Partially discovered by Marina ‘And The Diamonds’ Diamandis, teen new-ishcomer Jess Sparkle (yes, really) Morgan, aka Spark, pricked up the internet’s ears with her debut single, ‘Revolving’. We caught up with the London-based singer to chat about songwriting and darker follow-up single ‘Crave’.
Your career seems to have taken off very quickly, but we hear you’ve been making music for a few years now, right?
Yeah, I wrote my first song when I was 12 and then didn’t stop! It was a clichéd love song called ‘Butterflies’, which is basically what any 12 year old would write about. But nothing I write’s like that now!
So how has your songwriting developed since those heady days?
I kind of have themes and I write very honestly. Any song I write always has a very, very big part of me in it. If it’s not my situation or my relationship, then it’s one that I see and I feel, and it affects me in some way. I just take things out of real life, like control and desire and love and anger – all different feelings that everyone feels, and I build something around that. Sometimes it’s very literal, and sometimes I make a metaphor out of it. But it always stems from something very deep and a very strong emotion.
Your songs all have a very different feel – is that because they all have different themes?
Yeah, I love that! After I released ‘Revolving’, I was characterised as kind of electro-pop, and the comparisons I got were very samey. I get that, I don’t have a problem with it – every comparison I’ve ever had has always been to a successful woman in music that I think is amazing, so I always take it as a compliment. But after ‘Crave’, people were like, “Actually, this is nothing like ‘Revolving’ – so what else is on the way?” And that’s exactly what I wanted; I’ve always said that I didn’t want to have an album with 10 versions of the same song. I listen to music for different reasons, and I would expect people to listen to my music for different reasons, and I wanna be there for all of those. When you’re angry you can listen to a certain song of mine, when you’re happy you can listen to a certain song of mine, when you’re in love, you can listen to a certain song of mine. I hate when you can sing a person’s song over another one of their backing tracks. I can’t stand that! It’s just such a cop-out.’
Speaking of comparisons, Kate Bush and Debbie Harry seem to crop up regularly, despite you not sounding like either of them…
I think people see different things – I also get compared to Lily Allen and Kate Nash. I think that’s more of a personal thing. People think I’ve got some attitude which in some respects is true, but also I’m not always like that. I’m not the kind of person who would shy away from any emotions, because that’s what I write about. But I think people now are maybe seeing it’s not as one-dimensional as they thought. But then, they had only heard one song at that point, so I’m not going to get angry about it!
Is this chameleonic tendency deliberate? You’ve supported some very different artists, from Diana Vickers to Fall Out Boy spin-off Black Card…
And Marina And The Diamonds and Janelle Monae – all four artists are completely different, but it was okay for me to support them all and fit in with their audiences. I’d only ever had one gig before I supported Marina, so I was learning on the job. It was a very crazy time leading up to that tour: it was the most exhausting and stressful two weeks of my life, because I was leaving school, so I had exams, and then also had rehearsals and had to sort out everything before going on my first tour! It wasn’t planned – Marina only asked me to do it about two weeks before the tour started. But I wouldn’t have wished for it to be any other way.
