Jay-Jay Johanson

Jay-Jay Johanson is a Swedish writer and performer songs notable for his melancholic voice and emotional lyrics. He was born Jaje Johanson in Trollhatten and was raised in Skara. Jay-Jay revealed his brilliant musical abilities in early childhood and mastered saxophone, piano and clarinet by fourteen years. After he had learned to play guitar, Jay-Jay formed his own band, May Tuck. At that time he was deeply into rock and liked Kiss, due to their image and stage behavior. May Tuck used to play punk rock and treated their music as expression of protest against society and government. Later, Jay-Jay would call such an attitude frivolous and forgivable. His life was changed after visiting a concert given by Chet Baker, a celebrated jazzman. Since then he became interested in jazz. After studying architecture and graphic design at college, he moved to London, where his name, hard to utter for Englishmen, was changed into the one known worldwide. First, Jay-Jay was occupied with drawing album covers, and then he found a DJ’s job at one of the clubs.

Listening to the Portishead album, Dummy (1994) brought Johanson the idea to enrich simple electronica with elements of jazz and trip-hop. It was realized in the young Swede’s debut album, Whiskey. It gained various replies among the listeners, but attached the critical attention. Johanson’s sophomore studio work, Tattoo, was released in 1998. It featured the type of music similar to the one of the first album, but revealed improved arrangements and play. This album came to meet accolades from both audience and experts, which proved the rightness of the direction picked by Jay-Jay. The third studio work of the Sweden artist did not become a great revelation in terms of music. It was just another implementation of the project to mix electronic sounds with real instruments. Johanson’s fame came to increase steadily in Europe and South and North America, where his albums reached as high sales as those back home. Jay-Jay wrote his lyrics with focus on the subjects of love, desire, separation and complexity of relationships.

The musician’s image based on irony and infantile fantasies, the fearless attempt to add emotiveness to soulless electronic music, made Johanson an outstanding and prominent showbiz figure. Antenna, released in 2002, was an act of dance themes from the eighties. Jay-Jay tried to resurrect the romantic mood, so characteristic of Pet Shop Boys or Erasure, and desperately forgotten on dance floors of the new epoch. Johanson’s following album, Rush, was released in 2007 to become another big success. Full of ideas and inspiration, Jay-Jay did not wait long to do another album. The Long Term Physical Effects Are Not Yet Known became available in 2007. Many considered this one the best work ever produced by Johanson. It included such hits as She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Rocks In Pocket. Back from the promotional tour for this release, the artist shared some information about his new studio work. Self-Portrait was expected to become the most personal and sincere album in his discography. Energetic and expressive, it consolidated the beliefs of Jay-Jay’s most loyal fans into his endless skillfulness and talent.