We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jasmin Peters a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jasmin, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

The biggest risk I have taken was coming to LA for 9 months to be mentored by Stargate (Rihanna, Katy Perry, Ne-Yo). I got on a flight from London with 5 nights booked in an airbnb with a girl I’d never met before (who is now one of my closest friends) while we looked for an apartment. We spent the first week of the mentorship program bouncing between couches and airbnbs, leaving most of our belongings locked in the studio every night while we found and finalised our place. I’d never even been to LA before so it was objectively terrifying, but definitely a huge character building and bonding experience, and most importantly it allowed me to be here, fully immersed in my craft, learning and creating with grammy award winners.
It was definitely a baptism of fire at the start, as I adjusted to producing work at that speed and standard, but by the end I left a much stronger writer, across genres I had never written before, and had the opportunity to explore many different facets of my artist project and really dig into what I wanted to create for myself and the kind of community I want to build for people to connect and engage with. Plus I left with a catalogue of over 140 songs I was a part of creating in 30 weeks!
The biggest influence I think it had on my creative approach is cliche but its honestly my confidence – I feel like I can walk into any room now and have something valuable to contribute, whether thats lyrics and melodies, vocal arrangements or just getting into the vibe and supporting the people around me. It gave me the confidence to say I’m an artist, songwriter and vocal producer as my career or my job and not qualify it, or say aspiring or trying to be, that’s just what I am and now I have the confidence to say so. The opportunities I had through and since the program have only affirmed this to me more, and I definitely feel like I’ve taken what I learned from Stargate and am still utilising it and improving every time I go into a session now. For example, I just went out to ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event) in October and did a week long camp making dance music, which I’d only done once or twice before, and I was nervous, sure, but I had no doubt I could go there and make something cool, which was a huge mentality shift for me compared to before the mentorship. I was also so lucky to meet some really amazing collaborators through the mentorship – other artists, writers and producers that I’m working with super closely on my own and their projects.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an artist, songwriter and vocal producer working across pop, R&B, dance & hip-hop predominantly, although I do dabble in other genres whenever I get the opportunity!
I’ve been singing my entire life, my mum often jokes that I used to sing along to the melodies on the radio before I could actually speak the words! So becoming an artist was never really a decision for me, it’s always just been in me, from choir when I was small to the all girl metal band I played in at 15, the folk duo I was in at 17 and the indie band I started in college. I wrote my first ‘real’ song when I was 11, called ‘Changing Tides’, but I’d always made up little songs and stories to myself, and I started reading and writing poetry more seriously in high school, before going to BIMM London to get my songwriting degree, from which I graduated in 2022. I’d dabbled in writing before, but I really started to take it seriously in the year or so before I started my degree. Whilst I was there, I first wrote with other people and really studied the techniques of great songwriters, which led to me starting to get invited to some professional writing camps.
I then made the leap to come to LA and be mentored by Stargate, after hearing about their program LAAMP on the podcast ‘And the writer is…’. That’s where I really honed and developed my craft and essentially joined the professional creative ranks.
Since then, I’ve been working with artists in London and LA as a writer and vocal producer, and focussing a lot more on getting my own artist project ready to release out into the world! I created so much music during the mentorship, so it’s been a process of going through and picking and refining what. I started there and thinking about how it will represent me and my vision going out into the world! I’ve also been lucky to have some really amazing opportunities to work with some artists I only would’ve dreamed about 18 months ago, so that’s been really exciting and fulfilling, and a little bit of a full circle moment too!
I’ve also started to work more on championing and mentoring young women in music in the past few months too, which is something I feel really strongly about. I’ve been in the music industry since I was quite young, and though I’ve been lucky not to encounter any really dangerous situations, unfortunately it is rife within our industry. I work with some great really supportive collaborators, but sadly not everyone has that same experience. I also write with a lot of younger female artists, and I do feel a sense of responsibility to watch out and try and make this industry better for them too. In London I’ve gotten involved with an organisation called Amplify Her, and I’ve been engaging with the Ivor’s Academy too just trying to increase visibility and support wherever I can!

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Just start! Staring at a blank page or an empty project file can be the most daunting thing, but you only get better by doing and figuring out what you like, experimenting with that and refining it, showing it to people you trust and questioning yourself and your choices to figure out your ‘why’. The ‘why’ is at the centre of everything we do as artists and creatives and is why I put metaphorical pen to paper everyday, so it’s really important to figure out what that is for you.
Don’t judge yourself for making things that are ‘bad’ – even the worst songs are just tools to help you get better and refine your taste and style.
Find opportunities to perform live if you’re an artist, whether it’s your local open mic or to a completely empty room – sometimes that’s where you realise what really works and what doesn’t even if it sounds great in the studio or on your headphones.
Consume music, both in the genre you want to make and other stuff, go back 50 or 100 years even to understand how we got here in the present day, and stay on top of new releases that interest you. Cultivate your taste because it will guide you in everything you create for yourself or anyone else.
And most importantly – find your people and your community, people you love to work with, people who’s opinions you trust, people who you can learn from, people who are gonna recommend you for that thing, or will speak well of you when you’re not in the room as well as when you are. Find other creatives who are one, two, three steps ahead of you and ask them about their creative process, how they got there and if they’d be willing to listen to what you’re most proud of making or give you any advice – 99.9% of the time they’ll be happy to share. This definitely applies to me too, I’m always looking up as well as around and trying to learn as much as possible from the creatives around me, as well as help and support anyone I can too. I don’t believe any of us are ever ‘done’ either, and sometimes you can learn something in the most unexpected places.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, working as both an artist myself as well as writing for others, I find it really fulfilling to get to explore my creativity in so many different ways. The process is really different when I’m writing for my own project versus another artist or for pitch, so I get to explore different sounds and genres that I don’t get to in my own project, and really connect with someone and help bring their vision to life. It’s really an honour to be trusted with little seeds of ideas and to help them grow throughout the process, and sometimes it can involve really deeply personal topics and ideas, so it’s important that there’s a lot of trust there too in a session. I also firmly believe that writing across different styles and genres not only diversifies your portfolio, but that they also all feed into one another too, and help support the overall strength of your creative ideas. I sometimes leave a writing session even more excited to get back in and work on my own stuff, almost like a post-gym pump but with music and creativity if that makes any sense? Like it makes me even more focussed on what I have to say after helping people convey their ideas.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tiktok.com/@jasminstarre
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasminstarre/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasmin-peters-5a5b39206/
• Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/v4jYVRGkGj59R2xc9

Image Credits

Diego Andrade
Laura Buttice