SURVIVING THE TWITTER TROLLS
‘Gigglegate’ victim coming home
Call it a sign of the times. But in a fairly short period, Jocelyn Alice experienced both the heady highs and sordid lows of fame via social media. First, the highs. In 2014, the Calgary songwriter released the slinky pop tune Jackpot to YouTube. It caught fire and in 2015 landed on Spotify’s U.S. Top 10 list of the most viral songs.
It was enough of a success story that Alice was asked to perform our national anthem two years later at the start of the majorleague baseball all-star game in Miami. While singing, she caught a glimpse of some flag-waving Canadians in the crowd and gave a little giggle. Yep, it was one giggle. But the response was immediate. Fuelled by a twisted sense of patriotism and bad manners, Twitter trolls quickly emerged and were determined to turn the incident into a national scandal. There were news stories for days; it was even dubbed Gigglegate.
All in all, not a particularly pleasant experience one might think. So it may be surprising to learn which of these two social-media episodes Alice describes as “almost one of the best things that ever happened to me.” The hit song ? Nope. It was the baseball thing.
“Spiritually, it reminded me that I actually do know myself,” the singer said in an interview with Postmedia. “If other people want to question my intentions or say that I would shame a country that I couldn’t be prouder to come from, then that’s going to be their day. They can go on the internet and talk all this shit about me and they can have a great time doing that because it’s just not me. It was such a blessing to see how many people that have known me and have supported me and know my heart defend me. I didn’t have to say anything. I had this army of people. I was really touched.”
Alice survived the Twitterstorm and her response nearly a year later proves that the now L.A.-based singer-songwriter has not lost her focus or that stubborn streak of Calgary defiance. It was presumably these things that fuelled her during her early years in the city, when she would hustle unpaid gigs at the Calgary Stampede. On Thursday, she returns to the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth to play the Coca-Cola Stage.
“Finally getting paid to play the biggest show in Calgary is just wild,” she says.
Calgary shows, of course, always feel like a homecoming for the artist. This one comes after a hectic year. Alice spent much of her time in L.A. holed up in studios for writing sessions, working six or seven days a week in collaboration with other writers. It was exciting and intense and tended to distract her from the surreal phenomenon of living in the City of Angels, and America in general. Signed to Disruptor Records/RED MUSIC, which is an imprint of Sony, Alice has continued to release singles in the past couple of years, including the soulful I Know in January.
An EP featuring five remixed versions of that song is now available. But the singer has yet to release a full-fledged album, something that has been in the works for quite some time.
“Honestly, it’s been a weird couple of years thinking that the album would be out several times before and realizing that the right timing is everything in this business,” she said. “So I’ve just been writing and gathering songs. My EP has been finished for a longtime now, but then I wrote this new song that’s going to be coming out the day after my gig at Stampede. It’s called Still Wondering and that was the completion of the album we were all hoping to find. So I’m hoping that album comes out within the next couple of months.”
Of course, all of her songs will be judged against Jackpot, her first commercial triumph. Co-written with enigmatic Calgary artist Hello Moth, it is a perfect storm of icy synth and Alice’s yearning, soulstirring vocals. It’s an undeniably great song and one that might seem hard to top. Alice says she never gave much thought to the idea that following up a hit single
would be daunting until she went on promotional tours for the song and “literally every person asked me that question. I thought: ‘Well shit, now I’m thinking about it!” she says with a laugh. “I don’t know. Jackpot was such an anomaly. It was such a surprise to all of us on my team and everyone involved with the song. I don’t think you try and follow something like that up. I think you just take it for what it is, which is a huge opportunity to continue to grow as an artist.”
Being in L.A. has also had an impact on her growth, although perhaps in a less direct way. Collaborating with others is not always an easy process for Alice. Being “in the room with the wrong people” can make her feel like her “artistry is taken advantage of and questioned,” she says.
“But I’ve realized those are the moments that have actually made me the most confident,” she says. “Because I come home and have to grapple with myself and ask myself the deep questions of ‘Who am I? What does matter to me as an artist? Am I willing to compromise on this? Am I not willing to compromise on that?’ ... Everything about L.A. is really dark and really lonely. I think everyone is fighting to survive and you can feel the desperation of that energy and it’s really easy to get caught up in it. So thank God I come from this city, Calgary, and this country, Canada, that has supported me and heard me and said, ‘You’re amazing.’ I’ve had so many people support me over the last 20 years of my career, I know I have this foundation built that nothing can rock.”
It all began when Alice was 10 years old and her life changed thanks to a strict music teacher in elementary school.
“I had really struggled as a student,” she says. “I had a hard time paying attention and a lot of teachers struggled with me. I was a total bully, I was going through a lot in my home life. She recognized that in me and she said, ‘Instead of punishing you, I’m going to make you sing solos in the choir.’ It was the first time I got to step out front onstage and be at the centre and I realized I loved it.”
In Calgary, she formed Jocelyn & Lisa, a bass-vocal duo with musician Lisa Jacobs. Jacobs encouraged Alice to pursue a solo career and still plays bass for her for live performances. Alice says much of the new material she is working on reflects the stripped-down soulpop she played with Jacobs in Calgary. No matter what pop dressing may flavour the tunes, the songs can all be stripped down to an essential core, she says.
“At the end of the day, that’s what I’m moving more and more toward: just letting the songs speak for themselves and not worrying about all the extra stuff that goes into making a pop song,” she says. “It’s exciting because the stuff you guys haven’t heard yet is a little bit more in that realm and definitely feel a little more Jocelyn to me.”
So thank God I come from this city, Calgary, and this country, Canada, that has supported me and heard me.