Jay Som on Her Big Return, Studio Bugbears, and Working on Her Tennis Game

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I loved Melina Duterte's first two records as Jay Som, but she's been so busy throughout the 2020s as a studio secret weapon that I honestly didn't know if we'd ever get another Jay Som record. Fear not: Tomorrow she returns with the excellent Belong, which picks up right where she left off to great success. I interviewed Melina way back around Anak Ko and it was great to hop on a call again and talk about the return of Jay Som as well as a host of other topics. Check it out:

Let's talk about the return of Jay Som as a recording entity.
It's been a great process so far. I've been doing some of this press stuff, and I've gotten to reflect a lot on the six years and how much I've done. A lot of people—a lot of friends, especially—are really happy that I'm back and active, and it feels like I never left.

To me, the six years hasn't felt that long. But it was not a unique experience to be so affected by COVID, and that was a point in time for me to take a break from being a musician. I was also a solo project, and I was curious to be a producer and an engineer, and to do something in music that didn't involve showing my face all the time and begging people to like me. That's kind of what it feels like sometimes, being a solo artist.

Basically, it felt like I went to school for that time and that balled into jobs—Boygenius, working with Lucy a lot, mixing and producing a bunch of bands and understanding what it felt like to be on the other side. By the time I got to finish up this record, I was back in the flow of it all and taking all of the techniques and skills I learned from working with other people and putting it into my own work, and it just felt a lot easier.

I'm also 31 now, so that makes a huge difference—just being more of an adult.

The press materials mentioned the cancellation of the tour in 2020 as an unplanned halt, and you also mentioned your career being affected by COVID.
I did feel a sense of relief, because it was honestly super convenient to have all my shit canceled. Even a couple of months before that, I canceled a European tour because, to be honest, I was going through some stuff mentally and I needed a break. I was going really hard for five years and saying "Yes" to everything, and that takes a toll on your body.

It's a tale as old as time: When you're on the road six-to-eight months out of the year, it does something to you mentally and physically, and I didn't have like a sense of a domestic life to go back to\ and a lot of friendships were failing. When I was in Japan and they announced that all of the shows were canceled except for ours and a couple others, we went back home and were supposed to go to Europe in March 2020—and then Trump announced the the ban for traveling in and out of Europe. I remember being devastated, but also like, "Oh, hell yeah." This is scary, but also I don't have to do this extremely hard thing that is making me low-key depressed—being a musician and having to sludge out all the hard stuff, sleeping on floors, not making any money on tours for the sake of getting bigger. So I was relieved, for sure.

I do think that, when you look at the 2010s in general and how artists gained prominence with the music press in that time, it seems like it might've been more demanding than it might be now.
Oh my God, yeah. It was super saturated back then. I think about this a lot, because I'm back in it now, and six years is a long time considering how much has changed when it comes to streaming. Even the music journalism from before—I used to see blogs all the time, and now I don't see that anymore. The little things aren't around as much. and the algorithm is different. Posting, back then, everyone would see your posts. Nowadays it's, like, 10 people—and the way to combat that is by posting every single day.

As an artist now—especially as an indie artist, if you're
small potatoes—you have to be super annoying, and that's been a lot for me to take in. The music industry work ethic also feels a little different—what people prioritize. It's very social media-based and so personalized. I'm not used to that. I come from everyone being mysterious and just being kind of goofy online, which is something I miss a lot. But that's just a symptom of getting old, so I can't really complain.

What do you feel like you learned from pre-pandemic times that helps you manage things differently now?
I've learned that, beneath it all, it's the music that still matters the most. I feel very lucky that I come from a time of Bandcamp, SoundCloud—pre-Spotify, in a way.
Fnding music on YouTube, there was a lot of organic reach, because I got to hone in on my musical skills a little more and tour around that. I feel lucky that it was always about the music, and it still is now.

I've learned how to keep a good head on my shoulders, because I see a lot of my peers—and a lot of friends—that are trying to do the same thing. Some people lose their way and stray off the path of wanting to just be famous, fast-forwarding to a certain spot—because there are a lot of people that get things handed to them, with connections and whatnot. Everything is about connections. I just try to laser in on working with people I love and really fuck with, and not losing sight of what really matters.

You mentioned how just the music discovery landscape has changed. What are some of your earliest memories of discovering music yourself as a listener?
I remember actually listening fully to albums—and I remember other people fully listening to albums. I remember conversations about flow, length, and how one song transitions into another. I've noticed now that it's so easy to zero in on singles, and there's so much emphasis on a couple songs being really good and the rest of the album being trash. That's something I miss a lot. I know there's quality albums now—I don't know why I'm talking shit.

I know what you mean, though. There was also this experience of buying CDs where maybe half of the record you didn't love, and half you really did—but because you bought it, you'd spend tons of time with all of it.
And there'd be the sleeper songs that you'd just have to listen to. I felt that way a lot when I discovered a lot of the Death Cab for Cutie albums when I used to shop at Barnes & Noble and buy all of the CDs. I came from a small town, so I didn't really have record shops around—but they had an indie section in Barnes & Noble.

I had the almost exact same experience with Death Cab. I grew up in Northern New Jersey, but I wasn't old enough to go into the city alone yet, so i bought You Can Play These Songs With Chords at Best Buy.
Oh, hell yeah.

It's really easy to romanticize the past, but there was something to that experience—a little bit more mystery to it, which obviously doesn't really exist anymore.
Yeah, I feel like I'm starting to understand boomers a little more. I'm like, "Oh, I get why you guys are little Grinches about certain things."

Well, that's the big fight about getting older in general. You start to look at younger people, trends, and opinions, and be like, "This is wrong—this isn't how I remember it." I always have to remind myself that I was 26 at some point too, and I had a lot of opinions that were probably annoying and I was mad that people weren't taking them seriously.
Yeah, it's definitely more of the system that pisses me off and not the kids. I have a lot of Gen Z friends now that are in music and I'm like, "Oh, you're figuring it all out. That used to be me." I'm really grateful that I had people my age back then giving me the advice and guidance that I had in my early twenties to be a musician in this world.

I'm really curious to hear you talk about lyrics, especially coming off of the Bachelor record to this one. Tell me about how your own lyrical perspective has shifted.
Writing lyrics in general is something that I still want to be better at. It's something I'm always thinking of, but it's also something that's so hard for me, and that's probably why my lyrics are the way they are. They can be a little vague, and for this record it was hard to compound certain themes—because, in six years, a lot of stuff happens, and people blur certain characters into one song. It felt freeing to justhave a clear path in certain songs and go with feelings versus "I want to write about this person." That 's my guiding light for writing lyrics.

Working with El on the Bachelor record was also an educational experience. They just be writing all the time. They write on a napkin if they have ideas. They have a notebook full of lyrics. That was super inspirational. They were talking about how it's like exercising—and it takes practice, just like anything, to get better at it. When you're not naturally gifted at that kind of thing, it takes a lot of work. Luckily, I had friends helping me with lyrics for Belong and it felt really fun, because I'd just come from writing sessions with with other artists for the last couple of years. I had some practice in going with the flow and coming up with ideas on the spot.

Talk to me more about what you've learned with working with so many other people as an engineer and producer. What goes into conflict resolution? I've previously talked with Sarah from Illuminati Hotties about this, too.
I was just talking about Sarah yesterday, and how fun it is to work with her. It's rare to be friends with another artist that also doubles as a producer and engineer. She's a literal badass, she's amazing. She's actually the reason why I switched to Pro Tools to record and produce people. I saw how she worked during the boygenius sessions in 2022, and I was like, "Wait, I want to be just like her. I need to get my head in the game."

Throughout the years, I've picked her brain about stuff too. We've talked about how it's all just dynamics, and it's going to be different across the board. You might have a band for two weeks, and they don't know how to take breaks and so you have to be like, "Hey guys, we don't need to be working all day—let's go on a walk, eat food, watch a movie." It's about being really good at conflict, but also anticipating certain things with people. When you've been in that situation before, you have a deeper understanding.

I'm always trying to do session work and pay people to work on my stuff too, because I need to understand how to conversate and express my needs and concerns. It's weird, it really feels like a skill—a sport, sometimes, working with people in the studio and handling those conflicts. It just makes you better creatively. A lot of people will tend to brush things off, but when you're straight to the point—like, "Hey, you're acting really shitty right now and I think you're hungry, can you eat a banana or take a break?"—nine times out of ten, I'm always right.

Do you have any red lines or bugbears when it comes to working in the studio?
100%. When I'm at my home studio, if people want to record with me, I don't want to go past nine or ten p.m. There's something like so strange about being in my house and it's midnight and we're going over time. Eventually, I wouldn't want to have my studio in my house, because it'd be nice to have separation—but it's about having a set time and goal, and then we're good. There's some people where you just need to stay up until 2 a.m being kind of insane and chasing the dragon for a tone or lyric, but I love to communicate immediately as well, and IO just don't want to be your cheerleader. I can help with anything—but I'm also, like, a human, so let's treat each other with respect and communicate anything up front. That usually sets the tone for people to be themselves, because it's an insanely intimate job sometimes. I'm spending weeks with people that I don't know sometimes, so you have to get really close. It's the same feeling as going on tour with people.

I was talking to my partner about this too, because they're obsessed with Love Island and they're also a musician and have toured for for a decade now. We laugh at the people on Love Island because it feels like they're just musicians too. They always say, "No one really understands what it's like to be here in the villa—two weeks feels like a year for us," and I'm like, "Honestly, that's what touring feels like." Aand that's also what it feels like to be in the studio, when you're surrounded by so many people and you have this energy and things happen really quick and fast—especially when you're connecting through something as spiritual as music.

You toured as part of the band with boygenius, which I was honestly kind of astonished at how much of a cultural moment it ended up being. I'm curious to hear what that was like for you.
Best time of my life. I say it all the time. Also, an easy job. All I had to do was be a hired gun: Sit down, shut up, do my job, learn parts. They made me play, like, eight instruments, and it was just a really amazing, fun, welcoming environment. I got to see the ins and outs of what it meant to to be a hired gun, but also to see how Phoebe, Lucy, and Julian worked.

Like you said, it was a significant cultural moment in that year. Even my parents would see them—and when adults start talking about an artist, that's when you know they made it. Seeing the bond between the three of them and how hard they worked to keep that ship afloat was really special—and I'm still friends with the people I've met on that tour. I played tennis with one of them the other day. It's a lifelong, lasting experience, and one of those things where I'm kind of glad that it was short-lived, because there's so many good memories attached to it.

How's your tennis game?
I'm so bad. I'm at the point where i'm just hitting balls.