By now you may have caught drift of Jesse Saint John’s blonde and bloodied social media presence; he evokes a Gregg Araki character sliding between gender roles, maintaining a balance of soft and tortured, and voicing polarizing political opinions and human rights concerns to a generation who don’t find Climate concerns and Kardashian fascination mutually exclusive. A quick glance at Jesse’s writing credits (Britney Spears, Charli XCX, FOX’s Empire, co-writes with Sia and Diplo) reveal a deeper understanding of pop proficiency belying the subculture overtones of Jesse’s initial presentation. 2017 finds Jesse making the Sia-esque leap out from behind the scenes with the Spring release of his debut single ‘MOVE’. Upon first listen ‘MOVE’ is more in tune with the visceral energetic imagery of Jesse’s posts, danceable and hooky, the sort of thing that moms would sing along to in carpool, ignoring it’s twisted subtext. I met Jesse in his Los Angeles home base to discuss his ascension in a fickle industry and transitioning his voice onto record.
Where did your name come from?
It’s my first and middle name without my last name. I made my middle name my last name. I thought it sounded cool and evoked some religious energy so I really just rolled with it.
Tell me a bit about growing up, you’re from California right?
Yea, I grew up in Orange County which people have an odd misperception of from the show and all that, I grew up cash-poor and feeling very differently-minded from my peers, but my mom and sister and brother and I had this amazing love and respect and joy with each other so I was very blessed in that sense.
When and how did songwriting become your career?
I really started with this amazing girl called Brooke Candy who’s one of my dearest friends, like a sister to me. I was writing for her, totally unaware that songwriting was like, a legitimate career, and it really took on an amazing life of its own and from there I started doing sessions with producers and other writers a couple years ago and I really focused on it and made it work for me. Music industry is like, impossible to gauge and you never quite know if you’re doing it right, but I knew I could do it, and I wanted to make sure I did it without selling my soul or feeling nasty about myself, so far so good haha.
And now with MOVE you’re releasing your own material, how did that come about?
I found this special energy with Tim Pagnotta (Walk The Moon, Neon Trees), we spent the whole first day we met kinda reminiscing about Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gossip, Uffie, and Justice and all those incredible genre-blurring alt dance-y acts that really soundtracked my teenage awakening and I wrote this song sort of thinking I would give it to like a freaky girl to sing and then the more I lived with it I realized that I’M the freaky girl. I wasn’t thinking that I would do an artist-project but I’ve been encouraged to for so long and it finally felt right and Tim was 10,000% into it so I was just like hallelujer let’s go.
Activism seems to be important to you, tell me more about that and how others can use their voices
Yea please! Show up at rallies for causes that are important to you cuz body count makes a statement, make calls to your senators even if it freaks you out cuz the outcome of you not making the call should freak you out more. I think we have way more power than we even know and our government is in service to the people of the country. I think we have so much pain and betrayal in our country and throughout the world and we need to shed our conditioning and truly listen to eachother, and specifically marginalized voices that have felt so unheard historically, and begin to heal. I don’t find the issues I speak on to be incredibly political, it’s mere human rights that politicians try to control.
What is the meaning behind the blood in your aesthetic?
My entire artistic output at this time explores expectation vs. escapism. The way the world has conditioned you to be vs. the way you truly are and see yourself and express yourself. Blood elicits a primal strong reaction in people which gives me a thrill, haha, but essentially it’s representative of the great equalizer, underneath all the ways in which the world tries to divide us we all bleed the same.