Stockholm-based musician Johanna Andrén, aka JÁNA, started writing and making music at a young age: she was just nine years old when she began to learn classical guitar. JÁNA was also surrounded by music during her childhood thanks to her music-loving family as they played jazz and classical artists as diverse as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Bach alongside more popular offerings from Queen and Michael Jackson. JÁNA became the first in her family to study music formally at college and it was here where she found her own musical inspirations in the shape of Erykah Badu, D’Angelo and Frank Ocean. “They had a huge influence on me and I really felt like there was a door opening when I first heard them,” the 23-year-old explains. “I get inspired by all sorts of genres. I guess that’s what comes from listening to such varied music growing up,” she says.
Following intensive musical studies throughout Sweden and London, JÁNA was soon picked up by a major publisher but decided instead on a more independent, DIY approach – something which gave her greater control over the output, production and direction her music would ultimately take. In her home-made studio, JÁNA creates collages of lyrics, images and sound sketches until a distinct narrative for a song emerges. “I started to try different ways of singing and daring myself to sing ugly and make weird noises which create unusual landscapes for a song,” JÁNA explains. “My goal is to create a world for each song to live in. I pay a lot of attention to lyrics. I want it to hit, but still be art. I’m really inspired by Frank Ocean’s way of writing which means songs have many interpretations depending on which way the receiver looks at it.”
Such multifaceted storytelling is at the heart of JÁNA’s debut EP, Flowerworks – a project which began life as a dream. A fan of Swedish electro pioneers Little Dragon, JÁNA dreamt that she had the chance to play and work with the band until the moment was suddenly snatched away. On waking, with the dream still vivid in her mind, JÁNA decided to find the contact details of Little Dragon’s manager and email him her demos. “The dream must have been some sort of sign,” JÁNA laughs. Soon after, the manager got in touch. He and Little Dragon were so impressed with what they heard that she was invited to open for the group on their upcoming tour.
As her friendship with the group grew, JÁNA started to share some of her early ideas for the EP with drummer Erik Bodin and singer-songwriter, Yukimi Nagano. Eventually, they all worked together on EP standout, ‘Wild Roses’. The song proved to be a blueprint for the record’s dreamy aesthetic with Erik and Yukimi helping to develop the song’s thoughtful lyrics and cool melodies. “Yukimi asked me about this person I was just starting a relationship with. The song became about my first impression of her and what our relationship might become,” JÁNA explains. In the studio, the group encouraged her to be as free and as experimental as possible; they also helped her to persevere when the song proved difficult to write. “Even when we were struggling, I was having fun,” JÁNA says. “They were super encouraging. I slept on the couch in their studio in Gothenburg. They were the best and I’ll always have love for them.”
‘Wild Roses’ became JÁNA’s most experimental song to date and placed her soaring vocals alongside dreamy R&B and woozy, minimalistic electronica. The collaborative experience, JÁNA says, led her to be braver not only sonically but lyrically too, especially when it came to the deeply personal topics she decided to write about. Soon, it was evident that the EP was becoming a mediation on relationships as well as a chronicle of her own relationship, from its hopeful beginning to a sudden, abrupt end almost two-years-later.
“One day, I had my girlfriend, my apartment, a publishing deal and then the next, everything went away. I realised I can't control anything, that it’s always in motion. I decided to pursue a more independent approach to my music because I wanted to at least be in control of my work. There were a lot of major changes but ones that needed to happen. I would always want my music to be personal, to be an outlet of emotions somehow and that is ultimately what Flowerworks became.”
‘Lotus’, a song that strays away from her relationship, sprung from a conversation with a friend about the issues women face when presenting themselves in order to find love. “A good girl to me / Someone in a dream / I know good girl would see / When she’s being told who to be,” JÁNA sings on the song’s opening verse. “My friend and I spoke about only getting love when showing off the final product, through being a ‘good girl’. Lotus is a flower that blooms in the most ugliest of places and it became a metaphor; whilst you might not be able to see its beauty at the start, it’s can still become something beautiful.”
A song about seeing beyond appearances and beauty, its meticulous construction marked a new style of ambitious songcraft for JÁNA too. Born out of a multitude of her song collages and demos, she started to develop the song with her live band before experiments with the track’s electronics formed the final element of the song’s construction. “I definitely had the most satisfaction hearing the finished results of ‘Lotus’ as I had really worked hard on those lyrics and made many different versions of the track before putting my band on there,” she says. “The electronics were the final layer and we spent a long time getting those just right.”
The ambition is carried through on the EP’s most emotive track, ‘Carpark’, which charts the ultimate end of her relationship. “I felt stuck both emotionally and physically when I wrote this song,” JÁNA says. The last song she wrote for the EP, it eventually became the EPs opener on what is effectively a reverse-chronology of her relationship. Unlike other songs on the EP, ‘Carpark’s’ texture is sparser, with stripped-back guitars and gentle synths reflecting the void the end of the relationship brought to JÁNA’s life.
“I’d say that ‘Carpark’ was the more complex to assemble sonically,” she says of the tender song, which was recorded alongside two other guitarists. “The guitars make perfect sense for the song’s theme. All three of us recorded some live takes with nylon guitars which resulted in the making of the song’s outro and the mood for the whole track.” The track originally began life as a heavier, rockier incarnation. “It had a much more angrier vibe,” JÁNA recalls, but in the end, a sparser version made the final cut which was more in keeping with what JÁNA describes as the “indie R&B vibe” of the EP. “It’s weird how a song can lose and gain its magic in different forms. Playing classical guitar at home in Uppsala is how my interest in music began so it felt right to have these on the opening track.” Meanwhile, the EPs closing track, ‘Dew’ offers a hopeful conclusion. “It’s about new life coming out of darkness...I’m trying to describe that it felt like my world was both ending and beginning at the same time.”
Speaking of where her writing will go next, JÁNA says she’s aiming to keep it firmly in the first-person. “I’m always aspiring to keep my writing as an outlet for my experiences, so I will continue to be personal. Right now, I’m working on something that has sprung out of ‘Carpark’”, JÁNA reveals. When writing songs, JÁNA is also focussed on how they will sound live and is already looking ahead to taking the songs on the road. “All I think about when the song is coming together is how I’m going to do it live. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most now. I can’t wait to see what comes next.”
