Jake Carter on passion, projects and his new EP Point of You 'I will always be a Performer'
IT’S almost hard to believe that Jake Carter is only 25 years old, given that he’s so familiar to us at this stage. Following in the footsteps of his elder brother Nathan he upped sticks and moved to Ireland when he was only 17 but he reckons he has always been an older head on young shoulders.
Maybe it was that independence, maybe it’s his drive to succeed but at any rate at 25 he’s achieved much more than most at that age.
And today he’s releasing an EP, Point Of You, a record that was stymied by the pandemic but is now more representative of what Jake is all about he reckons.
‘I am buzzing to have new music out,’ says the Liverpudlian. ‘It’s been a while since I released a body of music and we have been sitting on these tracks for a long time. ‘Everything is good at the minute.’
The tracks on the EP, including Jake’s last two singles, were written over a number of years with people he says he gels with.
‘There are people on the EP that I have written a good few tracks with and would consider friends,’ he says. ‘You find who you enjoy writing with and who gets where you want to go and with this EP I have definitely found my sound in terms of where I want to be and releasing music.
‘I found a new producer a couple of years ago called Richey McCourt and he produced all the tracks on the EP.
‘I feel like Richie really gets all the sounds I’m going for. It took a while— it’s seven years since I moved over to Ireland and I guess I have been experimenting in the last few years but this is the best version of my sound.’
Though he was born in Liverpool and moved to Ireland under the watchful eye of his big brother Nathan, Jake now sees Ireland as his home.
‘When I first moved over I had just finished school and I wanted to move away from home and then Dancing With The Stars happened and lots of other TV opportunities came up,’ he says.
‘We started touring and the band really came together and then the last few years have been a rollercoaster of different opportunities whether it be musicals, TV projects and then I ended up meeting Karen so moving to Ireland has definitely paid off in that sense. I wouldn’t be anywhere near what I have achieved if I hadn’t moved over.’
And the pandemic, though it stopped him in his tracks, gave Jake time to reflect about where he wanted to go and who he wanted to be in terms of his music.
‘In 2019 I had reached a point where I headlined Vicar Street, I was touring all around the country and that came to a standstill,’ Jake says.
‘So this is kind of like starting all over again, not necessarily in a negative way as I don’t think back then I would have produced this type of music with this quality. I am really happy with how this album sounds and I think people might be pleasantly surprised that this is the type of music I am doing.’
The new EP is definitely embracing a pop style, putting Carter in among the likes of Harry Styles and Tom Grennan. He’d love to get back to the UK to play some dates there too.
‘There is a huge platform over there for pop music and I’d love to get gigging there or in Europe at some stage over the next few years. I definitely think Ireland is my home now and I don’t think I will be moving away any time soon.’
Of course, there’s something else keeping Jake in Ireland and that’s his partner Karen Byrne. They became friends when they were
partners on Dancing With The Stars and eventually that friendship blossomed into love.
Currently Karen is back on DWTS with paralympian Jason Smyth so the pair haven’t seen much of each other. ‘It’s crazy at the minute,’ he says. ‘We don’t really see each other that much. It is always hectic at this time of year. Normally in January and February I am quite quiet — that’s normally when I find my downtime to go and sit in the studio and get back to writing.
‘But this year with the release of the singles and the EP it’s been crazy. We did our first headline show of 2024 a few weeks ago in the Academy in Dublin. It has been a crazy couple of months trying to balance the stage school, the music school, the music releases and Karen being on the show.
‘It’s great though — we both love being busy, when we aren’t I think that’s the time we get on each other’s nerves more,’ Jake says joking. He admits that people are still shocked when he tells them he is still only 25 and while Karen is 31, the age difference has never been an issue.
‘I guess there are six years in the difference but because I always acted older, I don’t think it is ever anything that concerned us,’ he says. ‘I just like reminding her now that I am a lot younger than her. I think I forget that sometimes as well.’
Together the pair run their own business as well and dancing is still something Jake indulges in now and again after winning Dancing With The Stars in 2018.
‘Karen runs the dance studio and we have a stage school together,’ he says.
‘Every year now we run a dance retreat in Marbella where we take a group of people out. There was a great mixture of people last year, men and women of different ages, some in their seventies.
‘Karen teaches the dancing. I teach how to pretend to dance I suppose and we have great fun. Dancing is always around us. I love to do it every now and again and it will always be a part of my career but music is my main passion.’
Music was always in the Carter family but hard work also runs in the family and despite the huge competition in today’s music industry Jake is determined to succeed as a singer.
‘My dad is a builder and he brought us both up knowing you had to work hard for what you wanted to achieve but I definitely would consider myself to be quite ambitious,’ Jake says.
IWOULD have different goals and would constantly be working to try and achieve them — I don’t expect anything to be given to me on a plate. That was the way we were brought up and it serves us well in the music industry as there are a lot of ups and downs and not everyone is going like what you are doing.
‘That can be tough but I have always been of the mindset to just keep going and the hard work will pay off eventually. As clichéd as it sounds, I do this because I am passionate about it.
‘And I don’t see myself ever doing anything different —- until the day I die I think I will always be writing, recording and performing music whether that be to five people like I used to do when I was 17 singing in pubs, or to thousands of people or maybe even one day in front of huge arena crowds, who knows?
‘But no matter what stage I get to, I will always be a performer, I won’t do anything else. People often ask me “What’s your Plan B?” and that is the thing — I don’t have one. This is it so I have to keep going, it’s Plan A all the way.’
Point Of You is out today on all streaming platforms, see link tr.ee/JakeCarterOfficial for full details.