The album release will be accompanied by a TikTok-style inspired Music Video with throwbacks to films like Thelma & Louise and The Fugitive, for the track “The Greatest Escape Ever.”

Album Private Soundcloud Link: https://bit.ly/3WVnfwk

Growing up in a conservative community meant that Jay self-censored her songwriting all her life. “I was scared of being anything. Of being my true self” she says. “Scared of stretching my vocal range in case people who liked the soft folk stuff didn’t care for it, scared of writing pop songs because that might be seen as too commercial, scared of talking about my experience with racism in case my white friends and family got upset. I had spent my whole life, putting aside my emotional needs to make sure I wasn’t offending anyone, especially the evangelical church I grew up in. I was discouraged from wearing anything ‘too revealing’. I had struggled through awful bouts of anxiety and depression because of situations I was encouraged not to talk about, in order to ‘show love and forgiveness’ to others. I was quietly disappearing.” Enter 2020. It was a massive wake up call for Jay. “Covid hit, I got really sick, at home, then I had long Covid for 9 months. I sat and watched people I thought I knew make insanely racist comments online, churches were trying to break rules to get people to meet together, calling masks ‘persecution’ while the virus was still rampant, meanwhile my Facebook feed was full of Trump supporters. I thought, screw this! I’m going to go and make the music I’ve always wanted to now. And I’m going to wear tiny, little gold shorts. Bye!”

After being awarded the Do It Differently Fund through Help Musicians, Jay worked with ingenious producer Patrick Jordan (Young Rebel Set, Cattle & Cane) to create a 10-track pop album. The album includes “American Tennessee,” one of the first songs to be recorded, which has since made it to the semi-finals of the International Song Writing Contest out of 20,000+ entries, won Track of the Week on BBC Tees and was in the roundup of BBC Introducing Tees Best of 2021.

Jay has lived quite internationally, spending most of her childhood in Turkey, studying as a teenager in Sevenoaks, UK, taking a year out as a TV trainee in Copenhagen, then back to Turkey for a bit before finally ending up back down the road from Stockton in Middlesbrough. The album has one or two nods to moments of Jay’s past life in Turkey, “One Summer’s Day” a coming-of-age track about a romance that never happened and “Seventeen” journals the feeling of being 17 again through dance-pop lyrical mix of Turkish and English, bringing together Jay’s two cultural identities.

Jay Moussa-Mann the album comes out on CD and all streaming services on the 14th February Valentine’s Day 2023. You can follow Jay over on her YouTube channel @jaymoussamann and Instagram @jbmoussamann

JAY MOUSSA-MANN TRACKLIST


1. American Tennessee

2. Green Toyota
3. War
4. One Summer’s Day
5. White Like You

6. Speak Now

7. The Greatest Escape Ever

8. Seventeen
9. One Summer’s Day - The Other Story
10. Contradiction of Existence

Email: jay@jaymoussamann.com