We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stacey Jackson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stacey below.
Stacey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had started sooner?
I have always been a creative person and have been able to use my creativity in other paths that I have taken in my life. Whether it be working behind the scenes at a television network, entertaining my 4 babies or teaching aerobics in my past! I believe that timing is everything. The life experience I garnered before I took the risk to jump into a full-time music career later on in life helped me enormously, because I was able to implement a lot of things I learned along the way. Also, having lived authentically through various generations of music, changes in music, from rock to synth pop to dance, I have been able to authentically pull up on those influences when writing songs and creating sounds now.
It was a bit risky to put all of my efforts into becoming a commercial success in the music industry, because at that point I was much older and the industry is largely, very ageist / youthful.
Being able to prove that age is just a number and that it doesn’t matter how old you are to write a hit record, have people dance to it and DJs play it, is not only self-gratifying and fulfilling, but also demonstrates that it is never too late to live your dream. I wouldn’t have done it any other way!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a Canadian/American singer/songwriter, TV presenter, entrepreneur and author of the book “How a Gangster Rapper Made Me a Better Mom” releasing this autumn. I have lived in London, UK for over 23 years.
My musical journey spanned over 25 years, from Montreal in my early days with my original rock band Cold Front, to New York gigging around the 5 boroughs in my Motown band, Fuzzy Dice. But after a 15 year long hiatus to raise my family, I took a huge risk in a very temperamental & notoriously ageist industry, at the age of 40.
My first track was recorded for the UK-based charity “Music for Youth” which was remixed into a dance track and to my biggest surprise, catapulted into the the Top 10 Dance & Club Charts! I have since have been blessed with over a dozen Top 10 dance records, including a collaboration with the iconic artist Snoop Dogg with “Live it Up”. What a highlight to a career! Couldn’t even have imagined that would ever happen!
Some of my recent records have received over 30 award nominations & wins, including the prestigious Vegas Movie Awards, Rome Music Festival Awards and Toronto International Women Film Festival, for which I am ever so grateful.
I am also proud to say I have just become a voting member of the prestigious Recording Academy (part of the Grammys!) and am one of the celebrity judges for Talent Is Timeless, a songwriting competition open only to artists over 50, and a community so relevant to my life, my story.
A fresh album of original material strongly influenced by the 1980s, reflecting on my life’s journey as a woman trying to get the balance right, will release as 2 EPs over the second-half of this year. Soldier, which is the first single, is out now!
I have just completed the first of a humorous trilogy of “fictionalised” books based on my chaotic life. In it, the main character juggles her children, her husband’s legacy, and her rising pop career. The first volume — in the style of Sex in the City, meets Modern Family, meets Bridget Jones’ Diary, is called “How A Gangster Rapper Made Me A Better Mom”. It has been optioned to become a TV series in the UK, and also comes with a catalogue of an original soundtrack which will be released with the audiobook version in 2024.
This is art imitating life in its truest form: the epitome of “it’s never too late to live your dreams”.
Most of my original lyrics focus on passing on a true, authentic message to my listeners: one of juggling what life throws at you, doing what makes you happy, while also never giving up on your dreams. My songs have been praised for being inspirational and uplifting, which, I have been told, also reflects my personality and drive in life.
I’ve always been a super energetic and positive person, encouraging everyone who crosses my path to just “press play & move to music”, and to believe that everything is possible: age really is just a number!
To sum it up – What I am most proud of is overcoming all the “no’s” in my life and still cracking through to try to build a commercially successful music career. And as we all know, with every career, there is always going to be rejection but I never let that get me down, I actually use it to as motivation and drive to keep striving for more.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Finding a publisher.
I started writing my book “How A Gangster Rapper Made Me A Better Mom” before COVID, and when my literary agent sent it out, we started lockdown, and people were frightened, reading differently.
Feedback I got was that as great as it was, it wasn’t in the current mindset of the world.
I therefore went back to the writing board and incorporated how people were doing & feeling at this time and wrote a whole new story line based on where the world was heading (because of COVID & its implications).
That was my resilience – I didn’t want to give up on the book and take “no” for an answer”.
Once I made the changes, I started sending the manuscript to publishers again and it worked! My book will be releasing at the end of 2023!
Have you ever had to pivot?
With regards to this particular line of work that I am in now (in music), pivoting has been essential at times. The biggest move I had to make, is that I was originally always writing songs with a rock style. All of a sudden, when one of my songs got remixed, I was catapulted into the dance music world; a whole new genre to me.
It’s interesting because I liked that kind of music (transitioning from the 80s to the 90s, especially on my fitness tapes!), I was familiar with it and enjoyed it. But I never thought I would actually be in it musically! There I was sitting between Lady Gaga & the Scissors Sisters on the dance charts! But I realised this was a door opening and I had to pivot, and try my success at that.
Who would have guessed, back in 1985 when I was in a rock band, that I would become a dance music artist!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.staceyjackson.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/staerox/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/staerox/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-jackson-staerox/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/staerox
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGcX-xvcdoquas1i6pJToPA
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@staerox?lang=en Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2GHz4Qbs2i2bgOAAk9TKHk
Image Credits
Shane Finn and Earl Santos