JC Lodge: Still creating, still evolving

She is a Jamaican songbird whose soulful voice inspired a generation to believe in the beauty of love. With iconic hits such as Someone Loves You Honey, Telephone Love, and Make It Up to You, she was a bona fide hitmaker whose name was synonymous with positivity and musical poetry.

But JC Lodge is not resting on the success of those songs. Decades into her career, she is still creating, recording, and collaborating even as she grapples with being primarily recognised for the music that made her a household name in the 1980s and ’90s.

Those iconic hits, she said, have now pigeonholed and packaged her into a cute little box as a nostalgia artiste that promoters and fans reach out to see perform when they want that ‘feel good’ vibe associated with that era in Jamaica’s musical history. This has prevented her from truly expanding her reach, sharing her full repertoire, and enabling music aficionados the world over to hear her entire catalogue of songs.

As JC Lodge told The Sunday Gleaner, while she is proud of her body of work, it can be frustrating at times to be known for a handful of songs when she has an additional 14 albums of great music that people still have not heard.

Still, Lodge remains busy creating.

Currently, Lodge has a lot of fingers in different musical pies. “I’m always working on a project and just released two singles. Have a Nice Day, done with Yasus Afari, which is about seizing each day, and the other, just released, called The Right, about women deciding who has the right to touch them, as they alone have the right to make that choice. Also, Spragga Benz approached me with a track called No Ordinary Girl, and he said that I was one of the first people to inspire him because he had a sister who went to Alpha (Convent of Mercy Academy) when I was there, and apparently, she used to come home talking about me. So that made me really stick in his mind, and he decided that he wanted me because he could hear my voice on it in a collab.”

Music, she said, has been a blessing but was not something that she initially imagined as a career growing up. Now, decades later, she remains invested in the craft and is determined to reach listeners with the new music she continues to make.

“I’m still creating music, but it’s just become really hard. In the past, we had two radio stations. If your songs played on those two stations, everybody heard you. Now, everybody has access to streaming and YouTube, but a lot of the time they just go with what’s presented to them. This is a pet peeve of mine because I have written so much material that I think is good-quality reggae songs on good rhythms, and I just wish that I could reach people with new music.”

For Lodge, the challenge is not a lack of material or a desire to step away from music. Rather, it is finding a way to introduce audiences to the music she is still making while navigating the expectations surrounding her classic hits.

Live performances, she emphasised, have become crucial for most artistes to survive.

“But then the problem is that I will get live shows based on my old songs, which means that the audience is coming to hear those songs. You have 30 minutes, and you’re going to do five songs, and four of them are new. Jamaican people don’t want that. They came for the old songs, and they want to sing along. I understand that nostalgia. I completely get it. But my issue is, how am I ever to grow and let people appreciate the new music that I have?”

For young women trying to break into the industry now, she advised them to ensure that they are both marketable and dedicated to the process.

“You have to be determined that you’re going to make it because it is not an easy road. You’ll have youth on your side, but you will need to have good management to make sure that your product is of a high standard. And I would say avoid the slackness. Music is an art form, and I think that when your lyrics are clean and well-crafted, those songs have a chance of standing the test of time.”

nicola.cunningham@gleanerjm.com