PALEJOY On the Making Of “What a Sad Little Life, Jane”
How does "What a Sad Little Life, Jane" reflect your musical journey and growth as a band?
Jamie: When we started the band we wanted to be super collaborative and this track really showcases that. Kieran wrote the guitar parts, me and Dale added lyrics and together we made a proper song out of it.
Kieran: Palejoy was always about it being a merger and with this track it’s a perfect example of that.
Dale: I think this track along with the last couple of singles we put out really shows where we are heading with the band. I think we’ve established our sound and I feel like it’s really fine-tuned our approach to writing.
Were there any challenges or breakthrough moments during the songwriting process for "What a Sad Little Life, Jane?"
Kieran: It was probably one of the most straight forward songs we’ve worked on to be honest. It all just slotted together— we all felt the vibe of it straight away.
Jamie: It all came together pretty fast, after jamming Kieran’s chords through a few times I found some spare lyrics that fit the tune perfectly.
Dale: The moment it clicked for me was writing the guitar lick along with the line “bringing me back to life.” I’m all about finding a hook when writing and when I laid that down I just thought “that’s the one!”
What impact do you hope "What a Sad Little Life, Jane" will have on your audience?
Jamie: I hope it shows that we're really into this, we're putting something real, straight from our own experiences out there in song form and I hope more and more people see us and connect with it.
Dale: To echo what Jamie said, I hope people can connect with it. Grief is something we all experience, and whilst the events that take place will vary from person to person, we all go through the same emotions. As writers, we all pride ourselves on writing from our own experiences so we can express a true human element in our music and I hope that resonates with people who listen.
Kieran: To showcase the darker side of the band— that we’re more than just some silly sad boys on the surface, that we run much deeper.
Can you tell us more about you as a band?
Dale: We’ve been a band for a little over 2 years now, but this isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve all been part of various projects since our teenage years (especially Jamie!). That experience has really helped us hit the ground running and move forward quite quickly.
We formed whilst I was still with my old band Alkanes and Kieran and Jamie were with Broadsea. It was such an easy transition into this band, we’ve all known each other for years and toured together as well. Our music tastes align and that gave us a clear direction for this band.
In our short time as a band, we’ve already done some pretty cool things. We’ve made music we love, played with some amazing bands such as Split Chain, played our own sold-out headline show, had a hilarious “viral” moment on X and now we’re heading out on our first run of UK shows, venturing out of Scotland for the first time!
What role do you feel emotions play in your music, and how do you channel them into your performances?
Dale: It plays a huge role and it’s so important to who we are as a band. I want our work to feel real, raw and honest and that makes it something the listener can invest in too. Putting real experiences and emotions into writing brings out more passion and energy in us as performers as it’s something we really feel and believe in when we’re playing live.
Kieran: If you’ve caught us on socials, you’ll probably think “these guys don’t take themselves too serious” which is true— we never wanted to be seen like this, we are just a bunch of silly sad boys but we take our music seriously and the emotion that we put into that music, truly represents who we are.
Jamie: I think the emotions are what make our music, it’s all I look for in ours and others’ music and I definitely feel it gives us extra energy on stage. We have goofy song titles and are goofy guys in general but when it comes to the songs themselves, we keep it real, any other way I feel like we would be lying or showing off to our audience.
