Pastiche Releases Explosive Debut Single, “Chasing Down the Fame”

New Friday, new music. Today, the Dublin-based singer and songwriter Pastiche has just released her debut single, ‘Chasing Down the Fame’. The track is an explosive electro-pop song and features driving synths, energetic drums, and powerful vocals from the musician. Wanna know more about it?

Jade Roche is only 22 years old and her musicality and vocals will make any jaw drop, and silence the ones who doubted her, just because she knows how to. She writes, sings, plays the keyboard and considers herself as an ‘Unashamed Pop Lover’. Also, for issues such as feminism, she is an activist on social media, especially in her Instagram.

Pastiche’s sound combines dark pop, electronic pop, a rebellious club-kid sound, and theatrical influences. She started stage school and musical theatre at a young age and performed all over Ireland. Her love for music developed in school, when she was a voice-over artist. In fact, this job was good training for her, “I might have a script where I need to freestyle or do some vocal melodies, that’s when everything started”, Pastiche explains. Then, she studied vocals at BIMM Dublin, where she spent four years learning about the industry and honing her craft. The young musician is now in the process of recording and releasing her original music.

And so she did! Chasing Down the Fame was born during the first lockdown and now is even playing on BBC radio. This girl, who is already fascinating in the music scene, has the best of both worlds: the powerful vocals of Christina Aguilera and the craziness of Billie Eilish combined with the sweetness of Ariana Grande and the talent of them all.

On the Irish pop scene, Pastiche says, “Pop in Ireland always seems to be imported. There are very few successful female Irish pop artists. The scene isn’t here – so we have to create it. Radio stations are playing Dua Lipa every five minutes- so why can’t we have Irish pop instead? I want to help break that barrier”.

Chasing Down the Fame, her debut single

Personally, I have never listened to something similar to this track before. The engaging production and layered vocals create a dynamic track that establishes Pastiche as a force to be reckoned with in the Dublin pop scene. There’s no autotune needed for this girl. What’s more, you can perceive how she uses the ‘Mwah!’ as a particular mark, she really knows when to use it.

spotify:track:1se0dRAh4ZAbwB2SNOn8x8

About the song, Pastiche says, “The song addresses the idea of achieving fame as a subjective journey; it almost never looks the same. I also think there’s a difference between fame and significance. Fame is usually an accident, but you can claim your own significance. I think this track is me doing that: showcasing my sound and trying to prove myself.”

Actually, the song starts with a sound similar to rain, which means that a part of her soul is kind of sad but, instantly, she takes control of her life when she starts to sing ‘Don’t cry, no hold the tissues and starts living her dream: making music and making the leap to fame. She’s not a little girl anymore, she has broken the barrier and she’s now an adult warrior.

She goes on to say, “I wanted to address not only where I hope to go but also where I came from. The line ‘I’ll show them what they made of me’ is about all the rejections and ‘no’s’ that have led me to where I am, developing thick skin, and needing to rely on my own self-belief”.

Though Pastiche performs with a live band, this track was completed remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic with producer Fergal Mullen (Jupiter Parks). The vocals were tracked at Beardfire Music.

Being an artist during Covid

Pastiche has been singing for the past four years and she admits she really misses her time in college, but also, ‘kind of the Dublin scene, going to gigs and playing gigs and having fun while meeting a lot of musicians; as well as, you know, practising my performing’, she says.

On her Instagram, you can easily see her singing any genre, even jazz or blues (which I think that suits her a lot):

However, it’s tough times for those talented people. The Dublin-based singer tells me, “Chasing Down the Fame is just really a fluffy pop song about being famous, it is really a journey and the times we find ourselves and, this year, I was feeling like music was completely against me, I mean, I finished college in a music degree in 2020, when music industry basically died, which is horrible. It was meant to be the gig year”.

The songwriting process and lyrics meanings

One day during quarantine, Pastiche asked her drummer if he wanted to be her producer. “He said ‘yeah’, so we worked on this kind of project over Covid-19 and I still haven’t seen him in person since February, which is crazy”, she confesses.

Pastiche admits that the songwriting process is very simple for her, “I don’t sit down and be like ‘this is what I want to write for today’. No. For me, it is just like I just may get an idea, get inspired, or think of this word or sentence and be like ‘whoa, that’s cool’. And that was pretty much how I started with this track, I’m a daddys’ girl with daddy issues’ just came to my mind like a tongue-in-cheek, like a ‘in your face’ and then the whole song just came after that”, she says.

And usually, after she has an idea of the song, she gets her keyboard and plays some chords to that, bringing some logic. In her words, “then, I record it and add some drum beats and stuff like that and that would be the first demo. Later on, I take that demo and bounce it back for as long as it takes, as long as we have”

She goes on with, “actually, there’s many meanings of the song and that’s why I really like it. It has a nice message underscoring resilience and that you can do it if you just put your mind to it. “But also, the song gets you into me. ‘Sometimes your circumstances in life will put you on a mission’, pushes you to work harder. Or with ‘Blame my attitude, it’s from the television’ I talk about the time I was obsessed with Disney Channel as a kid and my mum always used to say to me, like some Irish mummies, ‘you are getting cheeky, all that American TV you are watching…’

She concludes saying, “It would have been very easy to say ‘fuck, it is not worth it’, but then I thought ‘hey girl, you’ve not worked all your life doing musical theathre, and going trough school where you did sing, you had keyboard lessons but mostly self-taught; you are going to do all that shit until you are so proud of where you have come’”.

Can’t wait to dance to this at a random club once all this Covid stuff passes out!

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