Pop music will always be here. It might change, evolve, hide, or go by another name, but it’ll never go away. And as long as there are artists committed to pushing pop further, it’ll never get stale either.
That’s the approach Jackson Stell took when pulling together his newest EP under the Big Wild moniker. Invincible was a career-defining moment for the former Massachusetts kid who packed up his computer crowded with the hip-hop beats he made using FruityLoops and moved out to the coast. After becoming a regular on the festival circuit, he got hooked up with ODESZA, who took him under their wing and helped him refine his own sound.
What Invincible does differently than anything Stell has ever worked on before is take an old school approach to songwriting while maintaining the electronic feel he started honing on previous tracks. He relished studio time and collaboration, writing lyrics and inviting talented artists like iDA HAWK and Yuna into the fold. The result is a series of five tracks with no real downbeat, mixing the expansive sonic splatters — that play so well with the festival crowd — with a relative pensiveness that fits the strength of a voice like R&B upstart Yuna.
This week, I spoke with Stell about the project, which released last Friday, his love for pop, his days selling rap beats, and what he’s learned from ODESZA.
You’ve been making beats for a long time and have a hip-hop background, which really shows in your drops on this EP. What’s your inspiration there? What got you into production and made it something you had to do?
It originally started as me wanting to produce hip-hop instrumentals. I was definitely inspired by artists like Dr. Dre and the Neptunes and Timbaland, and that’s kind of how I first started into it. I got FruityLoops to mess around, and it was pretty soon after starting that I realized this was what I wanted to do. I really started connecting to music, and really appreciated it. I was hooked. I started selling beats to rappers in high school and stuff, and when I got to college I took things on a more electronic route. At the start it was all hip-hop, and that’s how I first learned to make music basically. Making beats.
You’ve been touring a lot, and it seems like this comes out on Invincible. There’s natural breaks where you can almost sense these tracks being made for live crowds.
I’ve learned a lot from being out and performing all these shows, from small shows to big festivals. I’ve picked up some ideas on how to connect with crowds through my music. I wanted some of that to translate in this EP.
Was there anything else heading into recording you really wanted to make sure you got into the sessions?
I wanted to keep things fresh sounding and unique. That’s always been a staple of my approach to making music. There are also a lot of other things I tried to do differently on this EP too, like working with singers and getting into songwriting. Lyrics, and vocal melodies, and doing things like that. This was my first foray into that sort of thing. I really wanted to test myself too. In a lot of ways it was me trying to maintain the personality of what my music is, but also trying my hand at those new things. Making my own version of what I would want a pop song to sound like. That’s the direction I see this whole project going in the future, and this is one of the steps toward doing that, for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXGvuOZVYCk
What are some of the pop influences that suck with you?
It’s the idea of making something that a lot of people can connect with. That’s how I like to frame pop music. To do that in an non-generic way can be really difficult. There’s oftentimes a formula for making pop music. For me, it was focusing on parts that people can sing along to, something that’s catchy, lyrics people can relate to, and maybe when I get to using different sounds, that’s when I can get kind of creative with it and do something different than what you hear on the radio. Elements that are easy to relate to, and elements that aren’t what you’d expect. Trying to find a blend of those two things and putting them together.
There are a couple of really powerful voices, like Yuna, that you have on one EP, which is a rarity sometimes.
The thing that made it so easy is when we arranged to record, I had a beat for Yuna that was pretty different from what the track ended up looking like now. I came into the studio with the lyrics written and with all the ideas for her vocals down. It was really easy because I was able to approach it from a songwriting perspective, and that’s why I’m really proud of that song. It was one of the first times I wrote the melody for the vocals and the lyrics, and I was able to craft the track around that. One of the reasons it was able to work so well was because that was part of the creative process from the beginning.
When I got in there, I showed Yuna what I had in mind, and she killed it off the top. We barely did any takes, and that was that. It was pretty streamline and pretty easy. With iDA HAWK, it was both of us in the studio hashing out the lyrics and melody together. It was really collaborative. That was another reason why we were able to get her vocals to work so well. I don’t necessarily like to have someone send me an a cappella and then I work around that. I like to have a more integrated approach with mixing vocals and vocal melodies and lyrics with the song. I feel like it helps, at least for me, to make something more cohesive sounding.
When you have collaboration it always seems like those little miracles come out of it.
It’s always better to be there in person because you can’t beat it. The sheer speed of being able to exchange ideas. That being said, there’s a lot of benefits to working in the same room and then working on the song separately. You’ll have different ideas when you’re by yourself versus when you’re with someone. Most of the songs on this EP were a mix of the in-person collaboration, then me at my computer thinking of it a different way after I listened to it.
I’ve had moments of little epiphanies in both aspects, working together or being by myself.
Have you already started the process of wanting to remix the tracks?
I’ve tweaked these songs so much already, and I have so many different versions of each one. It’s like 20 different versions of each song. I can genuinely say I don’t want to remix any of these songs. [Laughs] That being said, we are working with other people on potential remixes and putting together the remix project, which I’m stoked about.
You’ve had the opportunity to work with and tour with ODESZA, and I feel like you pick stuff up from anyone you tour with. Have you found yourself pushing yourself creatively because of them?
They’re definitely an influence. They’ve always been willing to lend an ear if I’m stuck on something, and willing to give advice. It’s been really nice to have them have my back throughout this whole thing for sure.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on a lot of new music. The new tour, definitely, my set and updating a lot of things with that. There’s some pretty sweet festivals we’ll be at as well. On the recorded music front, I have a couple collaborations in the works and definitely have some really cool ideas about where to take my music next. I’ve been trying a lot of new ways to make music and my songwriting process streamlined and I can make music faster than before. I’m really excited. I’m definitely already starting on the next project. Planning out the next phase of my career is awesome.
Big Wild’s Invincible EP is out now via Foreign Family Collective. Get it here.
