INTERVIEW: Janine returns to Australia on her 2024 headline world tour: "I just feel so lucky that my audience is amazing and so respectful and so kind and just the best. I feel really grateful."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Paige Strabala
Published: 6 March 2024

New Zealand native, Los Angeles based singer-songwriter and producer Janine creates gorgeous R&B-soul-pop music and has recently moved into a slinky electronica sound which has an effortless cool, an experimental, out of the box edge and always evokes the sensation of a night time drive, or late hours in the coolest club in town.

After building a worldwide fan base over the past decade, Janine took a break from touring before returning to the stage in 2023 and this month sees her return to Australia and New Zealand on her headline World Tour, performing in Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne from 7 March.

Timed perfectly for her tour, Janine has released new single ‘Meet Me’, her first new music for 2024. It is a mesmerising electronic track with tinges of R&B and a chorus of distorted vocal. Lyrically it speaks of an all consuming love for your partner, both physically and emotionally. “I just wanna stay here in your arms baby…you’re the ocean that I wanna bathe in / You’re my water baby I’m your wave.”

Janine first broke through in 2013 when her EP Dark Mind hit number 2 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and also number 2 on the iTunes Top R&B/Soul Albums Chart. She launched her first tour across the US in 2018 and has increasingly attracted not only a huge fanbase, but critical acclaim from MTV and Billboard.

A truly independent artist who writes, produces and sometimes engineers her music, while also directing and editing the creatives, Janine is a performer who can effortlessly capture your soul. A remarkable live performer, her shows are not to be missed and we recently sat down with her to chat all about her upcoming shows.

Hi Janine! You are such ridiculously creative talent nugget like , just absolutely wonderful
That is the absolute best start to an interview I've ever heard! Talent nugget is probably my favourite thing anyone's ever said to me. I love that.

You should have been hearing it your whole life! You are like straight off the back of your recent return, sell out gig at The Troubadour Theatre in LA, and now you're heading back home to Auckland for a show and then you’re coming here to Australia to do a tonne more shows. This is insane. And you also record all your songs in a cupboard! Am I right?
Essentially, yeah, I've been recording in my wardrobe between wherever I'm travelling, because I have my own setup and I just really like the comfort of being able to do things at home. Surrounded by clothes that block the sound out in a good way!

Does that ever throw you when you go from the cupboard to a sellout crowd of faces and go ‘oh, shit, there are other people!’
Well, I hadn't performed in so long before the Troubadour shows, so I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't expecting to sell it out, so that just blew my mind in the best way. The energy of walking onto stage at that show was just so moving. I nearly felt like crying just walking on stage. The energy for the whole show was incredible. It’s kind of the same for me, I think they're both a very honest and real way of doing things. At my shows, I feel very connected to my audience, and when I'm doing things at home, I feel very connected in this very small humble setting, if that makes any sense.

100%. Your music in particular, not just your style, but even in the way you sing, it's like you're clasped around a mug of tea. It's very personable.. And I love hearing that that can play out in a live show, you're able to get the audience to just come with you and join this very personal moment. That's quite beautiful.
I love that, that is such a beautiful way to describe it. I'm very honoured by that. I’m very, very lucky because I genuinely feel like I've got the best fans in the world. I couldn't ask for nicer people and it does kind of feel like everybody is like one. That sounds odd to say, but it does feel like a real collective. I've met people that became friends at my show, or people formed relationships. It feels like everyone's in it together, I just have such a beautiful group of people. I've been to concerts before and not everyone is awesome. But for my own shows, I just feel so lucky that the audience is amazing and so respectful and so kind and just the best. I feel really grateful.

Your single ‘Meet Me’ is out today and it is beautiful. I can't believe we've already got like the third single of the upcoming album. It's a little bit of a new sound for you, but it still feels very human and very personal. Are these the kind of sounds you've been toying with yourself for a while now?
Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of different music that I wasn't listening to before. For a lot of years, I wasn't really that interested in electronic music whereas now I've listened to it a lot and I'm just soaking in a lot of different things. I'm also at a time where I'm just a lot more open I think than I've been. I'll know if something feels like me, I'm not trying to go out and create something to fit any trend. I'm just not closed off to something because it doesn't fit what I would traditionally do. With ‘Meet Me’ it was really just a fun playful thing where we were messing around with recording my vocal slowly and then speeding it up to see if we could create any kind of vocal samples that we could build an instrumental from. I wasn't planning on using a whole pitch chorus, we just were like, ‘This sounds really cool’. It was a bit of a risk, but I think it's good to come out and do something that are a bit different, but at the same time, it feels very me.

I like that. That's a good goal. On that, you are all encompassing in your work, you run more than your own ship, you run your own battalion. I wanted to know, does that come from - in the nicest possible way - a sort of obsessive need for creative control?
Probably a little bit! I'd also say there's so many layers to that. I'm at a place now where I think my judgement is a lot better as well. So I know what I like and I want to work with other people and I’m in such a collaborative spirit now where I can find people and I can see that we're going to click. I do think early in your career, you can become quite closed off, because you can meet people who aren't in sync with you, personality wise or creatively or whether they’re just out to screw you over I had a combination of things, and then you grow and then I've become a lot more open. I think as we grow older, we become more kind and acknowledge other what other people's thoughts.

I've also started to understand the people I want to be around and I want to create with and I feel really blessed that I just keep meeting such incredible people like Monro, who produced ‘Meet Me’, and it allows me to let go and I don't want to micromanage everything, I just want to know what feels good. And I'm finding people who can do that with me that can push me in different directions, but still feels good. In terms of the other stuff, I am definitely ready to not do everything myself! I love doing artwork and little videos, it's fun for me to change gears but I definitely am at a place of wanting to build a team and open up. There's so many incredible people in the world that can do things better than I can in their fields. Sometimes people can be closed off just because they haven't found the right people yet and for me early on, I've been like that, I've just not known what to look for so I closed off. Whereas now I'm open but with the understanding of where I should be open.

Your career is very interesting from a locations point of view, we can even hear that in your music. I can only speak from Australia's perspective on the fact that there's very little room here made for women wanting to actually make music. It's like we have one person that does R&B, we have one person that does alt-pop and that’s it. And so often some of our amazing artists have to go to LA or London just to get anywhere. Is that something you experienced as well?
Because I've done so much of my own producing, recording and writing, I could probably do it from anywhere. The major change for me when I started out being from New Zealand is that we don't have as many people, so when you are creating music that's a bit niche there's a lot less people to perform to. For me when I went to the States, and I did my first show people just gravitated towards me and loved me and gave me this energy that I hadn't experienced so I thought that's where I should go. I can say I'm blown away by the support I get from Australia, considering I've never performed there. So I do feel very, very grateful that there are people coming to the show. I will say that it's become so much more important for me as I get older to really make it in New Zealand, and it kind of hurts that I'm not doing as well in New Zealand as I am in the States.

As women in any industry, we've got to fight a lot harder, especially being in rooms we weren't traditionally in like producing. One of the things that's always bothered me is when I've co-produced something with another male, it always says ‘produced by the male’ never by ‘Janine and the male’ which drives me insane. I'm always big on everyone getting credit for what they deserve. There’s some things now where I let things go a lot more for the sake of the music, because I know what's getting out to people and I know my music predominantly inspires women and helps them. That's the main goal these days, just to make sure I can keep getting it out to women and helping in any way that I can.

I think that’s such a beautiful circle, when we are young and from what we consider a remote place, the whole goal is usually I need to get to the city, I'm going to make it in LA or New York. And then to have done that, you’re now think ‘I now need to make it in New Zealand’.
it's weird, it feels like it's harder, which is so strange. I've done the hard grind a lot younger in places like New York so it's hard to go backwards and go from a sold out show with everyone knowing the words to coming to maybe performing for my family and a couple of people who know me - hopefully not the case! That fear of trying to find people and go back to those smaller spaces, it is humbling, but it's scary after so many years of building to go back to to feel like you have to prove yourself again.

You said you make music for women, which I think is absolutely wonderful, particularly when it comes out like it's for you, you know where it's going and then that also becomes part of its intent, which I think comes from the absolute right space for female centric art to come from.
I mean I love when it affects affects men, or anybody that relates to it. I don't really go out with the intention of being like ‘this has to be for this’. I'm creating something that is from a genuine place and with that truth and that care of my experience as a woman. I think all of that does come forward to others and hopefully they can feel that as well. But I do absolutely love that energy. I've been so inspired by so many strong women that are doing incredible things. At the shows I meet people that go through things but are so strong and really connect to the music and I just feel so incredibly honoured when I meet these people and that they listened to my music.

On that who were those women, those singers those creators that made you go ‘hat's that's what I'm going to do’. Who was your goddess?
Early on, I loved Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and then a lot of in the R&B stuff like Aaliyah. Donna Summer was in there too. But the first couple of women that I really looked up to was those two completely different powerhouse singers Celine Dion and Mariah Carey in terms of their vocal ability and their music. But I've followed so many different genres through time and there's a lot of different people that obviously have affected me.

And just to circle back to the tour for a moment you do you create these gorgeous ‘rooms’, and you have such beautiful fans and you create these intimate moments. Is there anything in particular that you're excited to be doing or people should be looking forward to for the tour?
In terms of Australia, I just can't wait to meet everybody. I've not been in Australia in over 10 years and I've never performed in Sydney before or a headlining show in Melbourne before . I've done some open mics and stuff but over 10 years ago. So for me, I just absolutely got excited the other day on the plane to Auckland about going to Australia as well and just meeting people, I genuinely I'm like, ‘Who are these people listening to my music?’ and I want to thank them genuinely. It makes me excited to see what the scene looks like here ?How do people feel? What songs are they listening to? Because it changes depending on where people are, so I'm just really, really excited to feel that energy and meet people. I genuinely love meeting people, it means so much to me. So I'm really excited about that.

Oh, that's lovely! Janine, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Of course, thank you so much for having me! I love what you guys are doing and I'm grateful to be a part of it.

‘Meet Me’ is out now via Little Mixtape Records. You can stream here.
Follow Janine on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.