Now five months after her graduation from USC Thornton School of Music, singer-songwriter Jamie Gelman is taking music full-time. On the side of her part-time job, she writes for other artists, including her friend, Chelsea Jordan, and is releasing music under her own artist brand. Her recent release “Worst Enemy” pulls from Noah Kahan and Lizzy McAlpine in a story detailing self-criticism.
Annenberg Media talked with Gelman about navigating her roles as a songwriter and artist.
Note: This episode was recorded in March.
Full transcript has been edited for clarity.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: So hi, I’m Jamie Gelman, I am from New York City. I studied music industry at the Thornton School of Music and I graduated in December.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: So, I am primarily a songwriter for other artists. So I am in the room with artists helping tell their stories and curate the kind of narrative that they’re trying to sing about. For my own artist project, I do alternative pop singer-songwriter stuff. I relate my stuff to Clairo, Lennon Stella, that vibe. But I work pretty closely with a lot of R&B artists and that’s a huge influence for me, just like having grown up listening to it. And I also write house toplines. So I’ll do house music. I try to do everything in between, but I’d say those are my core, my main genres.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I don’t remember this, but my parents say that they had this Fisher-Price piano. I waddled over to it and figured out " Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” And then my dad was like, ‘I think we should maybe invest in some lessons and a real piano.’ And so after that, since I was like five or six, I just started taking piano lessons with a classical instructor. So I was playing very old school, you know, Bach, Beethoven. I was playing these classical pieces and a six-year-old, seven-year-old me was like, ‘I hate this.’ It made me hate the piano. And then my parents, they saw something — a talent in me or they just saw that I enjoyed the act of playing, but not necessarily the pieces. So they encouraged me to maybe switch instructors before I quit and so I started working with an instructor who taught me like old school rock and jazz, and that completely shifted my perspective on piano and it completely influences the way that I play keys today.
I started playing everything from, like The Beatles to Stevie Wonder, The Stones, like Sly and the Family Stone. Anything from the 60s to the 80s, I was pretty proficient in and it was so fun and I learned how to play with so much swing and whatever. All of this is to say I wouldn’t be writing music now were it not for those fundamental piano, kind of years. And then after that, I played keys in my friend Sofia’s band throughout high school, and I got to play at super cool venues that are classic in New York. And in my senior year of high school, I released my first EP, which is no longer on any platforms, but it was a way of me experimenting with the writing part of music, of singing over my keys, because for a while I was just playing keys. But then this was a really nice time for me to learn how to produce, arrange, compose and write this whole project. And that’s what kind of was the basis for me being like, ‘Alright, at least I want a minor in music.’
Then I applied to USC on a whim, because I knew it had a good music school. I actually applied as a journalism major, because I knew I loved to write, I just didn’t really know if it was through music or just through prose. And when I got in and started seeing that you could in fact, do music as a full-time thing, I started making friends in Thornton. My favorite classes were my Thornton classes. I started realizing that this was something that could be more than a hobby. But the point is, COVID happened. I changed my major to music industry when I realized, you know, I just thoroughly enjoy this the most and what’s holding me back is fear of failure. I’m just gonna say ‘F— it, let’s just do it.’ I came back to USC as a music business major and from then on, I started DMing random people, expanding my network, going to events, and saw some success through that. And that kind of inspired me to keep going and now I’m here.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I mean, it’s really scary graduating and coming to terms with your future and what you’re actually going to be doing, how that can provide a sustainable income for you. You are grappling with different problems all of a sudden, but you’re also no longer dealing with a lot of BS that you might have had to in college. So post-grad is really scary, chaotic, confusing, but also very exciting in that I just have so much autonomy over my day, I don’t have to take that one geology class that I just have no idea what I’m doing there, and what I’m learning. I can just really devote all my time to music and bettering my craft, which is really cool.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: What’s helped me a lot in the past few months, is trying to not think too hard about anything too far in the future. It’s so easy to be like, ‘Well, I’m in this job they don’t really f— with or all my friends are doing this, but I’m still super behind’ or in my case, I don’t really have a 9 to 5. I’m not making a consistent six-figure salary like my consulting friends are. You know what I mean? It’s so easy to think too much about what you’re doing and what you’re not doing, especially when you graduate. And it’s like, ‘Wait, I’m an adult. Now I should be doing XYZ.’ I think it’s just like literally taking things day by day, week by week, and situating yourself in a place that for now feels good to you and that is somewhat fulfilling, or gratifying. It’ll just allow you to be more at peace and not have to be stressing so much about future milestones. Even being present with implementing a morning routine and going from there. That has brought me so much peace of mind. In a time when there’s very little clarity, you’re figuring out so much, there’s so many moving parts, just things that will ground you and not allow you to live in the future.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: “Just a Kid” was narrating my post-grad experience to a tee. I was really frustrated and I went into the studio one day with the producer of the song Rich Tuorto who is in New York and I didn’t know what I wanted to write about that day, or if I was even writing for myself. And I just started to vent about how this process is really driving me crazy and I just feel like I’m not ready for the change. And I just still feel like I’m, you know, in high school, growing up and I still have so much to learn. And I just didn’t feel ready for this transition, even though I was. I just started singing these words like ‘Something’s wrong, but I don’t know what I can’t put my finger on it.’ And that became the verse of “Just a Kid,” and we wrote that song together in a few hours. And it felt so satisfying to just kind of speak to that narrative. And I think that it really resonates with my peers who have also just graduated. But also my parents’ friends were like, ‘I still feel this way. I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing sometimes.’ So it was really cool to write a song that resonated with so many different people in different contexts. But it was also cathartic for me to sing about because music and songwriting at its core is like a way of speaking your mind and parsing through your thoughts in a melodic, pretty way I guess. So it was really cool to write about that. And then it was my first song as an artist.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I’ll write with artists who are grappling with things I’ve never and will never deal with, especially when it comes to, you know, racial prejudices or biases against someone with a different sexuality. Those are things that I can’t really speak to, per se, but what I can do is provide the safest space possible with that artist to kind of talk about it and I guess be a really good friend/therapist in that situation. Where I’m not only I’m like, ‘Alright, yeah, I’ve been through that exact same thing,’ but it’s like, ‘Alright, I’ve experienced hardships and have felt similar ways’ or ‘I really, truly empathize with you and let’s work through this in a way that you think is best.’ I don’t know if that makes any sense. But I write, for example, with this artist, Chelsea Jordan, who is one of my best friends, but she sometimes will go through things that I’ve never experienced and because we have that bond, where she can just tell me anything, and we can just like work through it, I find that that’s enough to really tell her story, just through me being a good listener and having the tools with me to just shape her story that she’s made.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I have a rule where, unless circumstances don’t allow it, I need to at least get a coffee with the artist I’m working with first and break that barrier. Because it’s so weird to just walk into a room and be like, ‘Hey, I’m Jamie. Tell me your deepest, darkest secrets and trauma. And let’s write about it and we’ll call it a day.’ I hate that. It’s so disingenuous, it makes for a less profound writing experience. So if I can, I’ll grab coffee with the artist because it also allows you to assess like, ‘Do I vibe with the artist? Does the artist vibe with me?’ and if not, then we probably shouldn’t be writing together. But that coffee or even if we don’t have time for that, like sitting in the room during the session and spending the first two hours just talking about stupid shit or about something that will ultimately lead to a more serious topic or something that they want to write about. It doesn’t work otherwise, so you really have to make that effort as a writer to connect genuinely.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I had this one song that I co-wrote with the artist Emei called “Late to the Party” and it went viral and the song got like a million streams in like less than two months, which was crazy for us. We were just these small artists and writers. It made no sense. So that was a very memorable experience for me, because it was the first time I had such public validation of my craft. My friends would always be like, ‘Yeah, your music is so great. I love this song,’ or my parents obviously are so supportive and think every song that I create is like a gift from God and whatever. But finally hearing random people tell me and tell the artists that this song was really impactful and good. Someone tattooed our lyrics on their arm, like that was crazy. So that moment for me was a huge turning point in terms of my confidence level to really pursue this seriously. So that’s my first answer. And my second answer is I played a show at the Viper Room in Hollywood and my parents were there. That’s why I booked the show because they were going to be here and one of my lyrics in “Worst Enemy” is ‘Make Dad prouder’ and singing that with him watching and smiling and videoing me was just so validating as well, because all I want to do, obviously as many kids do, they want to make their parents proud and remind them that they worked so hard to create this life for us for a reason. And we’re making it worthwhile for them. So, I just really vividly remember, like, looking at him. And then the feeling of joy and pride, it was just a really sweet experience.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: The challenge I deal with almost every day is obviously, it’s a very slow burn unless you have this viral hit, which honestly, I don’t really want right now because the faster you go up, the faster you kind of fall down is what I’ve witnessed. The slow burn in a songwriter’s life or professional trajectory is really hard to grapple with sometimes because it’s not like every session I go to I’m getting paid and it’s not like every session I go to automatically leads to a song being released the next day. So having that willpower within me, and being determined to go into these rooms, and spend four to eight hours in this windowless studio, writing with an artist who may or may not like the song, who may or may not choose to release it, and even if they do, it will probably take a year and a half, for it to go from creation to release. You have to be so internally motivated because no one else is really supporting you. I mean, outside of my friends and family. It’s like, you gotta just keep pushing and keep your head down and work really hard and I think some days I’ll wake up and be like, ‘I need a path.’ Our peers have these laid out trajectories for them. Like, you follow these steps, you’ll make a lot of money and you’ll have this routine, and you won’t have to worry about… Sometimes I’m like, ‘Should I just do that? Should I just drop everything?’ Life would be so much easier, there would be so many fewer unknowns in my life and then I remember why I’m doing this and like I said, like those moments of validation make it all worth it. But, it’s totally anxiety-inducing and every other day I’m like, ‘Oh God, like when is this gonna — when is my work gonna pay off?’ So it’s really hard a lot of the time.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I truly love what I do. That’s the only reason I’m doing it is because it brings me so much joy and it just feels so right. I feel so lucky that I found something that just makes sense to me and I believe that I’m good at, and I’m really, really passionate about it. I never dread a session. I always look forward to that. And I’ve never really found anything else that I’ve responded this way to. I also just think I’ve put so much time into it already. Four years of my life I’ve been devoting pretty seriously to this. So why stop now? I’ve got momentum. And yeah, I guess what I said with my advice to people who are about to enter post-grad life, I just try not to think about it too hard. I do it day by day. I’m like, ‘Alright, who do I have a session with today? This will be great. We’re gonna write a great song and that’ll be that.’ It’s not like, ‘Well, what if the song isn’t good? And what if the artist doesn’t like me? And what if this artist never uses the song,’ whatever. I just have to trust the process, leaving everything to the universe, or not everything, but leaving the trivial details to the universe and allowing a form of acceptance in what will come and what is meant for me. That has brought me so much peace of mind I cannot even express, so that’s how I kind of stay optimistic day to day.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I think I was very turned off by the whole artist project thing for a while because I was concerned that people would misconstrue my title. They would see me as an artist and not think I’m a writer that they could invite into a room. I didn’t think that those lines could be blurred. I soon realized that was not the case and that it was actually harming me by not putting out my own music. Because of how casually people treat Spotify and Apple Music now, because of how low the barrier to entry is to just drop a song, you can treat it as a little resume of sorts. You can just put all the music that you like on the platform, and it’s just another way, another medium for people to find you and appreciate your artistry.
I was also very deterred from having an artist project because I never felt confident enough in a brand, my own brand that I could promote to others. I never really wanted to be forward-facing. I don’t really enjoy that. But now I kind of realized I don’t need to do the full superstar aesthetic thing. You have people like Lizzie McAlpine who she’s just herself. She’s not really glamorous or glitzy. She’s just super chill and I think unapologetically just like Lizzie. And I think seeing people like her remind me that your artist brand doesn’t need to be a Lady Gaga, Madonna, Beyoncé. It doesn’t have to be this big distinct brand. I’m just myself and if people like that they can follow along. I just put less pressure around the title of an artist and allowed myself to kind of flow between them more gracefully.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: So I was in Rich’s studio in Bushwick, New York. We started listening to reference tracks. I was really into Noah Kahan’s latest album and I really love Clairo, like I said, and just a kind of alternative pop sound that I could somehow make my own. And also Lizzy McAlpine is a huge influence. So, we’re getting into a groove. And I try not to think too hard when I’m writing because when I start to think too hard, it’s never good. It’s more methodical and structured than I want it to be. So I really like to just sit and mumble s— until something makes sense. And that’s how I feel like I’m tapping into something deeper within me that I can kind of turn into something if that makes sense. So I was on the keys, he was on the guitar, playing some cool melodies putting down some sort of percussion and I literally was just like, ‘I drink my coffee black … I lack peace of mind a lot.’ I don’t think I had that second lyric yet, but it was like…
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I just sang that and then I went into the next line, like ‘Long drives and plane rides / Get me in my bag every time / I cry to Noah Kahan like I am from Vermont.’
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: Because my Spotify Wrapped had recently come out and it said that my listening habits were like that of 80 or 90% of people in Vermont and I was like, ‘What.’ It’s because I listened to Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan and that was memed on social media. I remember everyone was showing where their listening habits were from and I thought that was so funny. So that was where that last line came from and I wanted to give him a shout-out because he had recently been making such an impact on my listening habits. He was introducing me to folk music, and I hadn’t really been listening to it that much. So shout out Noah Kahan, love him. And from there, I was like, ‘Where do I want to take this?’ Because the hook of a song generally is the message. It’s like where do all these storylines that you’re talking about in the verse kind of come together structurally? That’s generally how I write my hooks. And it was like, ‘I’m just being super self-deprecating. And all my thoughts right now are talking about things that I do wrong, or that I’m not proud of.’ So then soon after the hook was like, ‘I’m my worst enemy.’ And, you know, finding ways that I can say that in a flowery, rhyming lyrical way.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I’ve been in therapy since I was in like eighth grade and so I think it’s taught me to be very introspective and I’m very aware of my tendencies, my mental inclinations, the way that I kind of operate, for better or for worse. And so I’ve always been aware of how I’m just not nice to myself in my head or I’m really hard on myself and it was the first time I had ever really verbalized it. But it made so much sense, because obviously, all of the comparisons that we’re taught to do today, and how much we’re exposed to that we’re able to compare ourselves to like the perfect body, the perfect trip, the perfect girl, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect life. I not only don’t have that, but I’m like the antithesis of that. I don’t — I’m like, bad at this and I have really ugly this and I’m too this, and I feel like without even noticing, especially girls are every day at least 10 times a day, subconsciously comparing and getting down on themselves about something that they’re not. So putting that into words and putting that into a song again, like “Just a Kid, " it’s a nice way to remind people that they’re not alone. But also was a really interesting way for me to kind of point out something that I do, but don’t necessarily ever verbalize and be like, ‘Hey, I’m actually really hard on myself and I actually have a lot of people that give me s— already.’ Not a lot, but there are people out there who don’t — you have enemies, you have people out there that don’t like you. You need to be on your team because if you’re not on your own team, no one else will be. And that was a nice wake-up call for me. And it was really nice to hear how many of my friends and peers resonated with the story.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: Yeah, so after “Worst Enemy” came out, I was very burned out with the TikTok stuff with kind of talking about myself asking people to do things for me like pre-save or stream. I kind of want to retreat back to my songwriting hole for a little bit and I have several irons in the fire. I have some of the best music I’ve ever co-written coming out under the artist project Chelsea Jordan. She is about to release some crazy music and it’s been a crazy journey writing that with her. So I’m really excited for that and just a lot of one-off singles that should be coming out in the next couple of months. It’s kind of weird because it’s not really up to me at that point. I’ve co-written these songs, some of them a year ago, some of them a few weeks ago and it’s just a waiting game. We’ll see when the artist chooses to release them but I’m in full songwriting mode right now.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
Gelman: I feel most fulfilled by a song that I’ve written when it makes someone else feel something. Whether it elicits anger, or joy, laughter. If I can make someone feel something with my music, I know that I’ve done something right. If there’s something that they have stuck in their head, or that they can’t stop thinking about, or a witty lyric that made them giggle or a sad lyric that made them remember their ex. Anything that can elicit an emotion, then I’ve done something right.
[Musical Interlude: “Worst Enemy” by Jamie Gelman]
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