The Artist Explains: Jeremy Loops - 'Til I Found You'
Our favorite South African singer-songwriter Jeremy Loops has just shared his new single ’Til I Found You’ via Decca Records. Along with the release comes a self-directed video, he took a moment to discuss with us in more depth about the track and it’s visuals.
Hey Jeremy, how are you? How are you coping during this strange time for the music industry?
I’m good, thank you. This time has been horrible, I can’t lie! Haha. No, on a serious note, I just love playing shows. Traveling the world and sharing my music with an audience is what brings me joy. And with COVID and all, that’s just not been possible, and I hate it. We’re obviously luckier here in South Africa, since we aren’t on hard lockdown like your team in the UK and most of Europe, and shows are back here, but that restriction of movement sucks.
We’ve tried to adapt and sure, we’ve done the livestreams and tried new things, but just bring me the people.
You have released a new track called ’Til I Found You’, can you tell us what the track is about?
Of course! ‘Til I Found You is about the search. For another person you need in your life, for a certain feeling or experience, but it’s mostly about the search for yourself. On the surface of things, love is an obvious theme in the song, just like connection is, but if you dig deeper, it’s a song about that never ending journey and work you put in to find your true self. I believe once you find and love your inner being, it makes it so much easier to love and connect with others.
And so the track and the video explore these themes. The visuals and instrumentation for the song is bright and hopeful, but lyrically, we go to dark places. For context, ‘Steam train souls from the city, we loan our bones to the grave’ are the opening words. And that duality - wading through the depths of despair to find the respite of fulfilment and repeat - is where the magic lives in ‘Til I Found You. It’s where the magic lives in life, if we’re being honest.
With this track, it features a self-directed music video. What made you take up this kind of responsibility for the visuals?
Stupidity made me take that responsibility on. It can’t be anything else. Hahaha. I’m joking but kind of serious too - directing a video is so stressful. So demanding.
I actually decided to do it because I had this concept for the video and I just couldn’t stop thinking of it. We had other directors pitch great concepts, but I loved the idea I had. And I also found that, you know, directors are creative people who want to see out their own ideas, so even though I pitched my concept to directors, I could tell they didn’t want to do it or they wanted to combine my ideas with there's.
So I just decided to direct it myself. I approached a legendary director of photography Ross Hillier, who’s across various JL creative work over the years, and he agreed to help me see it through. And then, almost overnight, my whole life felt like it was on fire. You know that ‘this is fine’ dog meme? That was me for like two weeks. I had to redirect my entire team's focus and energy to helping me pull it all off. But I’m glad we did it and I’m proud of what we came out with.
Where was the video recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the filming process? How does the video connect with the song?
We filmed the video in different and iconic parts of Cape Town. Not iconic to tourists but iconic to locals. I wanted to show these amazing spaces we move through as the backdrop and character in our journey and in our lives, so it made sense to do it here.
I think the most insane thing that happened behind the scenes was organising the choreography and getting licenses to shoot in the locations we wanted to. I am not a pro dancer, so talking to the choreographers and lead dancers I was doing the scenes with was hilarious. They had to teach me some super tricky mechanics, but I also wanted to incorporate my own ridiculous dance moves I do on stage. Those rehearsals were undoubtedly the most fun part of shooting the video.
And then on a licensing front, we initially had our applications for shoot locations rejected. It was hectic! In South Africa, they don’t always give you a reason why your application was rejected, and the production company we were working with has a good relationship with everyone, so we were just so confused about why it was all happening. I had this whole crew hired, I had this deadline for the video looming, but I had nowhere to make the song. You can imagine the stress.
Along with this track, will we be expecting some more music from you soon?
Yes! Lots of new music on the way. I actually have an album I’m working on at the moment. I think it will probably come out late 2021, but there’s a couple of other big singles I’ve written with some pretty big names that will come in the coming months. I feel like I’m sitting on gold, you know, and I’m just excited to get all this music to people and to play shows again.