Pop/Rock
In May of 2020, Travis Barker’s label DTA announced its first signee: a relatively unknown artist named jxdn. Since then, the rising rocker scored two top 10 hits on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, opened for Machine Gun Kelly on tour and became a key player in pop-punk’s next wave.
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But now, after a particularly trying few years – during which his best friend Cooper Noriega died of an accidental drug overdose, he struggled with his own mental health and ultimately entered rehab this summer – the artist is ready for his fresh start.
In July, he returned to social media after a brief hiatus, captioning a fresh-faced smiling selfie: “I finally feel like Jaden Hossler so that’s who I’m going to be.” In September, he announced his new single “Chrome Hearted” to be released under his full name for the first time. The single is not only a reintroduction, but also a redirection for the artist, as the trap-pop song more prominently features his vocals than previous singles and steps away from the punk and rock roots through which he launched his career.
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“I’ve always wanted to be a pop star,” says Hossler while sipping chamomile tea (since prioritizing his sobriety, he’s cut out caffeine). “And I think I couldn’t be the pop star without being the rockstar that I was.”
And while his rockstar persona led Hossler to career highs, it also paved the way for personal lows. He recalls his breaking point this summer, when he “lost it” in London just before he was about to go onstage with MGK. Instead, he booked a ticket home and soon after checked himself into a treatment center for his mental and physical health as he battled anxiety, depression and addiction.
“This past year has been by far the hardest time of my life…and it’s all finally catching up to me,” wrote Hossler in a June Instagram post. “I am trusting my gut that this will put me in the best possible position to be who I want to be, feel how I want to feel and go where I want to go.”
Jaden Hossler
Hunter Moreno
When we meet in mid-July at the Sherman Oaks staple Sweet Butter Kitchen, it’s only been a couple of weeks since he finished his 21-day treatment – and it’s clear his manifesto held strong. Hossler wrote “Chrome Hearted” before entering rehab, saying “I think it was a big reason why I felt comfortable going, because I felt like I had a glimmer of hope. Like I wasn’t coming out to nothing.”
“I wasn’t coming out having to change everything, I had already started this process for myself,” he continues. “And if I came out of rehab and just wanted to drop all of it, I could. But being in rehab and leaving rehab, I felt even more [confident] about it. This song was really the first moment where I was proud of myself again in a really, really long time. And it felt the same way as soon as I got out.”
“Jaden has always had pop tendencies in his music, so it felt like a natural evolution,” says Johnny Minardi, SVP of A&R at Elektra (through which DTA signed a joint venture). “It’s been super exciting for me to witness Jaden’s [growth] both as an individual and as an artist.”
Below, Hossler opens up about his year of change, revealing what encouraged his reintroduction and why he finally feels like the artist, and person, he was always meant to be.
How did the idea for “Chrome Hearted” come about – and why was this the right song to venture more into pop music with?
I’ve been playing with pop for about a year, but I could never find the right sound. It was either too bubble gummy or just didn’t feel like me – I really wanted to find a sound of my own. I’ve always leaned towards ballads, but then I was like, “I want to make [a song] that is uplifting and could go on radio.” I kind of got obsessed with [luxury brand] Chrome Hearts at the time so it came into my mind to use it as an adjective. I had this melody and as soon as I sang it, I was like, “This is gonna be one of my biggest songs.”
We [Hossler and songwriter-producer Andrew Goldstein] made a demo of the hook in 15 minutes. I was showing everybody – I even went up to the president of Elektra, Greg [Nadel], because we were at the Blink-182 concert, and I was like, “I just wanted to let you know I just made a hit.” Once we finished the song, I woke up the next morning and [Greg] called me, my A&R called me, my manager and everyone called me, and they were like, “Holy shit, you were right.” I’ve really struggled with trusting my instincts over the past two-three years, especially when Cooper died, I felt like I lost my identity. And this was the first time where I trusted myself, so that was the start of this whole new process for me.
There’s a bit of attitude to “Chrome Hearted,” which is very different from your prior single “Elevated Heartbreak.”
I kind of wanted to talk my shit a little bit, you know what I mean? I haven’t really shown off my voice as much as I could because of the style of music I was making. This song isn’t the focus track of my album or anything – I’m working on my album separately – but this song is to let everyone know, “Hey, I’m Jaden Hossler now.” It felt like a complete 180 shift, but still felt like me.
Some of the lyrics are a little pointed, like “you don’t hold me down, you just watch me drown” and “she’s so obsessed with herself.” As someone who launched their career online, how do you deal when fans want to know who or what your music is about?
I kind of love it because now I’m in a position where I don’t really care. I think it’s awesome to leave it up to the interpretation of the listener because even when I listen to music I’m like, “What is this about?” I do the same thing. People want a story associated with it. But that’s the best part, a little bit of a mystery. Before, I thought I had to put everything on the table for people to accept me. Now I feel very different. I feel very confident and secure in who I am and my story.
It’s also important to not only have but protect your private life.
And I never understood that. And I haven’t really had one. Especially with social media and TikTok. It’s overtaken everything, and some people lean into it, but I know why they do, it’s because either side hurts. Either side is very invasive and anxiety-ridden and I just am not dealing with that anymore.
Is “Chrome Hearted” indicative of what your next album will sound like?
I haven’t completely put my project together but I made 25 songs, so my plan is to make around 40 and pick from there. I’m itching to make music. That’s all I can do right now. I’m genuinely obsessed with it, which is such a good feeling because for a while I just wasn’t in the studio. I wasn’t really present.
I’m reaching far and wide on the landscape of pop music and trying to center it on my voice. And more than that, center the songs on my story. I feel like I’ve been through a lot of shit and I really want to talk about it. It’s cool for me to express myself in a lot of different ways. It’s a lot of trap-pop, there’s an 80s pop vibe, like The Weeknd, which is really cool. And then R&B, these past few weeks I’ve been making a lot of SZA and Bryson Tiller [inspired] songs. This album’s gonna be a conglomeration of a few different sounds, I never want to put myself in a box again.
The Weeknd recently told W Magazine he wants to kill off his artist character. Do you see your own shift being as dramatic?
Oh it’s incredibly dramatic for me. When I decided to be jxdn, I just wanted to be anything but Jaden Hossler because I couldn’t live with myself from high school and my past. I felt like there was an opportunity to be someone different, and quite literally it was. And a lot of amazing things came from being jxdn, but then there’s a point where the pendulum comes back and I hit that wall of, “I can’t be this person anymore.” I’ve come to terms with all my trauma and all the things that I’ve hated about myself before and all my insecurities. That’s why I’m proud to be Jaden Hossler. I think it’s gonna be the key to open the door for everything that I’ve been dreaming of my entire life.
What is that dream?
I watched Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, when I was nine years old. I can see it clear as day, I was sitting in front of my parents bed and I just started bawling my eyes out throughout this documentary. I saw myself on the stage like he was. And so that was the beginning of manifesting that entire journey for myself. And that night I literally went and found a camera in my house, put on purple because that was his color, and started singing. That was the first time I realized I had a voice. I [always] knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know who I was. Having both is very important.
Who are some other pop stars you’re a fan of?
I didn’t listen to Taylor Swift really at all my entire life but recently I’ve been listening to her because she’s such an amazing writer. And listening to these different styles of music, I have a lot to learn. I’m excited about that. So I listen to anyone and everyone that I can right now, it’s almost like I have homework. There’s this guy named Brakence who I really love. Olivia Rodrigo is amazing; I love “Vampire.” Funny enough, I never listened to the radio before, but I listen to the radio a lot now because I want to see what they’re playing. I want to understand, because as much as people don’t want to believe, it is sort of an algorithm. And so I want to infiltrate it and then fuck everything up.
And Travis [Barker] has always been so supportive of what I want. He’s always believed in me, even when he really had no reason to. And so that’s really the biggest blessing, is to be able to have someone like him that no matter what I do, he backs me because he knows that I’m doing this for the right reasons.
How did the rollout of “Chrome Hearted” compare to previous releases?
I directed my first music video, which is pretty cool. I’m more invested in this project than I’ve been in anything else. Also, I’m fully sober. I thought that I would be less creative before I got sober, but I’m more creative than I’ve ever been in my life. Like, I needed sobriety to fulfill my dreams, and I never knew that.
In a weird way, it almost feels like restarting. Right now, I’m not thinking about 10 years down the line, because one of the things about being sober is trying to be present, but I do know that I’m building a career that’s lifelong.
What did you learn in rehab that you’re still implementing in your daily life now?
It’s the structure that I miss the most. The waking up, making your bed, going to breakfast. I eat three meals a day now, minimum, and I ate one meal every two days before. And obviously it has to do with sobriety, but even more so I meditate, I do things that actually help me throughout the day, that no matter if anything else changes, I have that structure, and that’s what I got to take from the treatment center.
I don’t drink caffeine because I know that if I start drinking caffeine enough it gives me anxiety, and then that anxiety makes me want to smoke, and that makes me want to drink. Little things that make a big difference.
Leading up to this reintroduction, why was it so important to be open about how you ended up here?
People like to talk about the story of starting from nothing and getting to the top. But there’s another story that I think a lot of people can resonate with: I started from nothing and I got success and then I lost myself in that success. I got lost in even good things, too much of anything can kind of turn you the wrong way, but it’s never too late to be who you really want to be, it’s never too late to make a change for yourself. I chose not to give up on myself. I’m here to remind people that you control what happens now and what happens next. And I’m really grateful for that. I feel like this is the start of a brand new life for me.
Pop-punk trio Meet Me @ the Altar arrived during the pandemic as a vibrant newcomer to the scene — and has been eager to release its debut album ever since. “I’m done waiting,” vocalist Edith Victoria tells Billboard in late February, in a tone that fuses excitement with exasperation. “I’m really over it.”
Fortunately, the wait is over as Past // Present // Future arrives today (March 10) on Fueled by Ramen. It’s the culmination of an effort that the band — comprised of Victoria and guitarist/bassist Téa Campbell, both 22, and drummer Ada Juarez, 24 — began writing in mid-2021.
With a tense-themed title that nods to the genre’s pivotal players throughout the past few decades and teases where the band will take it from here. Single “Kool,” backed by crunchy guitar, turns its title into an approximately nine-syllable word; “Thx 4 Nothin’” could fit seamlessly onto the Jonas Brothers’ 2008 album, A Little Bit Longer; and album closer “King of Everything” rolls its grunge-based production into a head-banging chorus. “We didn’t want to trap ourselves in the box of genre,” Campbell says. “It’s our art at the end, and we want to make the music that makes us happy.”
And though the group is intent on providing more than just nostalgia, its members aren’t afraid to tug on heartstrings: During its tour opener at New York’s Gramercy Theatre at the top of March, the band performed a medley of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” into Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” into the Freaky Friday battle of the bands classic, “Take Me Away.” (Plus, Victoria noted during the show that the vulnerable “T.M.I” draws inspiration from P!nk’s 2001 hit “Don’t Let Me Get Me.”)
Over the course of the roughly hourlong set (Meet Me @ the Altar’s first headlining show, and its first of 23 stops on tour), the trio took turns marveling at the crowd and offering an early listen of some Past // Present // Future hits.
“That’s such a big aspect in releasing anything. People really come to understand [new music] after they see it played live,” Victoria says. “I’ve even experienced that as a music lover. Not really liking a song, and then after I see it live, I’m like, ‘I love that song.’ I’m really excited for that.”
Below, Victoria, Campbell and Juarez discuss how they made an experimental — yet cohesive — body of work, wanting to tour arenas with the Jonas Brothers and more.
The release of Past // Present // Future comes just before the fifth anniversary of your first EP as a trio, Changing States. How has your creation process evolved since?
Campbell: I always forget that we even have Changing States. As time goes on, you understand each other’s visions, and we’re always communicating and talking about what we want for this band and what directions we want to go. We’ve gotten a lot better at visualizing our vision. Before, we were kind of just doing whatever. Now, we’re really locking in on what we want to be making.
What conversations inspired the sonic direction of this debut?
Victoria: We wanted for it to be a little bit experimental because it’s our first record. If fans end up liking those songs, we have so many different avenues we can take for the second [album] — and not have our fan base be so confused as to where the heck it came from.
Campbell: Right. We didn’t want to trap ourselves in the box of genre, which a lot of artists do and a lot of fans inflict on bands, too, which is kind of messed up. It’s our art at the end of the day, and we want to make the music that makes us happy. If other people like it, that is great. But if they don’t, it’s still music for us. Like Edith said, we want to be able to go any direction [while] still keeping it rock-based. An example of a band who did it perfectly was Paramore: Their records all sound different, but it’s still them. Some people take a while to get with it, and that’s alright. That happens any time anyone changes anything. But they’ll get over it.
Victoria: One thing I’ve always hated about the music industry is that fans don’t see their favorite artists as lovers of music that can like multiple things. It’s so unfortunate because I remember when Paramore released After Laughter everyone was freaking out and I was like, “This is so good, though!”
You’ve previously discussed wanting to create an album that sounded like a cohesive body of work. Why was that an important focus?
Victoria: [With] us being huge music-lovers and listening to a lot of different types of records, it’s always really hard to find the sweet spot between having a diverse record but also keeping it cohesive. Because you can listen to an album and then four songs in you’ll be like, “Well, I’ve already heard this.” We had to find out how to keep it diverse but also keep it cohesive. That’s what we would like to see in other artists, so we want that for our band, too.
Were there moments when you thought the project was finished and then you’d listen back later and think, “You know, we’ve heard this song already”?
Juarez: So many times.
Campbell: We thought we were done in April and didn’t get done until November. In the beginning, there were so many swaps because we weren’t really sure of what specific sound we wanted this album to have. As we had more writing sessions and fell in love with more songs, we started to really understand, so then those would beat out some of the other ones that we didn’t really feel fit that cohesive vibe. We recorded the album in April and then we had a last-minute session and flew out to L.A., wrote a couple more songs and had to put them on the album. We swapped those out last second.
How many songs do you think were written for the album in total?
Victoria: Around 30? There are some songs that I refuse to ever … we’re taking those to our grave.
Juarez: Those our deepest, darkest secrets. It’s just going to be us knowing those songs.
John Fields (Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato) helmed the album’s production. How did that come together?
Victoria: I made a playlist of early 2000s throwback pop-rock songs — Kelly Clarkson, Demi Lovato, Jonas Brothers, all those people. We were all listening to it during the process, and when we were seeing how the record was going to shape up, we had to decide who [was going] to produce it. I was looking through that playlist and I saw John Fields’ name under “Get Back” by Demi Lovato, and that’s one of our favorite songs. I was like, “He’s probably going to be a million dollars a song, it’s not going to work out.” But we had dinner with our A&R and he was like, “I’ll just reach out and see what happens.” John really liked us and it all worked out.
Juarez: Long live John Fields. He was the perfect person for this album.
The first line on the album opener and lead single, “Say It (To My Face),” immediately addresses being an industry plant. Why did you decide to kick it off with that?
Victoria: That’s the leading insult that people say to us, and we wanted to start this album rollout with an in-your-face moment. We’ve heard it so much since signing to the label; just people saying sh-t for no reason. We still get that. We get that more now than I think we ever have.
Campbell: In between [August 2021 EP] Model Citizen and “Say It,” we had all that time to see what people were saying. It was like, “We’ve been gone for a while, but we’re back. We saw what you were saying while we were gone! We’re going to address it and we’re moving on.”
You’ve been signed to Fueled by Ramen for a few years now. What are some of the bigger goals the label has helped you accomplish?
Campbell: First of all, we have the best publicists in the world. That has contributed to so much of our blowup. Everyone on the label genuinely cares, and it’s so nice to feel taken care of and listened to because that’s hard to come by, especially in our experience.
It’s also funny because — I’ve seen this recently — people assume that when a band changes anything, it’s because a label is making them. It’s all us. If you don’t like that, that sucks because it’s our idea. The label never forces us to do anything. Everything is our choice.
Victoria: It’s so funny. Especially since we kind of shifted gears with our sound, everyone is like, “Oh, the label is changing them.” They’re not.
Juarez: Funny enough, we would’ve done it sooner. Almost did.
Victoria: We almost did. Model Citizen almost sounded more like this.
You’re on your first headlining tour. As a band that has supported so many icons on the road, what were you eager to apply to your own shows?
Campbell: Every time we tour with someone, we’re out there [in the crowd]. To be able to tour with bands like Coheed and Cambria, The Used and Green Day who have been doing this for so long, we really studied those acts because they alter their songs around the show and alter their show around the songs. It makes you think of, like, “Oh, I could be doing this kind of moment” — whether it be a clapping thing or whatever — in our own songs. We really tried to absorb as much as we could.
Now that the album is out, what are the band’s biggest goals moving forward?
Juarez: Taking over the world.
Campbell: I want to tour with the Jonas Brothers!
Juarez: I want to do a big arena tour so bad. Manifesting.
Victoria: Yeah, I’d really want us to open up for an arena tour. The Green Day shows that we played in Europe were amazing. But Jonas Brothers, yes. They have a new album coming out, too…
If you had to designate one song on the album in each of the “past,” “present” and “future” categories, which would you choose?
Campbell: I would say “T.M.I” is past because I feel like that song has a vibe most similar to “Bigger Than Me.” Like, that era of MMATA.
Victoria: I feel like “Try,” too.
Juarez: For future, “Kool” has to be there. That’s that futuristic type sh-t. People haven’t even thought of it yet.
Campbell: Present would probably be “Say It.”
Victoria: Also, it could be “Rocket Science” from a lyrical sense. We’re experiencing so many new things and I think we’re going to have to remind ourselves—
Campbell: It isn’t rocket science!
Victoria: Yeah! It’s a whole new era for us, in every single way. First album, new sound, new vibes. We might have to remind ourselves a couple of times to chill and not overthink [things]. Like, “Oh yeah. We did that.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
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