Singer Janne Schra on new album less from the head and more from the heart

We meet singer Janne Schra in the dressing room of Gebroeders de Nobel in Leiden where she will soon perform with her band. She is announced on the venue’s website as follows: ‘Some people really have it all. Beauty, brains, a voice like a nightingale and she can paint too.’ Janne can smile about it.

When I ask if she is a Sunday child, to whom everything comes to mind, she replies: “Maybe I am a Sunday child, but I did everything I could to undo that,” she says. “I think too much, I make it much harder on myself than it needs to be. I set the bar so high for myself, just not normal. I also had a burnout at 27. I could have just done everything a little more relaxed That would have been better.”

Not a goose girl

Janne was born and raised in Huizen in het Gooi. Her parents owned a sailing school. “I had a very nice childhood. A lot outside and on the boat,” says Janne. She doesn’t exactly see herself as a Gooi girl. “Someone from Bussum, who lived on the right side of the railway, called Huizen the ghetto of the Gooi, I didn’t mind at all”.

She grew up without music, but turned out to have musical feeling. “My father and mother had nothing to do with music. But we did have a piano, so I played a bit on it and that immediately stood out,” says Janne. “I was just a very sensitive child. I also see that with my daughter, she hears something and can sing or think of something like that and I did. I still have that sensitivity. When I walk somewhere I associate myself drowsy, I be on all the time and that definitely helps with songwriting.”

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At the age of 20, Janne broke through with the band Room Eleven, with whom she made two albums. Room Eleven received two gold and one platinum record and toured Canada, Japan, Europe and South Africa. In 2012 Janne went solo and made a number of albums. The album ‘In the rain’ stands out because it was completely Dutch. She received an Edison for it.

The new album ‘The Heart Is Asymmetrical’ is again in English. “‘In the rain’ felt like a trip. I wanted to do something completely different. And that turned out to be that jazzy Dutch-language record,” says Janne. “And now I wanted to go in a completely different direction again. Really make an English-language pop record. They are actually two opposites. It is, just like in politics, that I have become a bit polarized.”

More impulsive

She made the new album ‘The Heart Is Asymmetrical’ together with producer Adam Bar. It originated in the corona period. The songs came about in a completely different way than Janne is used to. “Normally I first write a text and then I think of the music. Now everything happened much more impulsively,” says Janne. “I would sit on the couch with Adam in my sweatpants. He would play a chord and then I would sing something to it. I just didn’t want to think too much, just jump in and let it go one way. And that’s it whole album actually originated.”

Janne compares this working method with how she paints. “Then I turn off my brain, which interferes with everything and thinks about it, and then my hand just goes somewhere and then I intuitively know where it should go and then it arises. So you can do that with music too.”

Luck

Janne has now written more than 100 songs. They are all dear to her, but a song like ‘Speak up’, from her first solo album, is one of her favorites. “‘Speak up’ stays very close to what I want to say. Funnily enough, these are often songs with lyrics that I say to myself,” says Janne. “With ‘Speak up’ I say to myself, sit up straight and let hear yourself.”

Writing songs like this also makes Janne happy. “But I think that happiness mainly lies in accepting how your life is and seeing the beautiful things around you.”

The album ‘The Heart Is Asymmetrical’ by Janne Schra is out. Janne Schra and her band will be in the Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam North.