The Wireless presents the premiere of Jon Lemmon’s new video ‘When It Came Along’.
Electropop Wellington artist Jon Lemmon has unveiled the charming new video for his latest single ‘When It Came Along’. Crowdsourced from fans around the world, the clip aims to parallel the ideas of inclusiveness and community that he explores throughout his lyrics. With that in mind, we shot Jon a few questions about the message behind the song, and to see if we could learn a little more about the new music he has in the works.
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‘When It Came Along’ is straight-up dance-pop. It’s an uplifting song about coming together collectively to overcome struggle. Were there any specific personal moments you had in mind when writing the song, or was the idea to keep it universal?
You know, as I was writing the song I had this feeling of complete freedom. Like all the weight and anxiety that had been dragging me down all those years had suddenly lifted. God, I’d been aching for that freedom for so long! And there it was! It finally came! So that’s what I wrote the song about.
But I was also musing about the connection between personal struggle and collective struggle. For instance, I think the reason so many people have social anxiety is because we live in a culture which constantly undermines our self-confidence through aggressive advertising and insane expectations.
That’s not a problem you can just “fix” in yourself. We’ve got to address these problems collectively. And I think the first step is just connecting with each other more and being nicer to each other. You know, simple stuff like sharing more of what we have and telling each other nice things more often.
I think the reason so many people have social anxiety is because we live in a culture which constantly undermines our self-confidence.
If we value collective kindness more as a culture and practice it in our daily lives, it will have broad-sweeping positive impact on our laws and social infrastructure. And also just general vibe improvements all around!
The music video has crowd-sourced footage from people around the world. Who came up with the idea for the clip? And how did you see it tying in with the theme of the song?
Well, it’s funny, two of my good friends, Loo and Thanaa, had both thought of the same idea independently of each other and suggested it to me. The idea seemed perfect because we wanted the video to have an inclusive and community feel to it. So this was a natural and fun way to make that happen.
In the end it came together really easily, in large part thanks to my friends Sophi Reinholt and Mark Russell from Renegade Peach Project who edited the final video with me.
You’ve mentioned that you’re hoping to release your full-length Hope & Change sometime this year. Where are you at with the album?
Heh, well… I don’t know. In the past I’ve been really sporadic and I’ll say I’m going to release something and then I don’t release anything for years. But I’ve been super inspired the last few months and I’m writing a lot of material at the moment. Moving really quickly, which is a big change for me.
So I’ve got a feeling you’ll be seeing a lot more from me in the next few months. I’m not sure if that will be in the form of an album or a bunch of singles, but my hope is that whatever it is, there will be a lot of it!
