[Exclusive Interview] Julia Jacklin’s Journey Back to Herself in ‘The Gem’

Listen / Pre-Save

Creating a music album is like embarking on a journey to find answers in life. For Australian artist and songwriter Julia Jacklin, her latest album, The Gem, reflects growth, learning, and emotional crystallization after going through a long and intense period in her life.

Today, The Noize Magazine had the opportunity to talk with Julia Jacklin about making her new album, her inspirations, her resilience, and her perspective on the journey she has taken, all of which have shaped The Gem, an album that will be released soon.

The Gem: Julia Jacklin’s Journey Back to a Safe Space

“I feel like I took a while making it because I was trying very hard to be honest with myself about how I was feeling.” Julia revealed to The Noize Magazine about the process of making The Gem. “So I feel like it’s a good representation of where I was at. I was at a point in my life where I was confused about a lot of things, and I think that comes across in the album. I was just thinking about my role in my own life in a slightly different way. There are some things now that I’ve grown from and feel differently about already, but making the album helped me figure those things out.”

When looking back at life, a home or a safe space is a destination many people choose to return to. Julia Jacklin is no different. She chose to record the whole album in a Melbourne house with her close friends. Being in a familiar place completely changed the working environment compared to her past works.

“I felt very comfortable. There were discomforts that always come with making music, but it felt a bit like when I first started making music.” Julia explained about returning to record in Melbourne. “And you don’t know anyone in the industry, and there’s no pressure to be working with, you know, certain people because that’s what is going to look cool or is going to make more people listen to the record. It just felt the power balance of everything felt normal, ’cause sometimes making records, as when you do it for a job, um there’s just sometimes like a weird power imbalance in the room that is unspoken. And it was just really nice to not feel like that. It just felt like it felt at the beginning where you’re just all making music together and nobody’s… I don’t know, it just… it felt natural, a lot more natural in a way than it felt like, especially my last record.”

For an artist who spends most of her time touring, the meaning of “home” has changed, both as a physical place and an inner feeling. “I think feeling at home now I understand is feeling just like listening to my body and how it reacts to people around me.” Julia shared what home means to her. “And I think feeling at home feels like when I’m surrounded by people who I can fully trust like not only respect me as an artist, but also just really like me as a person. And that feels amazing. And I’ve never felt that as much as I feel that now. And how I felt making this record felt a lot like I was surrounded by people who time and time again proved to me that they respect me and they really like me as a person, and that was so reciprocal. And on like a practical sense, I think I’ve just spent a lot of the last two years like walking around where I live. I just walk a lot. I walked a lot to the studio, which is like an hour and 45 minutes away like by foot. And so, you know, it was so nice to do that before starting the day. And I think it just really helped me to feel really at home here.”

In this album, the song ‘If I Had the Hand of God’ stands out as a personal and vulnerable track. Julia told us how the song started while she was in Nashville. “That song started when I was in Nashville on a break between tours. I went there because I have some friends there, and I had been away for a long time. I was starting to question if it was worth it to be a touring musician when I felt like I was missing a lot of life back home. Once you’ve been doing it long enough, you realize, ‘Oh, I’m actually missing people’s whole lives.’ They’re growing and having all these life things, and you’re not there, so you become this strange figure in people’s lives because you’re always expected to not be there.”

“Nashville is a pretty weird place as a musician. It has really cool pockets, but it’s definitely where music meets money, and big parts of it almost feel like a theme park of music. It doesn’t feel connected to reality—it’s an odd place to visit as a musician, though I know lots of people who live there and love it.” She added about the song, “I was using the ‘Hand of God’ as a metaphor for saying, ‘If I were able to see the past and the future and have an overview of my life, would I still prioritize this? Am I too focused on this, and missing really crucial things that I’m going to regret missing when I’m older?’ So it was a metaphor for having a bigger perspective, which can sometimes feel impossible when you’re just on the ground doing your work.”

Another song that stands out just as much is ‘On God Sometimes’. It is a track that reveals her inner feelings, written during an artist residency in Iceland alongside artists from other fields. “I wrote that song in Iceland. I remember writing that song there, looking out at the fjord with whales coming in every day, and I felt quite insignificant in the best way possible.” She added, “Sometimes I feel like I’m writing songs to encourage myself to do something I’m not ready to do. Sometimes when you know you need to make a big change, you spend so long overthinking it, but you know you eventually have to. The whole song is saying, ‘Sometimes you just have to throw the whole thing out.’ Sometimes you have to do something very big and dramatic that’s going to be hard and will really upset someone, make someone angry, or disappoint somebody. But it’s kind of the only way through.”

Besides her inspirations and personal journey, The Gem was also inspired by 80s and 90s Australian movies like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Muriel’s Wedding, and Wake in Fright. “I was really those films, they are so tactile, and they can be like incredibly heartbreaking and melancholic, but they have so much whimsey and joy and it feels like part of me. So I was thinking about those films a lot.”

Looking back from her 2016 debut album Don’t Let the Kids Win to now, Julia believes her self from 10 years ago would be quite surprised to see how far she has come.

“I think I would be so surprised that I’ve made four records, because when I made my first record, I couldn’t even imagine that there would be another one. Every song that I liked and had written from the age of 18 up until 25 went onto that first record. It was so intense—it was my first experience touring and my first time being a public-facing person. It took a few years off my life with how intense it was. There were a few times, especially on tour, where I thought, ‘I don’t know if I actually want to do this.’ I didn’t know anyone else who had ever toured, had a record deal, or had a manager. I was the first one out of my whole friendship group. So if my past self knew, I think she would just be like, ‘Woah, you’re still going! That’s crazy, that’s cool.'”

Julia Jacklin as a Female Songwriter in a Male-Dominated Industry

In a music industry that is still mostly male-dominated, standing up for herself and believing in her own ideas is very important to her. “I think it’s really about trusting my own narrative, and not spending energy on things that I have no control over—so I can spend that energy on the music, myself, and my people. Especially as a woman, the music industry is still full of blokes.”

Julia added, “I try to change that balance in my work life. Now I only have one man in my touring party, which is very helpful for my sense of self. In the past, when I was experiencing misogyny, I was around men all the time, so it was a very isolating experience. Whereas now, everyone in the team can clock what’s happening immediately—you don’t need to convince anyone of what you’re experiencing because it’s a shared experience. On a practical level, it’s about not being shy to be proud of myself. That can be an uncomfortable place to be sometimes because it can be interpreted in strange ways in this world, but I am really proud of myself, and I really like the work. It’s as simple as that.”

For listeners who are just discovering her work through The Gem, Julia simply hopes her music serves whatever purpose they need it to. “I feel like I’m always like, ‘I hope you take whatever you need from it.’ I think there’s enough on there for everyone, so you’ll be able to find something in there. I just really like making music, and I’m grateful to be somebody who can provide that to other people. So I just really hope people get something out of it, and it helps them understand themselves or understand other people, even a tiny bit more.”