Jay Som talks about navigating isolation in alternative rock

Today (October 10) marks the highly anticipated return of Jay Som, the project of Melina Duterte. The California-born artist first made waves in the indie rock world in 2016, known for her unforgettable hooks, sharp guitar work, and clean, detailed production. Her second album, Anak Ko, became the pinnacle of that sound and cemented her place as a distinctive voice in the scene.

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Duterte tells NME she barely recognizes the person she was when those early records came out — from her debut project Turn Into in 2016 to Everybody Works in 2017 and then Anak Ko in 2019. The years since have been full of growth. She’s formed side projects with friends, spent time as a working songwriter, producer, and mix engineer, and collaborated with artists including No Rome, Beabadoobee, Jeff Tweedy, and Bombay Bicycle Club. She’s also contributed to the soundtracks for the films Three Months (starring Troye Sivan) and I Saw The TV Glow, and joined Boygenius on tour, among other projects.

“Because I was in my early 20s when I first started putting out records, there was a sense of feeling invincible,” Duterte reflects. “Now that I’m 31, I’m a little too self-aware, so I’m still trying to find my voice again and figuring out what my purpose is when it comes to songwriting.”

That ongoing search for meaning and belonging lies at the heart of her new album Belong, which marks a new creative chapter for Jay Som. For the first time, Duterte worked closely with outside producers and songwriters, including Joao Gonzalez (Soft Glas), Mal Hauser (collaborator of Mk.gee and Illuminati Hotties), Steph Marziano (producer for HotWax and Sir Chloe), and Kyle Pulley. The record also features her first guest vocal appearances, including dream collaborations with Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World and Hayley Williams of Paramore.

When NME speaks with Duterte over Zoom, she’s in the middle of preparing stems for Belong, carefully organizing the layers of her recordings to make them ready for potential remixes. What follows is a conversation about creativity, connection, solitude, and the next stage of her artistic journey.

What’s it like going through your songs with such a fine-toothed comb, maybe months after you’ve put them to bed?

Melina Duterte: “It’s a funny experience. There’s some songs where I’m like, ‘Ah, I love this’, and it’s so refreshing to hear it again and some where like it physically hurts my ears, because I think my body enters this state of, ‘oh shit. I worked on this one song for so many hours. I’ve listened to this one guitar part [so much] where the entire song starts to feel like mush.’ I haven’t listened to the record in a while, but having to do stems and go through certain instruments is just making my ears hurt.”

Was there a song on the record that was particularly difficult to finish?

“I think it was ‘Past Lives’, with Hayley Williams from Paramore. I think I’ve done six different versions of that song. Even now, if I had the chance, I would redo it all over again. It’s a problem child for me.”

You went to Nashville to work and write with Hayley. What was that process like? What’s she like as a collaborator?

“It was so fun. She was super nice and spent, like, six hours in the studio with us, and had all these ideas. We technically kept all of her ideas – like every vocal track that you hear on that song, it’s just all of her takes. That outro chorus at the very end, it was her idea to sing high and go for it. She’s a super kind person that’s really uplifting of people around her. She’s not selfish, she’s super direct, and when she likes something, she lets you know. I think it’s refreshing to get that from someone that has been so significant in pop culture for so long. Pretty much all of the rumours about her are true: she’s a great, awesome person.”

This is the first time on a Jay Som record that you’re letting in a lot of your friends into your project and working more closely with collaborators. How did you decide to do that? And was there any anxiety or hesitance around it?

“There was definitely some anxiety in working with people for the first time, and it was important for me to open that door and step outside my shell for a second. And luckily, most of the people that worked on the record were good friends. And I made some new friends, like Kyle Pulley, who was one of the last producers, but Joao Gonzalez, who’s the main co-producer on the record, I was friends with for a while, I’d say four years, before we even started working together.

“The first couple days we started working together, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, he gets it. He completely understands what I’m trying to do.’ And he was sitting behind me on this couch every single day for weeks, almost months, just figuring hard stuff out with me and telling me, ‘Hey, chill out’, or ‘You don’t need to work on this thing so much. You’re good. Just move on.’ And sometimes those little moments were really sweet.

“Another thing is that a lot of the producers on this record are also instrumentalists too. So some people play drums and guitar and bass, and it wasn’t just me playing everything, which is something I’m used to. It just felt good to take a back seat for a second.”

When you’re working with friends, there can be concerns on both sides of ‘how is this going to affect what we create, what I put out?’ And then on the other hand, it’s ‘how is this gonna change our friendship?’ Did those both come up for you?

“Oh, for sure. I’m not gonna lie and say that everything was perfect and amazing, and I loved everyone’s choices and we got along. I think it’s like anyone that works with friends or even acquaintances, sometimes you’re going to have some rub. And there were certain moments and with some of the producers, where I’d show them some songs and they just didn’t get it, and I’d show another person and they got it. So it’d be this challenge of: which song is this person going to care about the most, and feel like they can bring something to the table? I’ve had that experience as well with producing people, and friends too. You have to separate the ego from your work for a second and just accept that maybe this person doesn’t like your idea, and you just need to work through it and just keep the train going.

“But otherwise we had so much fun, and there was a lot of laughing, and nothing ever felt too serious with all of the producers. There were a lot of jokes, and I’m very direct with my friends in general, so I’m the same way in the studio. That expels any kind of unnecessary conflict. Conflict is really normal, but I’m very good at communicating so that there’s no passive aggressiveness or things left unsaid, so there’s a weird atmosphere. I very much just like to have fun, otherwise I’ll go crazy.”

As you worked with other songwriters, as a producer and mixing engineer, in the last couple of years, were there any artists who challenged you to think differently about how you operate as a songwriter?

“It’s tough to think of one person, because I feel so inspired and influenced by every person I work with. My friend Sab [Mai], from the band No Vacation, is releasing a project under their artist name Sab Star. I learned about… the emphasis on lyrics feeling poetic and vague, and I really love how they connect certain words together. I felt very inspired by that, the stream of consciousness writing and pondering certain things.

“Also, I think being around Lucy Dacus – I haven’t written with her, but touring with her and being in the studio with her naturally, witnessing how she writes so fast and in a direct, specific way. There’s a truth to her writing that I really respect. It digs deep, and I really like how she does it.”

You’ve also worked with Boygenius. You helped produce and engineer ‘The Record’, and then you also toured with them in their live band afterwards. When you’re playing the songs live, does that change the way that you relate to their music?

“I guess so. As I was playing their music and learning it, I really respected and admired how they would work with each other to support each other’s voices, because they were taking turns. In the album everyone has a song, and I really loved how they would have input for each other on, like, certain harmonies and which lyrics and which verse people would take, the tone of each verse and chorus – all of that matters. The way that they all sing together in harmony felt very athletic and pure. It was so cool to experience. And I was just having so much fun. [Laughs] I was lost in the sauce of how fun it all was.”

‘Athletic’ is an interesting word…

“We all have in-ear [monitors], and every single night everyone’s screaming in the audience. It’s so loud. But every song, Phoebe [Bridgers], Julien [Baker] and Lucy were just so on pitch and on time with each other. They never messed up. That’s what I mean by athletic: they cared so much. There was practice and muscle [put] into the work that they were doing. In your own project, you have to keep yourself accountable. But when you’re working with two other people, it’s a team effort, so you can’t let each other down. And they were very much on top of that the whole time. It was really cool to witness.”

“The way that Boygenius all sing together in harmony felt very athletic and pure”

You named your record ‘Belong’, which was a reflection of how you were searching for your place in the world, and also the indie rock ecosystem that Jay Som has been part of. How did you start to ponder or question your place in this ecosystem?

“That question has been with me my whole life. I don’t feel shy in saying that rock music, indie music, music in general, is very white-heavy, and to be in alternative rock is sometimes isolating. I sometimes don’t feel like I even deserve to be here because I don’t look like a lot of people that get famous or successful. Even in 2017, when I started to get attention, that was tough for me. That year deeply affected me, still to this day. There was early praise, and I feel grateful that I’ve had all these opportunities and I get to come back, but I feel my body going back to feeling like a little girl getting bullied in school, and when I was younger and feeling like I always had to put my fists up and fight for myself.

“I get asked to work with a lot of people and sometimes I don’t feel very comfortable in certain rooms, and that’s just how it is. I’ll rarely be in rooms where I’m like, ‘Oh my god, this is so awesome. I’m in a room with just people of colour.’ That rarely happens. I was just in a session with all Filipino women, and I was like, whoa. I feel really good right now!

“It’s not even just the feeling of isolation as a person of colour in indie… I hope that I feel like a really relatable person with this album, because it’s hard to feel like you belong in certain spaces, not just music. Everyone feels that way. And I think it’s a constant search within ourselves to find where we belong. Is it in community? For me recently, it’s with friends and peers that are going through the same thing. And sometimes all it takes is just me saying, ‘Hey, are you OK? How do you feel about everything that’s happening right now?’ And then it becomes a special bonding moment.”

‘Belong’ feels a lot more eclectic than your previous two albums. It’s almost as if the album gets more lo-fi as it goes on, in the sense that the last three songs become more fragmented with field recordings and stuff like that. What inspired that opening up of the sound world?

“I feel like the first half of the album was very much like, ‘Oh my god!’ I was so excited. Those are the oldest songs, and I got to put the singles here. There’s the alternative rock side and even the beginning of side B is ‘Past Lives’, to get back into the alternative rock world. But I was starting to get a little restless and wanting to experiment more. And it didn’t feel right to put any of those songs anywhere else. I get pretty bored when I make albums, so I need to have every song be a little different from each other. And I do like to challenge myself a little, and I like to have weird songs and moments here and there. So I do feel like the last three songs are kind of confusing, funny little songs. I think my headspace at the time was just: I need to do something different. I can’t just do this formula of, ‘here’s some rock songs’, because I listen to all types of music.”

“You have to separate the ego from your work”

What was it like to work with Jim Atkins on ‘Float’?

“Oh, so cool. It was a dream come true. I’m a huge Jimmy Eat World fan. He’s such a good singer, and that band is amazing. But it was really easy to work with him. We still haven’t met in person, but he was super nice on the phone. We were just nerding out about stuff. He was really kind about his ideas and coming up with the harmonies for the verses. He was so professional: he tracked everything really fast, and sent the stems over, and we would text here and there about gear. He’s just a really nice guy, and I got to tell him about me being a huge fan.” [Laughs]

What’s your favourite Jimmy Eat World album?

“My favourite, favourite one is ‘Bleed American’. I got to tell him that too. I listened to ‘Bleed American’ so much. My brother and I used to fight over the CD that we bought from Barnes & Noble, to the point where our boom boxes scratched the CD so much that it just skips every song.”

One last question: you’re an Oasis fan. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on about the reunion, and whether you’ve actually managed to see it live yet.

“I saw it live a couple of weeks ago in LA, they played at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena. My friend copped us the black and white Adidas jersey. I’ve been wearing that so much, I had to stop wearing it every day. But, yeah, huge fan. I love the show. I was like, I can’t believe that I’m seeing them right now. I also thought it was hilarious because I couldn’t understand anything Liam was saying. I love him so much. I’m still watching random videos of Oasis on YouTube. Right now I’m on a fan-made video about the evolution of Liam’s voice, how much his voice has changed from 1994 to now.”

What’s your favourite or most formative Oasis song?

[Groans] “I want to say ‘Supersonic’, because that’s an easy one, but ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ just puts me in such a mood. That’s one of my favourite Oasis songs ever.”

If Liam and Noel ever make music again, would you ever get into the studio with them as a producer?

“Hundred per cent. Of course. I’ve dreamt of that. I’ve dreamt multiple times of the day that I meet Liam and Noel. I love Noel, but Liam… I feel like writing with him would be an insane experience. [Laughs] I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen, but a girl can dream. I would write some stuff for him ASAP.”

Jay Som’s ‘Belong’ is out now via Lucky Number. Her tour of Europe, the UK and the US begins in November