Just Jaded Weekly
Written By: Brooklyn Poutra
New Music Monday: Luke Hemmings
Welcome back to New Music Monday with Jaded Productions! We are so excited to share our favorite new release with you! This week we have decided to highlight Luke Hemmings’ solo debut album ‘When Facing the Things We Turn Away From’.
You probably know Luke Hemmings from his Australian pop rock band 5 Seconds of Summer, but this solo project came about through the silence and stillness of his life during the Covid isolation. This album came to life after 5 Seconds of Summer canceled their final tour and Hemmings was left to ponder and reflect on his decade long career in the band.
5 Seconds of Summer formed when the band members attended the same high school and began posting videos of themselves performing covers on YouTube. The band had been together for years, so the cancellation of the last tour was a hard pill to swallow, and Hemmings worked out his emotions through his new album.
‘When Facing the Things We Turn Away From’ was preceded by three singles and released in its entirety on August 13th, 2021. The project was described by Hemmings as "a project that grew out of a year of enforced stillness". The album is full of ranging emotions and is a deeply personal statement filled with vulnerability of who Luke is as a person, musician, band member and songwriter.
Luke has talked about his writing process on the album and throughout his career and said that, “I’ve loved songwriting for my whole life. I’m in a constant pursuit of bettering myself in that department. My entire world revolves around music. By writing these lyrics, I learned about myself. A lot of the songs are about now, but some of them are written from the perspective of a 17-year-old kid in the thick of the industry.”
Hemmings celebrated the release of his album by doing a livestream performance from the studio where the album was recorded. All of the proceeds from his performance went to a charity called My Friends Place, which benefits homeless youth in Los Angeles.
If you're a 5 Seconds of Summer fan, or enjoy artists like Hey Violet or The Vamps, be sure to check our ‘When Facing the Things We Turn Away From’. We have been loving it and streaming it all week, and we are sure that you will love it too!!
Artist Rec Friday: Ethan Jewell
Welcome back to Artist Rec Friday with Jaded Productions. We are so excited to share our pick for our current favorite up-and-coming artist, Ethan Jewell!
Ethan Jewell is a nineteen year old songwriter and poet from Dallas, Texas. Ethan Jewell is a viral spoken word artist with over 146,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. His most recent single titled ‘something to live for’ is out today, August 20th in promotion of his upcoming third body of work. Jewell has been independently releasing music since 2019 and has amassed over twenty million streams across his poems.
Ethan Jewell has independently released two albums and his third body of work has been preceded by three singles titled ‘It’s Getting Bad Again’, ‘drive thru poem’, ‘i feel better when nobody remembers i exist’ and his most recent release, ‘something to live for’. His work includes heartfelt lyrics spoken over dreamy piano ballads.
Much like many other artists, TikTok has catapulted Ethan Jewell’s career and music to a large level of success. Jewell boasts over seven hundred thousand followers on the app, and has amassed over twenty million likes across all of his videos. Jewell’s first viral video of him showing off his debut single ‘Snowglobe’ was seen by over 1.7 million TikTok users, and his momentum on the app has not slowed down. He has received even more success with a video in which he released a clip of his song ‘Bouquet’ from his 2019 album ‘Live from Planet Ok’ receiving over 5.6 million views on the video.
But Jewell’s success did not stay within TikTok. Having superfans from cities ranging from Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Atlanta, his fans have streamed his albums over and over since their releases. His 2019 release ‘Live from Planet Ok’ has amassed 10.6 million streams on Spotify, and his 2020 album ‘Living the Dream’ has reached over 3.9 million streams on Spotify.
Ethan creates music showcasing all kinds of emotion, and he has said “The idea of "feeling your feelings" has always been so important to me. We tend to push down our "bad" feelings in order to appear happy. However, "bad feelings" simply don't exist. they're just feelings. and I hope my music will help people feel these feelings, and understand that it's normal.”
Ethan has shown many emotions throughout his releases thus far, and ‘something to live for’ is a very touching song as well. ‘something to live for’ lists out some of life's simple reasons to keep on living.
Ethan Jewell is showing no signs of slowing down, and he is an artist to keep your eye on. If you like artists like Hobo Johnson, Atlas, and Flatsound, be sure to check out Ethan Jewell’s music and stream his newest single, ‘something to live for’.
The Career of Ariana Grande
We hope you have been enjoying our Ariana Grande week this week at Jaded Productions! Ariana Grande has had over a decade long career with many notable accomplishments and she has been one of the most defining voices of our generation. With six hit albums and twelve Grammy nominations, Ariana Grande is a name you cannot ignore.
Ariana Grande made her first entertainment debut when she was just fifteen years old. Grande made her Broadway debut in 2008 playing the character Charlotte in the show ‘13’. For this role, Ariana won a National Youth Theatre Association Award and started to make a name for herself.
After being a part of ‘13’, she made her way to Nickelodeon to star as Cat Valentine in the show ‘Victorious'. ‘Victorious’ began in 2010, ran for four seasons and ended in 2013. Cat Valentine lived on through her own spin-off show ‘Sam & Cat’ which ran for one season.
Ariana began releasing her own music in 2011 with her debut single ‘Put Your Hearts Up’, which Ariana has since said she does not like. The bubblegum pop song was the first song of her own, as the music she had previously recorded was a part of Victorious soundtracks. Ariana first had success on the Billboard charts with her song ‘The Way’ featuring Mac Miller. The song reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and was released from her debut album ‘Yours Truly’ in 2013.
Ariana Grande has had five out of six albums reach number one on the Billboard 200, and the only album that did not hit number one, ‘Dangerous Woman’, peaked at number two. Ariana has had six number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and nineteen songs within the top ten.
In 2015, Grande went on her first world tour, The Honeymoon Tour, to promote her second album ‘My Everything’. The tour was opened by Rixton and Cashmere Cat, and Cashmere Cat was featured on a track from ‘My Everything’. Shortly thereafter Grande released her third album, ‘Dangerous Woman’. Later in 2017, Grande embarked on her second world tour, The Dangerous Woman Tour. This tour ran from February to September, and Victoria Monèt and Little Mix opened for her on tour. In May of 2017, at Ariana’s show in Manchester, England, the concert was struck with a terrorist attack. In response, Ariana performed a benefit concert, One Love Manchester, which raised more than $13 million for the victims of the attack.
Ariana’s comeback single was titled ‘no tears left to cry’ and was an inspirational song for the people that were rebuilding their lives after the difficult previous year. Her fourth album, ‘Sweetener’ was released in 2018 and earned Ariana her first Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. However, Ariana did not attend the awards ceremony due to disagreement with the producers of the show. She was initially not allowed to perform the song of her choosing, and the producers were trying to control the performance.
Just two days before the Grammys, Ariana released her fifth album ‘thank u, next’. The single ‘thank u, next’ was her first number one single, and Ariana held the first, second, and third spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, being the first artist to do this since The Beatles. Grande went on her Sweetener World Tour in 2019, and headlined Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Manchester Pride.
In 2020, Ariana released her sixth album, Positions and has recently been announced that she is a judge on the upcoming season of The Voice. More can be expected of Ariana this year, as she has her Netflix film ‘Don't Look Up’ coming out later this year.
Be on the lookout for Ariana on Netflix and The Voice! Still need more Ari content? Be sure to celebrate Ariana Grande week with us by streaming our Ariana ‘Jaded Faves’ playlist, curated by our team, available to stream on the Jaded Productions Spotify! Also, don’t forget to check out the new episode of our Jaded Productions podcast ‘A Little Jaded’, ‘Artist Spotlight: Ariana Grande’, where our hosts discuss all things Ari!