MUSIC
From Issue #19
Jem Interview
Look, Mom, I'm a star!
by Sam Thompson
“I didn’t know what a big thing The O.C. was till I came here,” says hit Brit singer,
Jem. She performed Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” on the season finale of
The O.C. “I wore a dress and lots of makeup, so you probably wouldn’t be able to
recognize me,” insists Jem. Yet her grown-up pop sensibilities in her debut album,
Finally Woken, are punctuated with sampled music arrangements that show off her
days as a DJ agent.
Having written and co-produced all the tracks, including “They” — which has since
been remixed by Cut Chemist (of Jurassic 5) — Jem launched her critical North
American tour. For what it’s worth, Jem has the respect of some heavyweight
music producers like Geo-logy (Mos Def, Talib Kweli), her current producer, Yoad
Nevo and Guy Sigsworth, with whom Jem collaborated to write track six –
“Nothing Fails” — on Madonna’s American Life.
All this should give Jem a big head, but it doesn’t. Instead she says, “I lay beside my
Mom the other day and said to her ‘Mom, I’m recording an album, I’m finally recording
an album’.”
Photo courtesy of BMG Music.
