Sex, Drugs and Pop Music: A Front-Row View of Jessica Morale’s Phases
When it came to slaying into obedience the culture of popular music, Lady Gaga has helped set the model that pop’s reigning queen Madonna paved, and in doing so, she struck a pose while revolutionizing the music world in her own image for female artists to be unapologetic and fearless in expressing themselves in their artistry.
The marital mean streak shows little sign of divorcing thanks to darkest pop exportJessica Morale. A profanic (refuse to obey) songstress with an anti-establishment background who rebuff’s putting her middle finger down… But then she’s devout and polite. Out Front Magazine, in the company of the 26-year-old singer-songwriter, spoke on the story behind her calamitous rise and the reckless abandon that led to her debut album, Phases.
“The songs on the album are cocky, defiant, melancholic, and hopeful all at once. Halsey, Sizzy Rocket, Lady Gaga, and Tove Lo” she expresses, “are some of the pop artists that inspire me … mostly because they are fearless in everything they do. They aren’t afraid to do things that are unconventional and don’t give a fuck if it makes others feel uncomfortable. I aspire to be that fearless.”
Morale unquestionably strikes out the streams of sparkle and spectacle. She proceeds to strip the safe label of average pop princess with her mid-to-late-nineties grunge-punk outfits: dstressed band shirting, a triple-layer, lock-chain necklace, Doc Martens, and her signature dominatrix waist belt. From Gaga-esq platform boots, winged eyeliner, or throwing on a dress: you’ll find her within each phase of the moon wearing everything and nothing at all.
For as stylish and incandescent as Madonna and Lady Gaga are, the industry has yet to see any pop stars who dare to pull off anything quite like the alternative teen-pop slayer Morale. She is redefining an outside world that’s been secluded and uninvited and making it popular and accepted. Though she is beyond her appearance as a future fashion-goth icon amongst downtrodden art geniuses and fellow rejects, it’s her music that makes the loudest impression in shock value.
“I think I’m a good girl with an unapologetic edge to her,” says Morale. “I haven’t always been this way. I used to be a people pleaser and always cared about what others thought of me. But, after a while, it becomes exhausting constantly living for other people and not yourself!”
Morale grew up an alternative kid with a free spirit who enjoys having fun in Coral Springs, but settled in the “Magic City” of Miami. Ever since her growing up in a Puerto Rican household, music, in an autobiographical way, has always been a foreplay of therapy. That is, until her private struggles at a young age landed her a relentless desire to become a singer who’s lyrically armed with the saying, “Make my messes matter, make this chaos count”—like a flying sparrow from a birdcage tattooed on her left thigh, an empowering reminder for women to never be afraid to break free.
Her darkly debut album Phases is a tuneful glitzy and gritty-drenched, coming-of-age record. The album channels a pain-ridden circumstance we all go through and the experiences that shape us into who we are as human beings. On account of self-deprecation, (like the moon) the album orbits into three defiant sections: the sex, the drugs, and the pain popping music. Morale, fueled by her blunt honesty, is perilous when purging all of her grievances through nine-track jottings.
“Prologue” opens up the thunderous album in silence like a dark-twisted fantasy. Sulking amongst rain scatters with a more haunting feel, the red represents the rage in her heart, and the blue represents the loneliness and the despair. Now that the root danger that’s been missing from pop music has been planted, “Hit Me Where It Hurts” is a habitual self-sabotage without a resolved pop maestro. It strikes without throwing a bruising fistful of punches. The pieces of paper behind this record couldn’t get any more bloodier and emotionally crumbed and bogged down when singing vaguely creepy things like “I’ve already dug my grave/I might as well sleep in it.”
Morale knows how to craft pop with her alluring 20-something angst and look-at-me rage. “Deadbeat Generation” puffs an excessive, thick drug-drenched marijuana haze caught up amongst a degenerate class of sex-dungeon goth ‘n’ opus alternative-pop, hot mess know-it-alls. An exposé in her brooding, true-to-life persona behind the broken-glass ceiling, Morale reveals the wasting away of her morals.
“It’s inauthentic to my art and myself as a person to not talk about my experiences and how I’ve numbed myself in the past with substances to help ‘cope’ through certain traumas. When I talk about it in my music, it’s often a cautious warning that numbing yourself can potentially add more fuel to the fire.”
“Letting U Go” encompasses an elegant, beautifully potent, yet painful goodbye to a rear-view lover. Melancholically haunting, it’s soothing to move on and close a chapter in life by singing a lullaby to your lover for the last time in order to be truly happy. This changed the seething mood of the superb album towards a laid back, melodious, and romantic flavored sound. Think classical-meets-modern texture with a jilted vocalized divine intervention that immediately takes the listener to another world.
At the very least, Morale is the hottest and brightest newfound promise that popular music has made room for since the space of Sizzy Rocket and Lady Gaga, the latest grand entry of pop sensations. Moral of the story (pun intended), she is undoubtedly cementing her placement into pop’s pantheon of icons. Morale has what it takes to make the next big pop in popular music. She is the angel from your nightmare, and she is taking over the world.
