It was the eighties that brought us great electro tracks and many exciting moments to go with them, but it’s rare these days you’re faced with memorable electronic music that you connect with and touches you inside. This does. And it does it so well, it makes you want to dance, and sing along with it, nevermind all the time wondering ‘where has this music been all my life?’ Well no matter, you’ve found them now and La Roux is the most successful new British Artist in Canada for 2009.

Fairly recently, electro pop duo, La Roux (twosome, Elly Jackson and Ben Langmaid) surfaced on North American shores hailing from Brixton, UK. It’s true, La Roux’s star is bigger in Britain than it is over here, but they’re doing a damn good job of opening our eyes and ears to a contagious tight set of remarkable synthing, driven by honest yet cutting lyrics and a voice that fully turns heads.

Speaking of head turning, the one shooting these songs like a sharp arrow from her heart into ours, front woman Elly Jackson is receiving quite a bit of attention for La Roux’s quick rise to the top.  
                                                                                                                                                                         
She’s the “it” girl of the musical moment, possessing vocals that can stun, but won’t make you stay back.  Not only that, she’s got a style that would make both Prince and Bowie proud and hair that has quite a following as its own player in the game of iconic looks. Talk about a package. In short, she is the next Annie Lennox and the girl that everyone has their eye on because she really is doing this her own way.

On Friday October 23rd, before her concert at the Guvernment in Toronto, Woman.ca got the chance to sit down with Jackson to discuss the journey, the music, the fashion, the industry and several things in between. Take a look.

Your music seem to ‘break the pattern’ of the typical love themes out there and I think this fresh articulation and deep honesty has edged its way into people’s hearts almost instantly. Tell me about the journey, what it’s been like to start out small making music in a living room to releasing your cd with several singles up to being on tour now.
“Yeah, I think it’s kind of crazy. I think we always wanted to, that was the thing, we had always wanted to write in an intelligent way, not in a really obvious way. It wasn’t about being sexy, it wasn’t about being crude, it wasn’t about any of that stuff or about being funny or anything like that. It was just about writing like the songs we’d loved for years in an intelligent way about love and an honest way about love, in a truthful way, which is often very difficult to do. And I think especially, well not especially now I suppose, less now than in something like the fifties, but I think a lot of people find it v. difficult to talk about their feelings honestly and especially write about them. You know you feel a lot of it’s half-hearted or it’s like they want to go there but they can’t quite or something. It took us a long time, it took me a long time to be honest just with Ben because when you’re writing with someone, you have to tell them things you never thought you’d tell anyone before. And I told Ben stuff way before, that now I’ll tell everyone. You know there was stuff I was really closed up about, and stuff I couldn’t deal with that I told Ben, that I started to tell my family and my friends and just stuff that you open up about and as you grow up you learn not to be afraid of expressing emotions or whatever they happen to be. I think that that’s a massively important part of writing, so that’s the main journey, and the rest of it, once all that stuff was down, all those songs were down, it was just convincing other people. So that was half the journey as well.”

At the beginning, did you get a sense of what the final result of the album would be like?
“That’s a difficult question to answer, you know, we always believed in what we did 100% so we never really thought about that because we just believed in it 100%. I wouldn’t say necessarily that what we thought was going to happen or anything because you can’t predict things like that, but we always believed in it and if you don’t believe in it 100% no one else is going to f*cking believe it.   So we just used to go with confidence and say ‘look this is what we’ve done, and we’re really proud of it and we really believe in it and we really think that other people will feel like that about it too, can you help us. That was kind of it really, yeah, but we did have confidence around the record, if you don’t have confidence about your own record I mean no one else is going to to believe you for a second. You know if you go in and start going ‘I think it’s kind of alright’ that’s not gonna work. We got very excited making the record, we knew it was going to go somewhere or we wouldn’t have spent five years getting it down

When you sit down to write, where does it begin for you, creation wise?
“Hmmm. Depends, it’s different for different songs. Sometimes it’s a chord thing, you start with a chord thing and then you start to hum a melody over almost instantly and there’s always that melody that sticks out straight away and then you just solidify that melody and then lyrics come with that. Sometimes it’s a lyric first and you start with a lyric like ‘Quicksand’ or something and then a whole song can be written around that, sometimes it starts with a riff, like ‘Bulletproof’ did, it just really does depend on what happens. Sometimes it’s something I’ve brought to Ben and sometimes it’s something he’s brought to the studio, just every song’s different. A lot of the stuff actually started on acoustic guitar.

I’m interested in the flow of the cd. It feels as if you focused on each song quite separately, which shows up in the quality, but I noticed there wasn’t a thread that laced the songs together as a whole, from one song to the next. Could you talk to me a little bit about the decision on your part for the line-up of the tracks?
“No, well I think that’s because we never had a definite idea of the album as a whole, we just wrote each song like you said one by one and each song was like, it didn’t all fit to begin with but then the more sound developed, the songs. You can put any songs on a record as long as the sounds I guess work with each other, you know, so it was just about La Roux when La Roux started, it was just about which was about half way through us working together, it was just about making all those songs work on the same record, though they weren’t all one thought or one train of thought or anything like that. It was all just like ‘this is how I feel today, and I can’t help but write about it.’ None of it was like connected really, I mean it’s all kind of about the same subject, but each song was its own animal as it were, and we treated it like that as well.

What about your next cd, will it have the same energy as the first and which direction do you expect it to take?
“The next record? Ummm, I don’t want to say about anything direction wise, ‘cause we know, but it still we need to hone it in and that kind of thing. Bigger. It’ll be bigger, and less of a dance crossover thing and more of a big pop album, I think. Not in a cheesy way, just in a kind of Tears for Fears, Michael Jackson way, that’s sort of in a more classy way, rather than in a Miley Cyrus way I guess. (Laughs) You never know though we might do a duet with Miley Cyrus. (Laughs)

What’s your take on being the ‘face’ of the band?
“… We always kind of knew it was going to be like that I guess, because when we started it wasn’t a duo, it wasn’t a band that only came into play later, when we realized that what we did was something we couldn’t really take anywhere else. I wouldn’t want to work another or work with anyone else and he wouldn’t take what we did anywhere else either, so it was sort of just to lock us in with each other I guess. I was like ‘look, I’m not going to go make a record with someone else next, that makes you not really like a producer, it makes it more like a band.’ It’s more of a long term thing, it’s not like a ‘this record’ thing, which then doesn’t make it like a ‘producer-writer/singer’ thing. It was a band and we wrote the lyrics together and stuff like that so I wouldn’t want to now be out on my own, you know, writing songs, I’ve now gotten used to this, having Ben there and us kicking ideas off each other, I wouldn’t want to ruin that for La Roux and have to go and try and do that with someone else now, it would take me years to get comfortable with someone else, to trust someone else.
I think I hate it most when people say ‘who are you going to work with on your next record?’ it’s like ‘what do you mean? Have you read anything that I’ve ever spoken about?’”
It’s like someone asking Depeche Mode ‘who are going to work with next?’
“Yeah, exactly, it really pisses me off, or Annie Lennox, ‘are you going to go and work with someone else next time’ ‘No, I’m going to work with Dave Stewart, you dickhead’ do you know what I mean? …Those new modern records they’re not emotionally attached at all, they don’t have any emotion, it’s just like a pump the records out, go in the studio, pump it out with whoever, hip hop producer, R&B producer, you know, and it’s only selling because it’s got so and so’s name on it. You know if that was an unknown producer, even if it sounded exactly the same, that wouldn’t be selling. And they use the same producers over and over again, ‘cause they know if it’s by Kayne West, everyone’s gonna go and buy it, it’s not rocket science, you know, and I don’t know I don’t have a lot of respect for people like that, so, I don’t know I should probably stop before I get myself in trouble, but I do think there’s a major sort of lack of real love for songwriting. We would only damage and f*ck up the songwriting if I went and worked with someone else, it would only get worse so why would I do it.”
No, you want it to grow.
Yeah, to grow, not to stunt it and stop it there, ‘alright, let’s try something else now’ it works, it’s not broken don’t fix it.

You have a strong fashion sense, have you always had this and or is it more a reflection of how you express yourself through La Roux?
It’s just an expression. I think fashion for me depending on the kind of music has always enhanced the music. It’s great for stage, I don’t think it’s necessary when you listen to the record, but it’s a really really great thing for performing, it’s a great thing for getting into character. I’ve heard so many artists speak about it before, it’s just that putting something on and you’re not you anymore, so it’s a massive escape and it’s a great way of being able to do stuff. It’s like putting on a superhero outfit, you put it on and you can do stuff you couldn’t do backstage five minutes ago, you know. It’s just like you turn on a switch, when you put it on, and that what makes me be able to get on stage, I couldn’t get on stage in my normal clothes, I’d be sauntering around with my head low wanting to get off stage. It just fits I think, for certain types of music it can really enhance the experience and that whole strong visual identity as well, you think about people like David Bowie or Prince, the first thing when I think about Prince is that logo, you know the male female sign thing: you think about his jackets, you think about his collars, you think about his hair. You think about Ziggy Stardust, you think about jumpsuits, and fashion and music have always been hand in hand, it makes sense.    

What’re some of the biggest risks you’ve ever taken musically or as a pop star?
I don’t know, I think sometimes honesty can be a risk. You know, I’ve found that I’ve been honest and just been really honest and just expressed my opinion about things in a completely normal way like you would in a discussion. You know what I think is really annoying, there’s no room for debate, there’s no room for any kind of debate, there’s no room for discussion, it’s like you have to love everything and that’s it. It’s just a creative, it’s just a creative industry and there’s a lot of creative people, you know you sit around with creative people and you get into debates and discussions about different types of music, different genres, different things instantly. And suddenly you’re put in the public eye and you are forbidden from expressing any of those opinions because you’ll get slated immediately the next day on youtube or something. That, that is the hardest thing I think about doing this, I think that’s the only negative thing I’d have to say about this job, is that.  That’s really annoying you know, it’s like you can’t say what music you like or you don’t like, well what’s the point then? You’re immediately branded as a nasty person or as a ‘hater’ you know. I’m just saying, I’m just saying, you know, I think that’s difficult. I think that’s the biggest risk I’ve taken where in the past I’ve been honest about things and now I’m not going to be honest anymore. I’m going to shut up.

Oh really, you’ve decided not to?
Yeah, I’m not going to tell anyone what I think about anything, ‘cause it’s not worth my time. It’s meant people have even said ‘I’m not going to buy your record now, because you don’t like this type of music’ it’s really harsh. So that’s a big risk, being honest. Everyone has it, it’s not just me, and this whole pop feud thing, I mean grow up.

Do you feel pressured to be a role model?
“No, I think that’s the part of it that I really like, that maybe young girls look up to you and see you as a different girl to look up to, not just as someone who’s wearing hot pants or whatever you know, it’s something else to look up to, but there’s not much of it out there, and it’s very nice to be seen as someone like that who can stand up for another side, for another angle of women. That’s really great, and it was never an intention, it was never something we’d intended on doing on purpose, I’m just like this. You know, but I think it’s great that people look at you like that for who you are and going ‘wow, you make me feel good about who I am’ and that’s amazing.”

How do you feel about the fact that not a lot of people get this opportunity?
“Do you know what I think, I think Lily Allen said a really good thing the other day, she said to me, she said, I can’t exactly remember what her words were but she was like ‘remember, this isn’t an opportunity you’ve been given, this is something you’ve gone out and got and remember that’ and I think that’s really important to remember, but yeah, of course I’m grateful for everything I’m given. Thank you. But I do, I think it’s not something God gave me, it’s something we worked f*cking hard for, we worked, you know, day and night thinking about this, how we could make this better, how we could improve it, how we could make a record that we’d still like in ten years, and that everyone else would like in ten years. And it took us a long time to get it right, and for us to be happy with it and it took us a long time to get signed and get recognized and all of that stuff, you know, we worked really hard and a lot of people helped us out as well and worked really hard for us. Before we got signed or anything, like the guy who does a lot of our artwork and stuff was helping us out doing our artwork for myspace like two years before we got signed, people just wanting to help. And without people like that, you know, and a lot of people worked hard to make this work and I think that’s worth remembering more than ‘you’ve been given this opportunity.’ It’s like, we weren’t really given it, we kind of worked for it.”

At the end of the day what would you say you appreciate most?
“I think when you’re onstage and people are singing your lyrics back to you, and just people saying after gigs ‘this is so refreshing’ and ‘you’re the only thing on the radio that I actually like’ which you know is kind of refreshing because that would’ve actually been me saying that to someone a few years ago going ‘well, you know this is the only thing on the radio I like.’ And people going ‘you know you’ve broken through a crack in the industry where there’s not just a load of bland stuff and you’ve taken a bit of a risk’ and people saying ‘you’re music’s just got me through a hard time’ or ‘ my mom died and your record’s done this or that’. That I think is the most amazing thing about this, that and getting to travel and also I f*cking love my whole crew, like all 12 of us, or 10 of us or whatever, we’re like a proper family unit. We just love being with each other, none of us are ever fed up with seeing each other or anything, we crack up everyday, you know, we have a great time, we have a really really good time playing live and doing all that stuff, I think I like all of it I guess.”

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                                By Jo-Anna Davidson