation, told through these different adventures of this girl,” she says. “She’s in a small town dreaming of bigger things and it’s her self belief and delusion that keeps carrying her through, even though it might actually be not very good for her.”
The music channels the artists she loved growing up — Scissor Sisters, Kylie Minogue, Nine Inch Nails — all of whom showed her “you could reinvent your whole identity.”
Winter, from Portsmouth, started playing piano at a very young age. She also suffered from a condition called hip dysplasia: “It’s a connective tissue disorder which affects all of the joints and tendons and whatever else has got connective tissue, which I think is pretty much everything in your body.” She had multiple operations growing up, “so I was in hospital not being able to move from the waist down for long periods of time. I think that’s why I like piano music, because it was something I could do even when I was unable to move.”
After moving to London at 16, she went through the industry mill but the big breakthrough came when she decided to forge her own path. “It just felt like it was the right time,” she says. “I just wanted to connect with the girls and the gays.”
In this manner, the record is a triumph of self-actualisation. “All of that pressure that gets put on young girls’ shoulders to have to be a ready-made pop star as a teenager. It’s just bullshit and it’s toxic,” she says.
“I just think it’s really important to be able to document the journey of being able to move and be fluid. Here I am in my thirties, doing my first album. I hope people can put it on and feel joy, hope and comfort.”
My First Album by Jessica Winter is out now
