Jack Kane

Jack is an artist. His mother is an artist, and his father is an artist. He jokes that unlike most kids, he thought his parents were cool. His music isn't just a reflection of his upbringing - it's a testament to his ability to craft melodies that resonate deeply with audiences through his vivid internal world. With a sound and self-deprecating tone that's as relatable as it is infectious, Jack Kane's music has a magnetic quality. We talk in detail about his upcoming EP and the inspiration behind each song. Jack has a knack for creating music that lingers in the mind.

Another thing Jack jokes sounds ‘kind of cool’ (we've got a theme going here) is the idea of getting into fights at school. But despite that cinematic drama running through his mind, his energy is calm and sensitive. This sensitivity is responsible for lyrics such as "I know it’s hard to break a sequence with the sequins in your eyes" or "you'd rather be lonely than love me again”. Vulnerability, to him, comes first when composing. The ability to see his faults and self-reflect to create honest songs is the recipe for his heartfelt melodies. He is making his way into music, creating songs one car ride at a time.

He tells me that he plays a lot of instruments, but none of them perfectly. He can be critical with a touch of wit and vulnerable with charm, but most of the time, he is just being honest…


I just wanted to start with a little bit about your journey into the music industry. How did you start and what made you become a singer-songwriter?
My parents are in the creative industry. My dad was a performer in Western musicals, and my mum was more of an actress. I've always grown up around the entertainment industry and the arts. From a very young age, I was aware that it was something to take seriously - something you can actually have a career in. I think many people discourage it because they know how difficult it is to make a career and money from it, and because they don't have a route in. Coming from a family that works in the creative arts, it was easier. I didn't have people telling me, "Don't do that, it's silly," because they were doing it themselves. From age five, I started playing piano and writing and composing. I wasn't very academic in terms of theory, but composition was a way to get away from that. I loved playing the piano but dreaded lessons because of the theory. Making up my own pieces was my musical escape from the theory side of things.

I've just always done it my whole life, just writing songs. My sister is the reason I sing because she's an amazing singer. When I was about nine, I was very shy performance wise - I was not a shy kid - but I was nervous to perform. I really wanted to go to the same school she was attending because it was a performing arts school. She told me, "You just have to sing." So she stood me in the kitchen and made me sing "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz. I sang it, and she was like, "Oh, you can sing!" Then I ended up going to the school, and I've been doing it ever since.

Do you still get nervous when you are performing?
Weirdly, yes. I act as well. I was mainly an actor from ages fourteen to twenty. I used to get very nervous with anything related to acting - really anxious. I was worried that I would translate that to music, or that I would be infinitely more nervous. But then I found a manager through social media. She took me to this little pub and said, "You've written loads of songs, get up, perform them, and just see how it feels." I had never performed my own material before, but weirdly, I wasn't even slightly nervous. Nothing happened. I knew that the moment I performed at this tiny pub, either I was going to love it and want to do it for the rest of my life, or I was going to hate it so much that I would quit music altogether. And I loved it. I loved it so much!

I want to talk to you about your songwriting process because when I listen to the EP, I can really picture a scene for each song. It feels very cinematic. Do you get images in your head when you are writing?
It varies massively from song to song. I think the sad ones are a lot less exciting to write. They're still fulfilling, but I'm not jumping around the room, obviously. But with any of the up-tempo ones, like "Swimming Pool," it is very image-based in my head. It was written about a party that actually happened, so I was just describing that kind of scene. I've always connected more to visual writing. Artists like Paolo Nutini and Madison Cunningham do it a lot, and going back through my favourite artists, it's all storytelling. You know, there are certain directors like Tarantino, you watch his films, you know what you’re going to get, you know the style they’re going to tell the story in. To me, the style you’re going to tell the story in has always been more interesting than the actual story itself. Hall & Oates are another good example. They were one of the first “I’m listening to my own music" kind of thing. I was in primary school, about seven or eight, and I had my dad's iPod. I took it into school and listened to "Rich Girl." I remember walking through the corridor, seeing the whole story in my head, and thinking, "This is so cool." I think that's partly one of the reasons why I started doing music because I just thought it was so cool.

Your EP explores a lot of themes and emotions. There's love, heartbreak, pretension. So, if you view your EP as a complete body of work, what themes or main ideas stick out to you?
There's a lot of self-critical, third-person stuff where I'm kind of criticising things I know I do but can't change, or I just don't change for whatever reason. That is what “I'm Just Being Honest” is all about. It's all the things I'm scared I'll become or that feeling you get after a night out when you wake up the next day and you haven't necessarily done anything wrong, but you have this feeling in your stomach like you were the biggest idiot the night before, and you don't know why. "Swimming Pool" is about internal struggles, like teen angst, feeling insecure at a party with people who seem cooler than you. "Sequins" is similar, in dealing with internal struggles. Actually, now that I come to think of it, it's quite a selfish EP - it's all about my inner feelings about things happening around me. The next song to come out is the saddest one on the EP. It's just a classic breakup song. It's all kind of self-critical. Actually, all of it is.

But that's the interesting thing because since it's very personal to you, a lot of people can relate easily because they are going through the same feelings as well.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think it's always interesting to hear what people don't like about themselves because you never really know. I would never be able to pick out what someone doesn't like about themselves - it's always something weird and random. And I think everyone can relate to that.

You were talking about breakups, and I actually have a question about that. There are many ways to deal with breakups, and artists have their own ways as well. For example, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and even Shakira lately have made popular ‘the revenge song’, where they write about their breakups and bad experiences. This is kind of popular right now. So how do you deal with all these feelings and emotions after a breakup or heartbreak?
To be honest, I haven't experienced heartbreak in a long time. I mean, I go through various different heartbreaks like losing family members or dealing with death, but in terms of relationship heartbreak, it hasn't happened for a long time. I will say there's a cultural aspect to it where, as a guy, I don't feel like I could really write a revenge song. There's something that just doesn't feel very classy or delicate about writing a song about a girl and slating her. I think you can get away with slating men more easily, it’s almost charming to tell another man everything that's wrong with him. But I don't think you can necessarily do that as much for women. Not that I want to, but I tend to channel all the breakup songs internally, thinking about things I could have done differently. For example, "Rather Be Lonely" is about all the things you wish you had changed before you broke up. There's a whole middle section where I reflect on things I know I should have done differently and what’s wrong with my personality and take accountability for them. I guess that's my form of therapy. Maybe that's how I deal with breakups - working things out, figuring out what's going wrong with me. But like I said, it's been a while since I've broken up with anyone.

It's funny because my next question is about that. Usually, when you experience heartbreak, you feel sadness and anger, so it's easier to write all these things down and create a song. But when you're the one who caused the heartbreak, it can be more challenging to write a song about it because it requires being really honest with yourself. Have you ever been in the position of being the "bad guy," and then writing a song about it?
Not really. I've been with my girlfriend for eight years, so it's been a while. The last breakup I had was when I was like fourteen. There have definitely been moments in life, like “I’m Just Being Honest” is about feeling like you have to own up to things and take accountability for a lot of stuff. “Sequins” is a similar concept - admitting fault. It's a really endearing thing when people write about that kind of stuff. And naturally, as a person, I quite enjoy…it’s not self-deprecation, but it's like poking fun at yourself, I guess. I can't remember the actual word for it. But I think I do that naturally, so it comes out in my writing quite a bit.

You recently posted your Spotify Wrapped. So how do you create a connection with your audience through the songs, and what impact do you want your music to have on them?
I would really love to keep doing what's happening right now, but on a bigger scale. I've noticed that people who like the music seem to be really connecting with it. If their favourite song is a specific song of mine, I'll know all the other ones that they’ve liked - the kind of songs they connect to that I’ve released. I'm really into DMing people back and messaging people to see how they're feeling. I think it's important to speak to your fans - I don't even really like the word "fans" because they're just people who listen to music. So, I have a Patreon, and that's really helpful. I post a lot of demos on there and get feedback from them, testing the waters. There are a lot of artists that I really love or loved who were doing one thing that was really connecting with people, and then they just went west and started doing something completely different. It felt like they didn't care about their fan base. I never want to do that. What's been so lovely about being independent is that I've had a lot of creative control over what I get to release. I've been able to make exactly the music I want to make at the beginning of my career. So, I do think I'll never really stray too far. If I do, it will be for a one-off project where I was just trying something out, and then it'll be back. I just hope people connect to it and keep listening to it, and hopefully have enough of a connection that they'll listen to the songs for a long time.

So, when people leave you comments on social media and tell you what they like about your song or maybe something negative, do you consider those comments to create your next song?
Definitely, especially with Patreon. I've grown quite a lot with all the people there. They suggest a lot of the stuff that I do on various other platforms. Comments on TikToks or reels, I definitely take on board. I mean, it's now like an age-old thing where you can get one hundred amazing comments, but if there's one bad one, it will disregard all the other ones, and I definitely need to get better at weeding them out in my head. Luckily, there hasn't been too much of that at all, which has been nice.

In your song "Rather Be Lonely", you sing, you'd rather be lonely than love me again. I felt like that was very deep, personal, and a little bit sad. So, I want to know, how important is vulnerability for you when you write your songs?
Vulnerability is everything for me in the writing process, if you're not being vulnerable, it's not interesting. I think you can be vulnerable in various ways. I have a song called "More and More" where it's very boisterous, but to me, it's clear that there's a veil of boisterousness hiding something, which is vulnerability. Everything interesting comes from a place you don't want to show. I was in a writing session the other day with these twins called Dani and Zara - they're new artists. Everything they were writing was super personal and super deep, stuff you wouldn’t necessarily want to share with the world or with a co-writer in a session. That vulnerability, I think, in any art form, is just really exciting and endearing. It can make you love music a lot more because you feel seen, because everyone's vulnerable in some way, shape, or form.

Talking about vulnerability, sometimes it's more socially acceptable for women to be vulnerable than for men. So have you ever struggled to connect with your feelings or to express them because you're scared that people will criticise you?
I definitely know a lot of people who are like that. I think I've been very lucky because both my parents are in the arts. I've grown up with a lot of creative people, a lot of different people. So, from a very young age, I've never been hammered down the masculine route. I'm very close to my sister and my mum, so it's never been a real thing for me. I've never been worried that I need to be more masculine. Maybe there's naturally something in me anyway, or maybe in men, where there's a desire to be more masculine, but I've never really felt that I needed to be like that. The other day I was thinking that I wish I'd been in more fights when I was at school because I think it sounds kind of cool, but yeah, I never really was.

I really like “Swimming Pool” and the music video is amazing as well. The music is really soft and catchy, and the video is really fun. Can you share more about the story behind this song and the process of writing it?
This song came about in the weirdest way. I went to a writing session with my good friend and producer Mack Jamieson. He produced "Gold" and "Ache", he’s done quite a lot of my style. He played the guitar riff as an idea. We tried to write over it for like three, four hours, and I just wasn't coming up with anything. I was like, "Let's move on." So we moved on, and then we wrote "Underdog," which I ended up releasing. At the end of that session, he was like, "Let's listen to it again. Let's see if anything comes up." He gave me a mic, and I basically sang - not the lyrics, but the entire melody of "Swimming Pool," except for the chorus, which was a little bit different. So, then we were like, "This is actually really good." We suddenly liked it. I was in the car on the way home, and I wrote the first verse and the pre-chorus, and then spent about six months trying to fit the story of a teen party into the song. But still the chorus wasn't sitting right. I was bashing my head against it for ages, it must have been about a year before we went back into a session. I invited a friend and writer called Sarah Close, we wrote ‘Tell Me What I Need to Do” together, which was on a previous EP. She came in and said "Okay, wait, let me sing it like this." She basically sang the whole chorus. So then we both put lyrics to that and recorded it. Honestly, I think "Swimming Pool" is potentially my favourite song. It's the one that when it comes on, I'll never skip it. It's nice actually having another writer on board because when I'm listening to it, I'm hearing melodies that I wouldn't have necessarily come up with. So it's more interesting to me, I think.

Continuing a little bit with "Swimming Pool," have you ever wanted to be viewed or perceived as someone different than who you feel you are?
Yeah, definitely. So, ‘Swimming Pool’ is about me when I was around fourteen, going to parties with my sister's friends who were a few years older than me, you just do anything, say anything to make someone think that you're cool, even to your own detriment. Even like messing around with drugs or whatever so people think that you are cooler than you are, It's just so dumb. I had quite bad cystic acne when I was a kid, but I didn't really get bullied for it because I went to an art school where bullying wasn't as prevalent. But I still definitely had this thing where I was insecure about how I looked. I was quite small when I was young. So yeah, throughout my teens, I was just trying to be cool…and I think I mastered it today. [laughs]

Have you ever considered changing your musical direction just because there's something else that's more popular and widely accepted?
I've definitely tried it, not with anything I've released, but I've gone into sessions or worked on stuff of my own with a more mainstream idea in mind. Usually, I like it straight away, but after a few days, I realise it isn’t me. I never released anything I didn't love. I think popular music is good, and I do enjoy it. I don’t hate it, but I don’t think it's very me. Every time I try to do it, it feels disingenuous.

You wrote on Instagram that you had the first line of "I'm Just Being Honest" a long time ago, and I want to know about it because I love this song, and I think it's so funny.
Yes, I'll find the note. Sometimes I just hear people say stuff, and I'll write it down. I can't remember why I wrote that down. Oh, I can't find the note...wait, here it is [shows the note] - it's just full of loads and loads of ideas - music, video ideas. I think that "taking down a peg" or "you need to take it down a peg" was at the top of that for a long time. I tried to use it so many times, but it didn't really stick until we wrote "I'm Just Being Honest." But there are a lot of lyrics that started out in here [the notes]. The name "Swimming Pool" was in here, "Sequins" was in there, which started out completely different. It was like a blues song.

Do you use your little notes where you write fast lyrics when they come to your mind?
Definitely. That's basically what that is - just any random ideas. I think I work better on paper, mainly because there are no distractions, otherwise I’ll be on Instagram while I try to write anything. But the issue with that, I think, is that editing is harder because you can't just go back and change stuff. But I think there's something with it... maybe it just makes you feel more like a writer when you're writing on paper and you're more focused. I don't know, but I definitely enjoy working on paper more.

You are a multi-instrumentalist, right? So how has your knowledge in different instruments influenced your songwriting and also your musical style?
It's been very helpful in terms of developing a style because I'm not very good at a lot of it. I can play a lot of instruments, but I'm not necessarily amazing at any of them. I think when you have margins, it's easier to shape stuff out. Being able to play different instruments has been a blessing because I'll hear my influences, like Billy Joel, for example, and then I'll listen to his song, and I'll be able to figure out what he's doing and, in some way, rip it off, and change it enough. So I think a lot of it has come from copying my influences and then just altering it.

That's pretty interesting. Is there a special artist that you prefer? Not just the songs, but the sound of their music or their instruments?
Definitely Fleetwood Mac. They come up in every single session that I'm in, in some way, shape, or form. I think they're probably the biggest influence in terms of writing. I don't know if it actually comes across that much in my music because I don't think I necessarily write like them. I think I always try to write like Joni Mitchell or from a similar place where it's introspective with poetic imagery. And definitely Billy Joel. If there's a song that's just me and a piano, I'm basically copying Billy Joel as much as I can.

And is there a specific person who has had a lot of influence on your music? your personal life, not necessarily another artist.
I would say my dad probably, in terms of my music taste, is kind of the reason I like what I like. I have a very good relationship with my dad, and I think because when I was younger, I thought he was really cool, and I think a lot of people don't think their parents are cool, so any music that they listen to, they don't want to listen to. But because I thought my dad was cool, I'd listen to bands like the Eagles, Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, all that kind of stuff when I was very young. I didn't really understand the concept of time in terms of music. I didn't realise that a song from the '80s was any different from a song from 2016. I just thought that music was music. While all the kids in my school were listening to the Black Eyed Peas, I was listening to Steely Dan.

Some artists find inspiration when they are happy, others when they are sad, and some when they are nostalgic. For you, is there a specific emotion or feeling that makes it easier for you to write or to compose a song?
I would say I come up with the most ideas when I’m driving. I don’t know what that feeling is; I think it's like being focused on something, kind of zoning out and thinking of other things. Every time I’m doing a task where I don’t really have to think about it, I can be taken away in the background. So a lot of songs have been written in the car. I drive to a lot of music sessions, which is really helpful because after the session I’ll be thinking about it on the way home, or I’ll be coming up with ideas on the way there. So I guess it's whatever the feeling is when you're on a normal day in the car.

Music often serves as a form of therapy. Writing your feelings and then singing them is a way to embrace them. How has creating and performing music served as a coping mechanism for you?
Most of the therapeutic stuff isn't writing for me. I think it's more the melody that makes me feel emotional, which is weird, but I think that’s what melody is. When you go back to the earliest forms of singing, they were making noises that they felt, almost like animalistic, and I think that can help influence melodies. If you’re going through pain, and the melodies you sing already sound painful before you even put lyrics to them, I think that can elevate a song massively, and that can act as a form of therapy. I think I’m not yet at a place with live shows where I’m fully internalising the song, because I’m more focused on not messing anything up. I’m so focused on hitting the note, performing the guitar, making sure I’m emoting enough. And I think once I’ve done a few more shows, after I’ve done all the festivals this summer, I think I’ll be there…fingers crossed.

If you had a dream collaboration with any artist, who would you choose?
For a few years now it’s been Miley Cyrus. I think she's got the coolest voice, potentially one of my favourite voices of all time. It's hard because some of my other favourites are getting older, but I'd love to do anything with Joni Mitchell. Anything with Stevie Nicks, even if it's just writing or just being in the same room with her. But I think Miley Cyrus would be the one if I had to choose just one name.

If you had the opportunity to collaborate with Miley Cyrus, what kind of song would you propose to her?
In my head - it’s so embarrassing - the scene I keep seeing every time that I talk about this is more of a live performance rather than a released track. It would be a cover of a really classic song, something up-tempo and belty, just something super classic that we both just kill it on stage. It would be amazing.

Do you have a favourite song by Miley Cyrus?
There's quite a lot. I really loved “Jaded” from the new album. "Malibu" I really like. I love all of her covers as well. Oh, "Midnight Sky." I love "Midnight Sky," I think that is one of my favourites.

Where do you feel the most comfortable and at peace, as a person, not as an artist?
I think it's somewhere in nature. My girlfriend's parents live in Wales, and when we go and stay up there, it's just so quiet at night. It’s completely silent apart from any animals making noises. The skies are so clear. When I went up there last, I did quite a lot of writing there. I think I write more folky stuff when I'm there because I just feel more at peace, I guess. So probably there, probably in Wales, in the middle of nowhere, with a few horses around.

Outside of music, what are your hobbies and the things you'd like to do? And what's the weirdest thing you like to do?
It's kind of difficult because I do music and acting, and then I have another part-time job that makes money. Between those things I don't actually have a life, apart from just sitting down and watching TV. When I was younger, I was quite into skateboarding, but I wasn't very good, so I don't think that’s a good enough answer. I actually don't really do anything apart from music and acting. It's quite sad, actually… Oh! I really love cooking!

What do you like to cook?
I cook a lot of Italian food. My favourite thing, I think, is cooking with leftovers and making them into something else. So it's not necessarily a specific cuisine or dish, but just getting creative with whatever you've got in the fridge and making it. When it comes out nice, it's so much more satisfying.

What is the next step for you and for your career? Do you have any exciting plans coming soon?
This year I’ve got a show on April 18th at Camden Assembly, which is my second ever headline show. So, in my head, that's the only thing that I'm really thinking about at the minute. I've got two gigs this month - supporting AURORA, then I'm also doing a UK tour with Arthur Hill. But I hope this summer is going to be quite heavy festival-wise. This year I just want to be playing as many gigs as possible. There's not necessarily a dream that I want to achieve this year. I just want to play as many gigs as possible - get my music out there as much as possible.

Are your parents happy with the choices that you made? How do they feel right now when they see you doing what you love?
They love it, really. When I was fourteen and I really wanted to do it, they sat me down and said, "Just so you know, you're not going to make a lot of money. This is not going to be an easy ride. It's going to be difficult” - all of the things that they know about the industry. They just knew that I wasn't going to listen to them. So yeah, they're just really proud. They really like it. They love coming to the shows, all the songs. I don't think they'd change anything.