This piano that accompanies Jay Scott’s voice on All the streets are silent opening the album of the same name is played by none other than Richard Desjardins; and this is the least surprising thing about the album. The pop-soul singer-songwriter with guitar, revealed three years ago by the success (6.6 million views on YouTube!) of his duet Co-pilot with FouKi, today offers a second album of songs that are still just as melodious, but with surprisingly candid lyrics, in which Scøtt portrays himself as a failure, sends the parasites that have appeared around him packing and takes the weak pulse of our world.
“Last week, we had the music directors of the radio stations over to present the album,” Jay says. “I was laughing under my breath! I had them play it Woodstockwho says that I just want to do some mush and get kicked out of Zellers. The managers would listen to it and say, ‘Yeah, that’s catchy… But where’s it going?'”
It’s in the song Woodstock that Jay, as he sings, “loses his temper”: “I don’t know where we’re going anymore when Icheck the two-minute news / Governed by people who don’t even know how much it costs / A pint of milk, a Winner for Life and a packet of Export A / Elections are like OD, you vote for your favorite clown.”
Well, well, Jay Scøtt is a committed singer! Or at the very least, one who is very willing to take a critical look, both at himself and at the world in which he struggles. “It’s funny, it’s not something I intellectualize more than necessary when I write songs,” he comments. “It just comes out like that — I usually start with the melody, it stays stuck in my head before the lyrics exist. Then, there are certain themes that I knew I wanted to address, like on Where were you?the friendship, the success I found, and these people who started texting me again, but who I hadn’t spoken to for fifteen years…”
No need to dig deep beneath his tasty modern pop grooves prepared with acoustic guitar and drum machine to find something more serious to say than his sugary choruses suggest. So, after having blown his top on WoodstockScott sings I need a break : “It doesn’t even make me feel good / When I’m wasting my time all day / I’m a little tired ofget shit face “Towards the end of the album, another striking song called I hate youaddressed to an ex; he sings the chorus with his heart stuck in his throat, with a sincerity that had never been so detectable in his softly nasal voice — “I hate you more than Kendrick hates Drake,” he sings, going for another of those references to hip-hop and popular culture that spice up many of his compositions.
It’s striking for two reasons. First, because we don’t expect the musician to be a good guy, a personality trait he shares with the popular MC FouKi. Second, because what he says on his album strikes a chord with each of us. Let’s be honest, we could all use a break these days.
Since everyone will want to ask him the same question, he might as well answer it right away: “Yes, I’m fine!” he assures at the end of the video camera. Jay left his native Terrebonne to settle “in the woods” in Rigaud. “I’m not so keen on the big city, I wasn’t so keen on Terrebonne either, I was surrounded by all these people I went to high school with, the guy from dephis mother was my neighbor, etc. I wanted to try that, the wood, and finally, I like it there!
This move also coincides with another major change in his life: Jay Scøtt can now call himself a musician (read: full-time). “In my life, I had never stopped everything I was doing for six months to do just that, music. I feel lucky to have been able to do it here, in my business, in nature” de Rigaud. “My previous album [Ses plus grands succès, 2021]it was a collection of songs, several that I put on YouTube, that I didn’t imagine for an album. We put them together on a vinyl, we made a record. There, I didn’t want to do the same song twelve times; I did a judicious sorting, I hope, in my songs, so that they flow well.
This luxury of carefree creation, this dream of becoming an artist, which he has cherished since his earliest years beats of rap songs made on the computer at the age of 16, Jay Scøtt is now getting a taste of it, propelled by fruitful collaborations with FouKi, Souldia (the song Big brotherradio hit), Koriass (MatusalemA hit also), the duet album with Mike Clay, the other prodigy of Quebec pop who knows groove.
In a few weeks, he will present his new songs at Club Soda two nights in a row, then announced a concert at the Impérial in Quebec City in March 2025 after quickly selling out the Petit Champlain Theatre. About fifty concert dates are already on his agenda: “Yes, it’s big, but it seems like I’m too into it to realize it, and that’s good. I’ve dreamed of this my whole life. I’ve been making a living from music for three years, that was my goal. I closed my eyes to dream about this; today, my eyes are open and it’s happening. But I remain aware that it can be fleeting, that, in four years, all of this [peut être] finished for me. At least I will have lived all those moments, with the public.”
All the streets are silent by Jay Scott was released on the 117 Records label.