The Artist Explains: Jameson & The Conditionals - 'Wasting Your Love'
Jameson and the Conditionals speaks to us about the animated visuals for ‘Wasting Your Love’ which explores the concept of not being wasteful of love and life’s natural gifts.
’Wasting Your Love is the stylish lead single taken from Jameson and the Conditionals upcoming EP.
How did you decide to go the animation-route for the ‘Wasting Your Love’ music video?
When Lowground Records and I decided to team up, we agreed that 'Wasting Your Love' would be a bold first single. And while we want to be bold right off the bat, we also want to take some time figuring out just how we want to brand Jameson and the Conditionals. We thought an animated video would be bold, but also inconspicuous, and would give us an opportunity to avoid being tagged with a particular label or identity. I remembered hearing of Amy Kuttab a couple years earlier from another musician, and after meeting with her and discussing the project, we were in business.
How does the video connect with the song?
The song itself is more directly about love in the traditional sense between two people, and how rejection can feel like someone is simply wasting the love you have to give them. For me, it was much more interesting to make the singer or narrator the one who is doing the wasting, instead of being the one who was rejected, which is maybe a little more of a common theme. I like the idea that someone could be so self-aware as to say, 'yes, I know you have love to give me, and, yes, I am wasting it, and that's ok with me right now, because this is where I am in my life.' But that's my take on it, and, like with many of my songs, I tried to write it in a way that gives the listener a chance to make up his or her own mind about what it means and represents in his or her own world.
My only instruction to Amy with regard to the visual content was that when the strings section in the middle of the song comes in that she dip out of whatever 'world' the video and it's characters were set in and get really psychedelic for a moment or two, and then, at the next verse, come back to the normal world again - whatever that meant. And that's how it went. She said, however, that her concept was to show things, like family, the natural world, pleasure, etc., that represent what we have - the 'love' - that can be wasted, and what it looks like to not waste those things. I think it's super cool that Amy went the other way with the video, because it could be really heavy, if that's what we had wanted, and it might have been too much of that vibe.
Do you have any unforeseen behind the scenes/making-of stories you can share?
I was not there for those moments of having a break-thru, or the horror of thinking something accidentally got deleted or destroyed without being saved since I was not involved day-to-day. There are, however, some things about the recording of the song that I found interesting.
I've worked on a lot of songs with a lot of great musicians over the last few years, most of which have yet to be released. It's always fun when we bring someone - an experienced musician - in to do a part, and they tell us we're asking them to do something they've never really done before. It doesn't happen a lot, but, say, with singers, we might ask them to sing a part in a range where they don't spend much time on their own. And a specific example of this happening during the tracking of the strings for ‘Wasting Your Love' was when the first violinist commented that the rhythm of the run of notes at the end of the middle section was something she hadn't seen much, and that it was a unique choice. Whether it was meant to be a compliment or not, I thought it was cool, especially for a guy who has no formal training in classical arrangement. But maybe that's why she doesn't see that kind of thing much.
Could you tell us more about the ideas/themes/imagery used?
I chose to stay very hands-off on this project. I wanted to let an artist be an artist and run with it. Amy did, however, specifically point out the fruit trees and the women in them as a metaphor for humanity and the love we get from the earth and its natural resources and how humans can be very wasteful of these natural gifts. And, again, taking a more positive approach by showing what it is to appreciate those things, instead of wasting them, like the lyrics suggest. The contrast is nice, and I think it will play well when more songs and videos come out from Jameson and the Conditionals.
What do you hope people take away from watching the video?
I can't speak for Amy, who created the visual world that we see in the video, but, personally, I just want people to enjoy it and get lost in the music, as well as the visual world. And I want people to be ready to see a lot more from Jameson and the Conditionals in the near future. We hope to be so lucky as to work with Amy, but there are a lot of great artists out there, and we want to work with all kinds of folks. Be on the lookout for the upcoming EP ‘Wasting Your Love’ and a follow-up single.
Interview feature by Karla Harris