The pod’s guest for this episode is Swedish singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, director, water-colour painter, mother - both in the parental sense and the meme sense - ionnalee (Jonna Lee).
With a career spanning over two decades and 9 studio albums, Jonna previously joined Chris and Doron for an interview in season 1 of Melody A.M. to discuss iamamiwhoami’s 2022 record, Be Here Soon.
In the autumn, Jonna put out two new albums, Close Your Eyes, and its Swedish language counterpart, Blund. She has referred to the creative process of bringing this new music to life as making something “in colour, shimmer, playfulness” - a contrast to having been brushed by darkness.
In doing that, she reconnected with her iamamiwhoami album from 2014, BLUE, which took the independence she had carved out for herself as an artist with the first two iamamiwhoami records - bounty and kin - to a whole new level. Close Your Eyes and Blund, therefore, were created and presented as siblings to that seminal album, which came a decade before them.
At the time of the release of BLUE, Doron travelled to Sweden to undertake what is believed to be one of the very first filmed interviews given by Jonna about the iamamiwhoami project (filmed for online music and culture publication, The 405, on Djurgården in Stockholm).
Ten years on, Melody A.M. explored the possibility of revisiting that filmed interview together with Jonna and having another sit-down, outdoors in Stockholm, for a chat. Jonna said yes and we met for what is now Melody A.M.’s first audiovisual episode.
Our meeting was an opportunity to reflect on Jonna’s growth and development as an artist over the years as well as the connection between BLUE and the new music that shares a strong family connection with it. We also spoke about Jonna’s recent residency at Stockholm’s Fotografiska Museum and the exciting new addition to her own record label (To whom it may concern) - the Swedish artist, Jenny Wilson.
This episode is presented with a big thank-you to John Strandh, who undertook the filming of the interview, and To whom it may concern.
On the ionnalee page of our website you can also find a playlist with our favourite ionnalee and iamamiwhoami tracks from the artist's rich discography.
