Spend your formative
years on the road with a national touring company. Dedicate your
teens to preparing to take the music world by storm. Throw in the
scrutiny of MTV cameras documenting your every move. If this had
been your day-to-day existence, you’d probably call your debut album
This Crazy Life too.
And if you happened to be Geffen recording artist, JOANNA, you’d
have the confidence and talent to come through it all with aplomb.
“The title represents my journey,” Joanna explains. “I’ve struggled,
been on such a high and such a low. But my purpose in life is to
touch people with my music. I’ve always turned pain into strength.”
Joanna will touch you with
This Crazy Life, an
insightful collection of pop gems that showcase her incredible vocal
ability. Whether soaring through independence anthems like the first
single “Let It Slide,” bearing all on emotional ballads like
“Miracle,” or even stirring soulful rock on “Tip Toe,” the main
thing that knocks you out is Joanna’s powerful voice.
Joanna first started entertaining folks as a
blue-collar kid growing up in Philly. “I’d sing for the customers in
my father’s barbershop, and they’d give me tips—then I’d go down to
the corner store for candy,” she recalls. The young girl with the
powerhouse pipes soon began branching out from a local TV talent
show to big-time Broadway auditions. She landed roles with a number
of musical productions and, after 106 performances of the 20th
anniversary national tour of “Annie,” Joanna was bound to take the
show back to the Great White Way. That, unfortunately never came to
fruition as Joanna came down with bronchitis and the show went on
without her ensuing a media blitz of attention and support. This
only made Joanna stronger and she decided to focus on her music.
“Knock me down, it makes me want to get up and
soar higher. I realized I wanted to do my own music, but first I had
to define who I was,” she says. One big step in that direction was
allowing herself to have some typical teenage experiences. “I’d been
in the industry professionally since I was nine, and I needed to
just experience normal teen life.“
Joanna also had to deal with the
blessing/curse of her multifaceted instrument. “My voice can go from
quiet and intimate to raspy to opening up huge,” she says. “I can
sing any style you throw at me, and that’s bittersweet, because I
needed to discover the style that was me.” When she started turning
her poems into lyrics and her concepts into melodies, Joanna was on
her way. Once she’d saved enough money to travel to California and
make a demo she already knew the person she wanted in her corner.
“I kept on hearing about this guy Ron Fair,
what a genius he was,” she says of the now Geffen Records Chairman
who molded the career of
Christina Aguilera, among others. So although she’d received
calls from various labels, Joanna held them at bay. “I didn’t want
to meet with anyone until I met Ron Fair.” She got her way, and sang
one a cappella number after another for Fair. “I’d been warned that
he wouldn’t tell me how wonderful I was or anything,” Joanna
recalls. “So I was surprised when he said, ‘I’d sign you right now
if I wasn’t in the middle of a career transition myself.’” At the
time Fair was leaving RCA to head up A&M Records. Suffice to say,
Fair didn’t waste time working with her to ready her Geffen debut.
Then he gave her time to deliver her debut.
“I’m so lucky, because record companies don’t really develop artists
anymore,” says Joanna, now 21. “I was only 16 when I was signed,
they could have thrown things at me, like, ‘You’re singing this and
you’re wearing this,’ but they really left it in my hands.” Working
with young, up-and-coming producers and writers, as well as Fair and
hitmakers like Linda Perry, Joanna got down to honing her sound.
During this time, Joanna became the subject of MTV’s “True Life”
documentary series. “They followed me around for a year to show what
really goes in to making a record because it’s so tough!” Joanna
says of the two-hour episode. “People have no idea how intense it
is. Now that my record’s coming out, anyone who saw the show will be
like, ‘Wow, she really kept at it.’”
The result is an album that showcases Joanna’s
vocal talent and electric personality.
This Crazy Life is an
album of awakening—it’s all about breaking free, taking chances,
getting hurt and letting go. Rock guitar and compelling percussion
build to a crescendo on “Let It Slide,” with Joanna’s vocals
ascending to heart-bursting heights. “I began to cry when I listened
to it for the first time—I was like, ‘That’s me!’” she says of the
first single. “It’s so close to me, so personal, and I love what it
represents about being independent and taking off to do your own
thing.”
Another song Joanna’s especially close to is
the title track. “It’s a story about my mom, who had the craziest
life—she was abandoned as a child, was in an orphanage, went through
a series of foster homes,” Joanna says. “My mom is the strongest
woman I know, and a lifetime of lessons couldn’t teach me what she
has taught me. It took me a long time to write that song, and when I
finished I sent it to my mom for Mother’s Day.”
This Crazy
Life also features the emotional Linda Perry-penned
“Miracle,” the ruefully romantic “Just When You’re Leaving” and “4th
of July”—which Joanna wrote when she was just 16. “I shout out
independence and strength but also that you shouldn’t be afraid to
open up and be vulnerable, let yourself love, even if it means
getting hurt,” Joanna says of the album in sum. Universal, classic
themes rendered by a truly unforgettable voice—that’s Joanna’s debut
album, but certainly not her last. “I hope to be a credible artist,
someone who will stick around,” she says. Undoubtedly—no matter how
crazy this life gets, Joanna will be here to sing about it.