By Cat Woods
When Lorde’s music video for Mood Ring dropped in August last year, a tongue-in-cheek take on wellness culture, eagle-eyed fans spotted a Kiwi cameo in the cast: her friend, fellow New Zealand pop star Chelsea Jade was among the green-clad flower children, fanning herself with feathers.
But Jade owes Lorde more than a screen credit. Five years ago the art school graduate was sitting on a pile of pop songs when her exasperated friend gave her an embroidered writing-robe and an ultimatum: “When are you going to be a lion and put out an album?“.
Home is where the art is for NZ musician Chelsea Jade.Credit: Oscar Keys
She did. And now, with her second album Soft Spot released, Jade is firmly established as a bright star in a constellation of dazzling New Zealand musicians chasing pop careers far from home.
The Cape Town-born, New Zealand-raised singer-songwriter began writing Soft Spot in Los Angeles in 2019. A return trip to New Zealand in 2021 enabled her to complete it in Auckland, supported by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA).
Many fellow expat New Zealanders travelled home to make their latest albums: Ladyhawke’s Pip Brown moved from LA back to Auckland in 2017, making her 2021 album Time Flies there. Aldous Harding’s recent, critically acclaimed album Warm Chris was made in her birthplace of Lyttelton, and the duo Broods’ February album Space Island was made from their home studio in Piha Beach on the North Island.
Jade says the NZ music scene is “so vivacious” right now – reflecting on the visit from the “extremely cold” Brooklyn apartment where she now lives after a recent move from LA.
“I moved to LA because I love pop music and that’s where the industry was and is,” she says. “[But] I think the New Zealand music scene is so healthy and so exciting.”
She credits APRA for helping grow the vibe: it’s been putting on songwriting camps to stoke the idea of collaboration, which reminds Jade of what LA gave her: “like speed-dating with songwriters and producers. NZ is working hard to make it so that you don’t have to leave”.
Jade calls herself a “DIY artist” – being a soloist comes with “a privilege of being on your own timeline”, she says.
She’s taken that DIY attitude to a spectrum of artistic pursuits that being a transient expat since 2015 enabled. She has been collaborating with and supporting New Zealand artists based in LA, she choreographed Aotearoa Music award-winning videos for Georgia Lines, wrote songs as a gun-for-hire for the Chainsmokers, Cxloe and others, and designed the album artwork for US band Deafheaven’s vinyl.
“I feel like my identity as an artist is almost contextless,” she says. “You can hear that in the music. I’ve never been someone who can stick to a template. The songs all sound like they have me as a through-line but I’m interested in a lot of languages. Lyrically, there’s a reaction to that transient viewpoint, which is a little bit defensive and a little bit removed but craving intimacy.”
The single Good Taste from the new album delivers evidence of that craving, recounting a sexual encounter with a fellow partygoer in the hotel Jade was living in at the time: “And yeah, I’m miserable/ But oh, it’s such a mood getting sad/ Getting sexual…”
It’s one of the 10 tracks on Soft Spot, a whorl of calypso beats and buoyant harmonies behind Jade’s sultry vocals, exploring a vaguely gothic pop landscape that’s been charted thoroughly by Lorde.
Jade says she won’t be following her friend back to New Zealand to live any time soon.
“I think of home as wherever I can make art well.”
Soft Spot is out now.
A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. Sign up to our Culture Fix newsletter here.