Interview With July Jones Over New Single “Beautiful People”

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July Jones is a rising star, that has gained much recognition through her writing songs for the industries best known musicians such as BTS, GIRLI and Brooke Candy among many others. Although July was born in Slovenia she emigrated to London when she was just a mere 16 years young, she has a British nationality just without our accent.  For all the new fans, July is known for alternative pop and her futuristic alternative pop project, she has featured on many publications from EUPHORIA Magazine, Cool America Magazine, Gay Times, CelebMix, Nonchalent Magazine and now us over at Origins Of CJM. We must say it is a true honour to have her with us and at the most perfect of times too. We get to go in deep and discuss her most recent release Beautiful People and her upcoming tour with Lauren Sanderson to what inspires her the most and much more.

It’s lovely having you with us July, so with your new release of “Beautiful People” fans want to know what’s the story behind the song? 

So Beautiful People was actually not in our release plan at all. I wrote it around two weeks ago and all my songs have a kind of bad bitch vibe and then I wrote Beautiful People and it’s like a ballad and very sad. I didn’t think I was going to put it on the record, but it was very personal and I thought maybe it would help other people. 

Beautiful People talks about what happens when you go through a breakup, and then the next phase when you’re hooking up with all these beautiful people and hoping that it will help or you know fill that hole that you have. However you still feel destroyed, you always come out of it and just feel empty and that’s kind of what I’ve been feeling a lot. I had a big breakup last year and I was really scared about writing about it because I knew it was going to send me all the way back to feeling heartbroken and it did send me there but I think it’s also one of my favourite songs and I think a lot of people can relate to it. Everybody I’ve played it to cries, which I think is a good sign. I mean, a bad sign and a good sign but a lot of people and a lot of my friends have been in similar situations, and they can relate to it. Especially with our generation, we have this kind of replaceable culture, if somebody doesn’t work out you just swipe them out of your life.

What would you say was the biggest difference in the creative process of “Beautiful People” compared to your previous songs? 

Beautiful People comes out of a really raw place. I’m always trying to talk about empowerment. When I talk about going through things I always think, just be like a badass, but this one was different, I wasn’t okay with my mental health at all. I cried for the past like six months, and I just thought I can’t do this anymore. Beautiful People comes out of a really deep place and it wasn’t even made to be public. It just comes out of my deepest, darkest place. So for me that’s the difference between the other music and this and it’s kind of weird to even promote it. 

What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

I’ve been given so much advice but for me the best advice has been to let it go when things are not working. I’m a person that will try to fix it, try to go back and be like why. In my previous relationship I should have let it go when I was 22 however I just kept trying to fix it and make it work and even though it was another person’s choice what they were doing. Letting go is so hard for me. 

When somebody is not in the same place as you. You don’t have to convince them you don’t have to work for them to love you and sometimes you just really have to stay still, not reach out and just let it go. That’s life so I think it’s very simple advice. I was single for a while after my breakup and then entered a relationship and it was having someone up and down and because of my previous relationship, it was all just too much.

You’re a pretty cool artist with a great distinctive style. Is there any item in your wardrobe that you cannot live without? 

Well my high boots. They are the boots that I also perform with, they are really high military boots. I wear them all the time, I even wear them to the grocery store. 

Tell me something no one knows about you July if you can? 

I think most people don’t know that I’m very soft and goofy. I have my online persona, which I am too, it’s not that I’m not that but I think when you get to know me I’m very much like my zodiac sign cancer and then like la la la.

Have you been into music since you were young? How did it come about that you decided to start your own music?

So my mom pushed me into music. I went into jazz music when I was six and I basically was forced into piano but I really loved singing so I took singing lessons and piano and then I had a scholarship when I was 14 to study jazz here in the States. I had the scholarship, moved to the States, was in high school, did music at the same time and then from there, got a scholarship from Berkeley. So I did jazz my whole childhood and then hated Berkeley. It just wasn’t for me, not that it’s a bad school but just I was more interested in creating new music rather than playing music that has been already created. I think having a fundamental base where you can learn is great but also I think that every era can be looked back at and like this will be history one day too and I want to create something new and I’m very interested in writing.

So I emigrated to the UK and moved to London. I wanted to be an artist but it was just so hard so I ended up busking for two years on the street with two of my friends. We didn’t have anywhere to stay, we were just couchsurfing and then I started to write for different artists that were privileged enough to be born in the UK. I started to get into this whole alternative pop scene, and started to write for GIRLI and for Brooke Candy, and met all these you know queer people that I kind of related to and I was very passionate about. I knew I didn’t have the resources to trade my own thing, so I just helped them create their thing and pushed their projects to do well. By the age of 22, I had made some money out of it but I wanted to do my own thing while I was young and beautiful. So I just started to do my own project and now I’m creating my own thing, which I’m very passionate about. I’m still writing for other people. So I think it will forever be my world, because my project is a little bit more experimental but then I really also love clean pop artists. 

As you mentioned, Brooke Candy and a few others. You have also supported the likes of Rita Ora and Professor Green before, who going forward would it be and why if you were to choose one person to collaborate with? 

Wow, tough question. Well as in my soul I just care about music, my favourite artist is 070 Shake. They did all the Kanye West stuff and I’m actually supporting them this summer on one show and I’m super excited and then FKA Twigs too and Grimes. Grimes followed me a few months ago and my heart died, it was like oh god. I like them all, controversially I would love to work with Kanye because I just love his music, but I know he’s a controversial person.

So what is your life motto? 

It’s a really interesting one that my friend told me, it’s not a motto. It’s these two words but he said to me “Invent Yourself”. You can invent anything. Sometimes when I walk down the street I see so many people that look like the most amazing celebrities or look like crazy amazing models, but it’s the people who brand themselves and invent themselves. You can create anything and this is something kind of what I’m living by, you can be whoever you want to be. Just sit down and think about it and invent it. You know?  My friend told me this and it was a longer quote, but this really stuck with me. I was like, wow, I have a few plans of what I want to do this year because I really want to grow this project into something big and then sometimes you get into this mood and think, oh, it’s so much but then at the same time, it’s like life it’s so weird.

You mentioned you come from Slovenia, were opportunities easier to come by when you moved to the UK?

Yeah let me put it this way. Where I’m from people don’t even know where it is, right. There was so much prejudice, especially with Brexit happening and Eastern Europe is already kind of like Mexico here right? We are like coming from a little bit lower class and the jobs that we are supposed to do are either for example be a sugar baby or be a cleaner. Those are kind of the main things we are seen as doing and I invented this whole July Jones thing. My name is not even real, I invented it. I mean July is my name but I’m from Eastern Europe so of course my last name isn’t Jones. 

Talking about inventions, how did your stage name come about?

The way we created July Jones was, I was born in July so we chose July as my name. When we were busking I would introduce myself with a different surname, I introduced myself as a different person every time I was like, Hi, my name is July Smith. And then like hi, my name is July, followed by something weird. And then we’re like, Hi, my name is July Jones and then people picked up on that and then we were thought, okay, July Jones it is. My style is invented, my music is invented, my persona that’s invented, you can create whatever you want. I’m just a girl from Slovenia. I’m just like an immigrant however since I wrote “More Than a Friend” and the BTS track things have kind of just skyrocketed me to a different level in the industry. Then I started to get these kind of friends, like best friends, and they wanted to be around me because of my music. I think it doesn’t matter where you’re from, and this is also what I want to show to people. It doesn’t matter who you are, you can literally create anything. 

We all have our inspiration from different sources who has inspired you the most and why? 

Weird question, I never think about that. I’m not close to my family. So nobody there, because most people would be like my mom. I think it’s not a person for me, it’s a scene like the queer scene. I come from Eastern Europe so being in the LGBTQ+ community, it wasn’t even a word when I was growing up and I realised quite early on how queer I am. I thought I was gay and I really hid it, it was so embarrassing for me, I felt I was gonna die because I was also quite popular in high school and inside I was like dying. Oh god, it wasn’t even funny. It’s not like now, especially not in the West, people still obviously struggled to come out and stuff but it was so embarrassing. I don’t know how to explain it. I had a girlfriend at the time and she was always around but nobody kind of knew and my cousin came to me. I remember it so well. She said, you know that girl’s gay right and I said yeah, but she has a girlfriend she’s not gonna hit on you. My cousin was like, yeah, but like July she’s gay. I remember her reaction to it and my soul was like oh my god. When I moved away to the States and met my host family, they were very queer, my host dad at the time was transgender and it opened my whole world. Then when I moved to London, my first ever big performance was London Pride, I just feel it’s my home and that inspires me and I live for it. I feel safe knowing how many queer people are there. I feel no matter where I’m at, I find my home and my peace in that and when I see my fans and their stories, I feel these people relate to me and I relate to them, that just inspires me.

You are soon to go on tour with Lauren Sanderson. Where are you looking forward to travelling most and why?

Oh, good question. So from the previous shows that I know do really well I think Paris for me, the Paris shows are like crazy. Obviously I love London, but that’s my home so I think it’s kind of a stupid answer because London shows are the best. I’m excited for Lauren to see London though I think she’ll really thrive there. Paris, Berlin and London I think are my main. 

To finish off with what do you hope your fans and listeners take away with them when they listen to beautiful people? 

I hope my fans can see that it’s coming from a deep place for me and I hope that it helps them if they’re in a difficult place of healing and overcoming loss. I hope that this song can bring them some sort of peace and relatability that they can feel, almost like there’s somebody else struggling with this. So I hope that this helps get them through the shitty times that they’re dealing with.

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Written By Connor Mantle