Sean Fischer Goes Global

Story by Kerry Doole | Wednesday May 24th, 2023

He was born, raised, and remains based in Toronto, but Sean Fischer’s multi-hyphenate career as a songwriter, musician, composer, producer, and re-mixer is flourishing because of his global approach.

Via major success in such markets as Mexico and South Korea, Fischer’s music has accumulated more than 100 million streams. He co-wrote and arranged “Black Clouds,” a song on Korean pop group NCT 127’s Billboard world music charts-topping album 2 Baddies – one that sold more than 3.5 million copies. Elsewhere, the song “Sr. Tigre,” recorded as part of Fischer’s solo project, French Braids, went viral in Mexico, notching more than 20 million streams.

NCT 127, Black Clouds

Click on the image to play the NCT 127 video “Black Clouds”

“I just follow where there are sparks. There have been a lot of those in the K-pop world, and I’ve been diving in there head-first,” says Fischer. “I’ve found that being there in person really helps bring success. I just got back from 10 days in the studio in Korea, being worked to the bone by SM Entertainment, the big label there. I’m always on the road.”

Aiding Fischer’s cause are his language skills (he’s fluent in English, French, and Spanish) and proficiency in a wide range of musical genres. “I may be up there as one of the most diverse producers in Canada,” he says. “I go from working on a Celine Dion ballad, to a Mexican tropical house re-mix, as French Braids. That diversity keeps me refreshed creatively.”

The Dion song referenced is the superstar’s new song “Waiting on You,“ featured in the movie (in which she also appears) Love Again, and that’s a career-boosting placement. “That song came out of a writing session with Liz Rodrigues six years ago,” he recalls. “For Celine, they took my demo and fully re-created it, with a 70-piece symphony orchestra. When I heard it, I literally dropped to the ground and started crying my eyes out. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard!”

Fischer has amassed impressive credits with other Canadian artists as well. He was a writer and producer on Jazz Cartier’s gold-selling “Tempted,” and other recent cuts include those by BANNERS, La Zarra, Banx & Ranx, Preston Pablo, and Dragonette, alongside international artists Fitz and the Tantrums, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Tim Atlas, Now United, K-pop star Taeyeon, and Inna & Farina.

 His unconventional career path included early jazz piano studies with the legendary Hilario Duran, and at Humber College; similar studies at McGill University, and in Havana, Cuba;  and, back in his late teens, a stint in a rock band in Toronto.

YoSoyMatt, French Braids, Sr. Tigre

Click on the image to play the video “Sr. Tigre” by YoSoyMatt, French Braids, and Eva De Marce

“We signed to Sony, but after about a year I decided it was too much of a hustle,” he says. “After slogging it out in clubs for $75 a night, and fighting with my bandmates, I decided there had to be something else in store. I started doing internships for film composers, including The Hive studio. I basically forced them to let me pitch on projects for free, and I landed theme songs for HGTV and CTV News, for which I still get royalties 10 years later. That was the first stepping stone to my true producer career.”

Fischer balances two parallel creative identities, one as a songwriter, producer and re-mixer for hire, and the other as French Braids. In the former role, he has a publishing deal with Honua Music, while  French Braids is signed to a joint record deal with Sadboy Records and Armada Music.

“It can be a headache with many overlapping deals,” he says. “My lawyers hate me, as I have to carve things in and out of contracts, but I do my best to keep the brands separate. French Braids is very pure electronic, dancefloor re-mix bangers. My Spotify for it has a cohesive sound of electronic, vibe-y re-mix stuff, with none of my pop cuts there.”

A collaboration with Mexican artist YoSoyMatt brought Fischer/French Braids stardom there. “During the pandemic I started reaching out to random producers on Instagram, offering to re-mix their stuff for free,” Fischer recalls. “I found YoSoyMatt, re-mixed his track ‘Sr. Tigre,’ and it went viral, with close to 15 million streams. That took me to Mexico, where we’ve played big festivals, and people recognise me on the street. Thanks to this Mexico magic, my own artist page has almost a million monthly listeners.”

Three tips for novice professional producer/songwriters

  • “Think globally. I love Canada and SOCAN and all our beautiful systems, but at the end of the day, this is a tiny market on the world stage. It is so easy to set up a Zoom session in Australia or Korea. Open yourself up to markets that are way bigger than ours.”
  • “Remember that a songwriting session is such a personal and social event. Be the kind of person a co-writer or artist would just like to have a beer with, or hang out with. Don’t make it all business, or people will be turned off so fast. I learned this from my publisher, who’s Norwegian, so every session we start off with coffee and a chat about life.”
  • “This is easier said than done, but be really familiar with the song and the songwriting, the melody, the lyrics. If a producer can’t sit by a firepit and sing through the hit songs on guitar or just singing, then you are pretty limited as a producer. To me the best producers can in theory do it all themselves.”
Photo by Katrin Braga

Debby Friday’s Good Luck

Story by Liisa Ladouceur | Wednesday May 24th, 2023

There’s a good chance that you’ve never heard a Canadian record quite like Debby Friday’s Good Luck. The Nigerian-born, Toronto-based singer/producer’s debut album is a 33-minute adrenalin rush of modern music fusion, with influences including rave, rap, industrial, alternative, R&B, and hyperpop, to name just a few.  Friday’s official bio refers to her as a “zillennial anti-heroine,” and when asked what she calls her style, she offers simply “hybrid.”

Debby Friday, What A Man, video

Click on the image to play the Debby Friday video “What a Man”

Friday herself has a story that’s both typical of many young first-generation Canadians, and unique to her creative mind and vision. She immigrated to Montréal with her parents, where she was educated by Catholic teachers at an all-girls’ school in Westmount and, not much later, the city’s after-hours club scene. While she didn’t grow up dreaming of a music career, she did want to be a writer.

“I was always a very creative child,” says Friday, on the phone from her home, days before embarking on a European tour. “I wrote a lot when I was young, thinking maybe I’ll be an author. But I didn’t have this idea of the arts as a career, because that wasn’t a thing that existed in my upbringing. My parents are very supportive now, but they didn’t have any context for this type of work, or this industry. The younger generation, we have a lot more choices. We can essentially create [our] own career[s], and that’s what I did.”

Good Luck, released on Arts & Crafts in Canada and Sub Pop for the world, follows a series of singles and EPs that established Debby Friday as a new artist to watch – literally. Friday holds a Masters of Fine Art, and her music videos draw on her studies, and passion for visual storytelling. The clip for her single “What a Man” references the infamous 17th Century “rape revenge” painting Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi – one of the only professional female artists of Italy’s Baroque era. She’s also released a surrealist short horror film to accompany the album. Still, Friday says that of all the arts, nothing compares to a song.

“I think music is the greatest connective art because you don’t have to speak the language of the song,” she says. “And a song doesn’t even have to have words in order for you to connect with it, and to connect to other people through it. Like people who are on opposite sides of the globe can have the same feelings elicited within them by hearing a song. I think that’s really beautiful.”

For her full-length debut, Friday explains that she wanted to level-up her songwriting, and her production skills. “I think previously, I was really comfortable with one mode of expression, but this time I wanted to be a little bit more open, more vulnerable. Like, I could just feel that there was something inside of me that was, like, ‘OK, we have to do something different. We have to do something more.’ I listened to that impulse, and I leaned into it.”

Debby Friday, So Hard To Tell, video

Click on the image to play the Debby Friday video “So Hard to Tell”

Part of that process was working with Graham Walsh, a member of electronic experimentalists Holy Fuck, who’s produced for Operators, Doomsquad, Sam Roberts Band, and co-written with Lights. Friday, who writes, records, mixes and produces her own music, met Walsh through her management, and says he “got it right away.” Her initial 17 songs, mostly written during the pandemic lockdowns, were edited down to 10 short tracks that condense decades of electronic music history into three-minute pop pleasures.  And if seductive club tracks like the high-BPM “I Got It” (featuring Chris Vargas of Montreal’s Pelada/Uńas), or the serpentine, Biblical-themed “Let You Down” are brooding explorations of the dark side, a song like “So Hard to Tell” shifts into a beautiful falsetto ballad.

For Friday, her diverse musical explorations are a natural result of growing up in the digital age. “We essentially have an archive of all of human thought and musical history,” she says. “You can pick and choose from that; like, take what works and leave the rest. I do love experimenting. I want to make beautiful things. And we’ve kind of come to this place where everything has become everything else – there’s not necessarily just one context for things now. That’s why I just call it hybrid.”

Photo by Meredith Truax

Leith Ross’s “We’ll Never Have Sex” resonates with listeners

Story by Nancy Dutra | Wednesday May 24th, 2023

In a short time, Ottawa-born, Winnipeg-resident Leith Ross (they/them pronouns) has gone from obscurity to internet sensation, thanks to their viral TikTok singles “Orlando,” and especially, “We’ll Never Have Sex.” The latter song amassed more than 37 million Spotify streams, over a million video views, and inspired countless covers/TikTok videos from ardent fans.

In 2022 alone, Ross performed sold-out headlining shows across North America and supporting slots on tour with Lord Huron, Andy Shauf, and Helena Deland in Europe. They received the inaugural John Prine Songwriter Fellowship at the Newport Folk Festival; were dubbed Gen Z’s new favourite songwriter by NME; and signed a global deal with Interscope/Republic Records. Ross’s success has been shockingly swift – much like their songwriting process.

“I never write songs over a period of time, really,” says Ross. “I’ll have a feeling about something, and then I’ll get the feeling that I could write a song about it. Then the songwriting process will be the only thing that I can think about, or do, for, like, an hour or two. It’s very intense and overwhelming, and then it’s over.”

By contrast, the recording process for Ross’s 2023 debut album To Learn was intentionally slow, with Ross being given the space and emotional safety required to capture their sensitive, authentic music. They recorded with Joey Landreth (of Bros. Landreth), whose musicianship Ross has long admired. Their close and collaborative friendship, and the recording studio’s proximity to Ross’s home, allowed for a “chill” and  “spontaneous” process.

“It’s really nice when you’re recording very vulnerable music,” says Ross, “to have the time to sit with it, and take your time making decisions. Sometimes, if I was coming up with a pretty vulnerable song… instead of recording for half the day, we would just be crying, and talking, and working through it, for which I’m so grateful. It really changed the way I felt about recording music.”

Leith Ross, Video, We'll Never Have Sex

Click on the image to play the Leith Ross video “We’ll Never Have Sex”

That vulnerability is the hallmark of several of their songs, including “We’ll Never Have Sex” – which has struck a chord among an audience that identifies with Ross’ deeply personal, yet universal lyrics. They give voice to complex feelings about romantic relationships and sexual intimacy. For fans, the song speaks (among other interpretations) to the queer experience, asexuality, and the desire to enjoy another person’s company without the expectation of having sex.

“When I wrote it,” says Ross, “I really was feeling so isolated by the feelings that I was having. I felt like the people that I talked to didn’t really know what I meant.” To see how strongly – and differently – the song has resonated with listeners has been surprising to the artist, and “insanely therapeutic.” Ross says, “Everyone is just experiencing their own humanity, but I’m lucky enough to be able to facilitate a part of that expression.”

The official video for “We’ll Never Have Sex,” which Ross directed, produced, and starred in, features Ross and their real-life friend Fontine, playfully dancing in circles while wearing drawn-on moustaches. The splendid scene evokes images of innocence, and the slow swirl of being on a merry-go-round. Ross attributes the magic of the video to the communal efforts of their friends, who participated in the shoot. Friendship and community are vitally important to Ross, but in contrast to the speed of their success, finding safety in that kith and kin has come far more slowly.

For those of Ross’s fans whose vulnerabilities aren’t yet cushioned by an accepting community, they acknowledge that it can be a long process – one that requires “trial and error, purpose and intention.” For anyone feeling isolated, Ross offers these words of advice: “Be patient and kind. If you’re kind, and you make a real effort to support the community that you want to be a part of, then it’ll work out.” After a reflective pause, they add that it’s important to allow everybody their own humanity, while also maintaining one’s own boundaries.

Such wisdom has been hard-earned, through Ross’s lived experience. It’s as if they’re speaking softly from their soul to themself, while also facilitating the humanity and healing in others. Which is how their sad songs, to which everyone can relate, can land hope in the hearts of those willing to receive the message.