Interview: JAWNY on The Story of Hugo EP, staying authentic and the pressure of going viral.

JAWNY is the 25-year-old Bay Area born, Philadelphia adopted and Los Angeles based carnival-funk lover boy pop musician who brought us the 2019 indie anthem ‘Honeypie’. He’s since inked a deal with Interscope, quickly putting out his debut collection For Abby and has now followed up its narrative with another perspective, The Story of Hugo.

In creating these fictional worlds, JAWNY tells me “When I did the For Abby narrative, I feel like I only told the story of the love between two people. I didn’t really get too much into the person or the people. You heard the girl talk a few times and you knew how the dude felt through the songs he put on the mixtape but I didn’t really tell the story of, you know, how he got there. How he was in the predicament, and it was just eating at me.”

But that’s not the only thing that drives him. He’s an artist of authenticity and not afraid of scrapping and redoing to do his art justice. In fact, his music video for ‘Honeypie’ was made three times before JAWNY selected his favourite. His For Abby collection was entirely scrapped after he finished a tour right before its release and realised its themes weren’t where he was as an artist or personally.

“As long as I stand by it and it makes me happy and I’m proud of it, then most likely other people are going to like it too… I was chasing what I thought my fans expected… and I’ve kind of just been riding that out ever since, never looked back, not chasing anything anymore,” he said of period trying to follow up his success of ‘Honeypie’.

He’s a larger-than-life man with some tall tales in his work. If you’re looking for an artist to stretch your sonic tastebuds, be sure to check out JAWNY and the full interview below.

The Story of Hugo is OUT NOW.

Tait McGregor

@taitmcgregor