On the Rise
Joni

She’d relocated to London from L.A. with the man who was then her long-term boyfriend and key creative partner. But after a visit back to the states gone awry, her entire world order shifted. With no notice, she was left high and dry, mid-pandemic, in a city she barely knew, a continent away from her family and friends. It all seemed, as it would to most people, insurmountable.

You wouldn’t know it now. With a disarmingly kind demeanour and an adorable Cavalier King Charles perched behind her – part of her breakup therapy, she says – the Joni Fatora of today seems worlds away from the version of her that once was. And yet, out of that chaos emerged Things I Left Behind, the fantastic debut record that she has, in some ways, spent her whole career trying to write.

As Fatora will tell you, she’s accustomed to change. Her father was a submariner and her mother a math teacher. Both moved far and often for work, and after her parents split up, she’d follow her mother to wherever she needed to be. She’s called places as disparate as Honolulu and Naples home, though she pays special homage to Connecticut (where she spent a long stint in the town of Mystic) and New York (where her family is from). She’d also be remiss not to mention the time she spent in Japan – which she describes as exciting and abundantly eye-opening – a job her mother took because Fatora got obsessed with the country after watching Lost In Translation.

“Because I was always moving around so much, I was always a little bit of an observer,” Fatoria explains. “I was always really comfortable with sitting in the background and observing people and places and really soaking it in.”

Music came to Fatora accidentally but welcomingly. Obsessed with doing whatever her older brother did, she pushed her way into his instrument lessons. Quickly, she excelled, and the better she did, the more she was drawn to it. First was piano, then came flute, then saxophone, and then the guitar and voice. “I was always so fidgety and wanting to play,” she says. Eventually, she started writing little songs in private, developing her craft in near secrecy. “I was really shy, so I didn’t sing until I was basically forced to,” she laughs.

“It’s funny – I think because I was trying to be so quiet, it almost developed my voice in a different way. Because I wasn’t screaming, trying to be really loud, I was almost holding back, which I think made me develop into the singer that I am,” she says, meditating on her signature tone. It’s that distinctive sound that acts almost like a calling card or a secret sauce, making any track Fatora sings on both instantly recognisable and unmistakably, beautifully lush. “When I was on tour, someone described my voice as a cream donut. And then [my producer] Luke was there, and he’s like, ‘No no no, your voice is like a mouldy cream donut.’ It’s pure, but there’s something a little off. That became the slogan for the record, actually.”

Fatora completed high school in Japan, and from there went to study at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. “I couldn’t look at schools, so I remember just Googling music programs and applying,” she says. She bounced around between production and songwriting tracks, never thinking she would be the artist. Eventually, she dropped out altogether, instead moving to New York to work in the cowriting scene. “A decade later, I ended up getting my degree,” she says, telling me that she did eventually return to finish and graduate. “My parents are thrilled!”

“It ended up that a lot of my friends were New Yorkers, so we all moved back there together and were all playing shows together,” she says. Friends helped connect her to producers and label people, and between their little group they’d dig up connections and networks to propel them forward. Her songwriting started taking off, and, at the suggestion of her publishing deal partners, she moved out to L.A.

“Quickly, that became very soul-sucking,” Fatora remembers of the move. “I was like, ‘I feel that I’m giving my creativity away.’ And also, I think I had seen that my own voice was the thing that people were excited about more than the songs I was giving away. Something wasn’t sitting right with it.”

The pandemic was a natural move into becoming “the artist” herself. There were no cowriting sessions to attend, so she started focusing properly on putting music out under her own name. She had early success with 2020 single “Orange”, a California-soaked, shoegazey cut that laid the groundwork for the sound she now fully embodies on Things I Left Behind.

But the switch from writer to artist alone didn’t bring the change she hoped it would. Her disaffection ran deeper. Part of it was the L.A. industry circuit itself, which organises itself around status and streams and radio play numbers. Fatora's boyfriend and producer at the time – the same one who went over to London with her – had experienced a measure of success on the charts, thus bringing to their sessions a level of “military precision” and focus on the “shoulds” of music-making that just didn’t work for Fatora. At the time, though, she didn’t know it.

“I started to subconsciously believe that my music was only good because of his production,” she says. “Basically, the only real way I knew of working was like this very intense way where I felt like I wasn’t good enough to just go in and sing the song.” Sessions would last hours. Re-records were routine. And Fatora left often in tears or feeling defeated.

As lockdown persisted, Fatora decided she needed another change of pace. She applied for an artist visa and found herself in London. A welcome change until, of course, the breakup. “It was like, real shock and grief. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I was a real mess,” she admits. There were, at first, a lot of days in bed. At times, she considered packing up and going back to New York, only thinking better of it because her ex was there. With a small social network in the UK, she reached out to some musicians who she had worked with. “I basically had to reach out to these strangers. And because they had heard what was happening – and because they were musicians – they really took me in,” she says. “They’ve stayed some of my best friends here.”

“I’m so glad I stayed,” she reflects. “I’m so glad I did. And, I’m also very proud of myself.”

The first few months were spent in post-breakup movie montage: staying in bed, grieving, calling friends. Some suggested that the breakup would give Fatora good material. In the end, this turned out to be true, but at the time she wasn’t ready – and the thought borderline pissed her off. It was her first real heartbreak. But when she came out of it, strange, freeing things started to happen.

“It wasn’t until that breakup that I was forced to really stand on my own and ask how I wanted [my music] to go,” Fatora explains. “After the breakup, I wondered how I’d make music again. It wasn’t just a decade of a relationship and my personal life – it was also my career stuff and my music.”

The first professional thing she reengaged with was a tour. That, she says, got her out of her head and got her approaching music from a different angle. She was writing, but then instead of going straight to record, she would play live. It was a different form of connection. After the first one ended, she went on another, this time with long-time friend Luke Sital-Singh. Knowing her situation – and, she says, after having watched her cry about it on tour multiple times – he suggested working on at least one thing before their tour was over. And this time, when they got in the room together, it was easy. More than that, it was fun.

“We worked on ‘Still Young’ first. And it was just spot on and really fun and easy, so then we thought: Should we just keep working on stuff? So, we just kept working. I flew back to L.A. to finish the bulk of stuff with him there, but it was not a grand scheme. It was almost like, let’s do another one and another one and another one,” she tells me. “Then, it became: Wait a minute. I think I actually have enough material to make an album.”

In this process, Fatora was allowed to just let herself be. Vocal tracks had small imperfections. But this time, they added depth and character. She let herself embrace the Velvet Underground and Radiohead mindset rather than try to be the glossy Top 40 girl. The entire process of music-making became something to be enjoyed rather than toiled over and dreaded. Things I Left Behind embodies this spirit. The record itself aches. And yet, it’s expansive and jubilant. The constant contrasts between sadness and elation are an addictive, relatable draw. Most of all, it’s an ode to self-acceptance, a masterclass in accepting what is, rather than yearning for what isn’t.

“I was watching a Nick Cave interview, and he was talking about grief and the thing of always leaving things behind. We are always leaving things. We’re always losing things and that’s actually beautiful and makes us who we are. The pain of losing people and the pain of losing things is what’s so transformative,” she tells me of the record’s title. “I didn’t realise what the absence of something could do to a person until I really experienced it. And it was very profound.”

When we chat, Fatora is still a few months away from release date. On publication, the record will probably be with audiences. The thought, to her, is surreal. Getting this album out into the world has been a true labour – both of love and other things. But finally having this piece of herself is an immeasurable accomplishment. One that, at times, seemed impossible. Hearing all that Fatora's been through, you can’t help but cheer for her and for this project.

“It feels so good to actually have something for the people that care,” she tells me. “It’s going to be gratifying because whenever I release a song or put something on my YouTube, the fans are like: ‘Oh my god! She’s back!’ They just assume I’ll put something out once every two years. They’re gonna die. My loyal YouTube following – they’ll be thrilled. I feel good about that.”