After meeting up with fans backstage, JCON is having a quick makeup retouch while we talk about our hair colors. After getting her crowning glory transformed into different styles through the years (shoutout to her 2018 “JCON” album blonde era), Jess Connelly insists that she loves her current one—black, thick, and long—the most.
The current JCON also bursts with confidence and sweet edginess, while championing vulnerability, also as seen in her 2022 album “Bittersweet” and latest single release “Heaven Sent.” The contemporary R&B-soul musician, who claims to be more spontaneous than organized in songwriting, always expects unpredictability in her process.
“Whatever the sound is that I feel from the music that’s being created, or the beat, I can have an idea [on] what I wanna say. But it doesn’t usually end up that way. Or, I might come in and write about something, but then, a whole different melody or words would just flow out of me. My main thing, or what I’ve realized now that I’m older, is just to ‘think less, do more,’” she says—and that last line couldn’t be more fit as an anti-procrastination alarm.
Meanwhile, when it comes to deciding when a song is good to go, she quickly responds, “If I love it. That’s pretty much it.”
She also adds, “Honestly, there’s a lot of ones that I hate, and I don’t know why. I overanalyze a lot, but other people around me will be like, ‘No, this is a good song.’ Or, ‘this is my favorite.’ This is, of course, before [the song] comes out. So sometimes, other people convince me that it’s good. I guess you never know what is a favorite of other people.”
On Oct. 13, her listeners—who each has a favorite for sure—flocked in a late-night space in Makati to experience her discography IRL through her intimate concert “JCON Live,” and the millennial singer-songwriter had many words to describe her pre-show headspace: “I feel excited, anxious, relaxed, and ready at the same time. I’m doing good.”
In our Scout Backstage episode below, you can check out the rest of our conversation with JCON (and find out which particular thing she declares as a “triple Gemini”).
Spoiler alert: Keep your tabs open—she has a new project arriving in January.
Read more:
Listen to these local R&B artists to fuel your Y/N fantasies
Six stages of grief—the ‘unable to attend a K-pop concert’ edition
Art by Ashley Valdenarro
Photos from @jessconnelly on Instagram