Phoebe Jasper

“I wrote it with a few of my best friends and that’s something I am super proud of,” says Phoebe Jasper of the Rita Ora single she co-wrote entitled ‘You Only Love Me’. “I still can’t believe that happened.” The single generated a music video full of cameos from Sharon Stone, Lindsay Lohan, Kristen Stewart, Jodie Turner-Smith and others; and was performed live by Rita Ora on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for over a million viewers – giving Phoebe an additional thrill.

And a few months later, Spotify put Phoebe’s face on a billboard in New York’s Times Square no less, as part of a campaign to promote artists worth knowing from around the world. Under her own stage name “Navvy” (pronounced “Navy”), Phoebe’s beautiful voice soars, delivering “straight-up” accessible lyrics in interesting rhythms over lusciously produced electro-dance pop. 

“I prefer a conversational lyric,” she says, and those first three 2019 EPs tell the story of how she processed a hard and unwanted real-life break-up of a long-term relationship. The relatability of her lyrics means strangers from halfway around the world have made the effort to let her know her songs helped them get through their own awful break-ups. And when she’s on tour, emotional fans often cry while singing along.

“All of those moments make me seriously stop in my tracks,” she says. “It is so easy to just think of music as something so trivial – we’re just writing songs! But then every so often, I’m reminded that people take these songs and weave them into their own memories; they send them to their friends, screaming because they relate so much to my story, or they play them on the guitar they got for their 13th birthday. Truly I could cry every single time I hear these stories.” Phoebe has not always been a pop aficionado; when she was a budding teenage opera singer, she thought pop was, well, a bit dumb. But the lecturers in popular music in her Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Auckland changed her mind – particularly the legendary arranger, composer and musician Godfrey de Grut. “I still feel so incredibly grateful to have gotten to learn from him,” says Phoebe. “I can hand-on-heart say with absolute certainty that I would not be doing what I am now were it not for the University.” 

Even when she left University, she did not expect that her training would open up the paths she now walks. “If I’m super honest, I thought I would end up as a touring backing vocalist, but my career could not have gone in a more different direction if I tried. Having ‘songwriter’ be the honest truth when I fill out the ‘career’ section of any official form is not something I could have ever predicted.”

And while others find it easy to get jaded “in a job where we write 200 songs in a year, and if we are lucky, 10 of them come out”, Phoebe finds the work exciting – an energy which clients find appealing to have around them in a songwriting session. “I am doing things I wasn’t brave enough to even dream of – things I’ve somehow tricked everyone into letting me do!” she says. “If I can keep having the time of my life while still paying my bills, then that seems like a job well done to me.”