Photo: Jennifer de Konin / @jenniferdekoning_
For Wellington musician Jason Parker, pop songs are a place to say things he wishes he'd said in real life.
In his new single 'The Bright Side', Parker communicates some things he didn't express in a post-breakup "after chat".
"'The Bright Side' was my way of like, asking the questions I should have asked back then… but also dancing," he tells The Tahi's Evie Orpe.
- Listen to the full episode of The TAHI (13 June 2024)
Jason Parker, with support from Isla Noon, performs at Auckland's Ponsonby Social Club on 15 June.
Parker says he hasn't always felt as liberated as he does today.
Once a confident teenage music theatre student in eyeliner - "so fierce" - Parker withdrew into himself during his 20s and only "broke free" again, he says, when he began releasing music.
A good part of this self-liberation, Parker says, was realising that it's fine if he's not for everyone 'cause not everyone else is for him.
"The people that I am for, I love so much. Bringing a room of people together at a gig who are just like all on the same vibe, just want to dance and feel like the best version of themselves for 40 minutes, the fact that I can have the power to bring those people together? I'm for those people … Nothing feels better than a room full of people screaming the same lyrics."
For Parker, pop music is not only a "safe space" where he can be fully and freely himself, but it also helped him discover who that was.
"I used to have pictures of Christina Aguilera all over my bedroom and I was like 'Oh my God. This woman is so hot', which is true, but like… I don't want to be with her. That realisation really changed a lot for me."
Pop music is a very male-dominated industry, Parker says, and he's grateful that his creative circle - which includes producer Maude Minnie Morris and fellow pop artist Isla Noon - features many queer people.
"I love a man but I love the girls."
At Parker's upcoming Ponsonby Social Club gig, the musician will be impressively dressed as always, but uncharacteristically stationary due to the recent aggravation of a fractured collarbone.
"I was actually doing dips at the gym and it just went. It's actually a rugby injury. Like, people get this from playing rugby. My dad has never been prouder."
