Sydney Jaffe: More to the Story
Taylor Harrington 5/18/2021 1:07pm EST
New York native, rising Alt-Pop star Sydney Jaffe has made her way to the West Coast, and is living out her dreams of stardom in Los Angeles. Sydney Is a true artist, having co-written her latest single, “Sweet Validation” with Sizzy Rocket (Noah Cyrus, Bea Miller) and Jesse Barrera. There is so much more to Sydney’s story, and we can’t wait to see how her journey unfolds.
Taylor Harrington: I’m here today with the beautiful, wonderfully talented Sydney Jaffe, thank you so much for being here today, Sydney Jaffe.
Sydney Jaffe: Thank you so much for having me, and thanks for taking the time out of your day.
Taylor Harrington: Sydney is a talented musician who just released her single, “Sweet Validation”. I was seriously just showering earlier, bopping along, and it’s so fun. Sydney, where did you get your start in the music industry?
Sydney Jaffe: I was born and raised in New York, so I always wanted to be on Broadway. That’s how it started. I feel like a lot of little New Yorker kids love going to Broadway shows and have that dream to be one of those people on the stage when they see it. Once I had gone to my first Broadway show, I was really little, like five or six, I was pretty lucky that I had that opportunity. After that, I just started singing all the time. I was always singing in my room, in the bathtub, I would be singing all the time. So I finally started doing voice lessons with a voice teacher and everything. I was doing plays and musicals until I was in the seventh grade. I want to say I was like 12 or 13when I started to realize that it was more about the music for me than anything else, so I started researching recording studios and places to go where I could just be in a booth. I found a place in Long Island called The Loft Sound Studio. Shout out to them. I still go there all the time. I just started putting music videos out there, not music videos, but just videos of me singing covers in this recording studio and kind of took off from there.
Taylor Harrington: So you got your start from falling in love with Broadway music and musicals, but then you searched out these little things on your own, what came from that and gave you the drive to continue your musical journey? I’m so curious to, because you’re in school, but you’re also having this uprising musical career. So I want to know, where do the two lineup and how you can handle that all, especially through a time like COVID when everything’s been so wildly crazy.
Sydney Jaffe: So going back to the first part of the question, it kind of just all fell into place after I started just putting out little covers here and there. I luckily met the team that I work with now, and they connected me to a bunch of other songwriters and a bunch of other artists. The music industry is really a lot smaller than I ever thought it was. I found all these songwriters that I love to write with. I got to go to Nashville to write with some people and came out to LA for the first time. I remember that trip so vividly. So things all just started to come into play.
Taylor Harrington: So when did you first go out to LA?
Sydney Jaffe: I want to say that 2017 was my first trip out here and now I go to school out here, so I’m here basically half the year, maybe more than half the year. It’s kind of wonky now with COVID. I was back in New York which is home to me a lot more than usual, but now it’s like LA is half my home. Everything started to fall into place and it was just like everything started to work out and then I got into college out here. I was like, it’s perfect, LA is the music hub right now. I had all these connections out here that I had started to form, so it makes sense that I can keep on working on my music while I’m in school. My degree is in Music Business. So that’s my life and it never stops. It’s always about the music world for me.
Taylor Harrington: Good for you just following your heart and talent. There are a lot of talented people out there, but some people don’t have the courage to follow through with that talent or recognize it within themselves. You have, and that’s so cool because it’s only growing. So your Music Business degree, what made you follow that path?
Sydney Jaffe: Not a lot of schools offer it, first of all, so when I heard about it, I was like, that’s awesome. That was, first and foremost. I was like, I can’t find this at a lot of other places. As an independent artist, I want to know when there’s something wrong with a contract. I want to know when I’m gonna get screwed over or when I can do better.
Taylor Harrington: I’m gonna say right now you’re the Kim Kardashian of the music industry. She’s out there getting her law degree, because she wants to be educated so she can’t get sued. I mean, look at you go, that’s so smart.
Sydney Jaffe: I just want to be able to pursue this career without relying on a million other people. I want to be there supporting myself. So if I can understand every part of the path that I’m about to take, why not? Helping other people in the same industry is a big part of the degree too. If someone has to ask me a question about a gig they’re going to go to or a job they’re going to get, you know, I’m giving that input. It’s all about just having an understanding.
Taylor Harrington: The possibilities are endless with that degree. You can almost create your own path within that to have just your own journey, helping yourself and your own business and brand grow, which is exciting. So when was the last time you did a live performance?
Sydney Jaffe: Everything seems so long ago now because of COVID. I want to say it was a few months before COVID really locked everything down. I’ve just been kind of taking that as an opportunity to be in the studio, and honestly, taking it as an opportunity to do some self-growth separate from music. So as much as I would love to get back on stage in front of people, and I think a lot of other musicians would love that too and have already started finding ways to do things outside and stuff like that, I think, in the end, it’s come full circle for all of us.
Taylor Harrington: So in Los Angeles, where would you be hoping to perform live once everything is fully opened back up?
Sydney Jaffe: I actually haven’t done a lot of live shows in LA, which is kind of exciting for me to think about, because I don’t really know where it’s gonna take me once COVID has kind of been put to the side and we can all take a deep breath and go out and live our lives. I’m hoping that I can just start to step into smaller little venues, I don’t really care if they’re little coffee shops, or if they’re bars. I just turned 21, so I can go to a bar and do a show and then finish my set and grab a drink with friends. Wherever it takes me, I’m excited to see the journey through. I think it’s just gonna be kind of a huge step for me and my career.
Taylor Harrington: Happy Birthday! Does the thought of performing live make you nervous?
Sydney Jaffe: No, actually, I love it. I always say I’d rather perform in front of like 600 people I don’t know than a room of 10 people I do know. I don’t know what that is about. Maybe it’s just that I don’t know the faces, and it makes it easier, but I also just have more confidence in front of a larger group. I love the adrenaline rush that comes with that.
Taylor Harrington: You just had your single, “Sweet Validation” come out at the end of April, how can we listen to it?
Sydney Jaffe: You can stream “Sweet Validation” on any streaming platform. Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, Amazon Music, wherever you choose to find your music. We also did a little SoundCloud link on the premiere and we are hopefully going to get a music video out there. I’m not positive yet, as we are seeing if certain things work with with COVID, but hopefully we can get a music video shot and out there. “Sweet Validation” came out on April 30, and honestly, it’s my favorite song that I have ever done.
Taylor Harrington: It’s such a fun song to dance around to, but I’m also finding myself, which not every song does this for me, but I’m finding myself actually listening to the words and being like, Wait, what? I’m listening. I’m like, okay, this is so relatable! So Sydney, let’s talk about the meaning behind “Sweet Validation”? How did you find the mental space to do this song?
Sydney Jaffe: It was actually really funny. So I wrote this song with Sizzy Rocket, who is another singer/songwriter artist based in LA, who I actually met in New York a really long time. So it’s really great, but I was in New York and she was here (in LA) and we wrote it on Zoom together, which we both hate doing. Honestly, I don’t even remember how we figured that out. We both do not like doing like Skype, FaceTime, Zoom writing sessions. I wanted to write with her so badly, so we made it work. We started just talking and catching up about like our lives. I started telling her about how I was going through all of these changes and like, my mindset, and just about life and how I looked at the way people looked at me. The song kind of just started to get put together piece by piece. I said, the word “validation” a few times and she stopped me every time and she was like, “that word, I like that word”. The song itself, l wanted it to be as honest as possible, you know? It was really me admitting that hey, sometimes I’ll post a picture that will be to get someone’s attention, or I will act a certain way and we all do it. That’s why I was like, I think it’s okay to talk about it like this and to say, sometimes we look for that sweet validation, and that’s why it is so sweet sometimes. Once the whole song came together to it felt so good because I was like, This is such an anthem to admitting to yourself that you do it, but then you know that other people feel the same way. It’s powerful and fun and I’ve like never been so honest in a song before in my life.
Watch Sydney’s full interview on our YouTube Channel, or listen everywhere podcasts are available!
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