Jillian Jacquelines Makes New York City Headlining Debut

On Friday night in New York City at Gramercy Theatre, the crowd waited patiently for Jillian Jacqueline by listening to her opener, Joy Olakodun. This singer/songwriter from Arizona is incredibly sarcastic and funny, which is only an addition to her insane vocals. Her demeanor and stories had everyone laughing and falling in love with her immediately. As soon as she opened her mouth, you knew you had a new artist to follow; she made you want to even just be friends with her. She’s definitely one to add her to your Spotify playlist.

When Jacqueline came out, sporting an adorable striped jumpsuit and sneakers, everyone was ready for her, and you could tell she had some major fans in the room. After playing “Prime”, “Reasons”, and “Somebody”, she talked about how special this show was to her. You could tell she was really excited. “The last time I played this room, I was opening up for another artist; I think it was about five years ago. This is kind of a full circle moment for me when I walked down the street today and saw my name up there, I definitely shed a little bit of a tear.” She had a lot of family in the room, explaining that she was Italian, so they just “came out of the woodwork”. She also said she just got married two weeks prior, calling this the “Honeymoon Tour”, because her husband happens to be her guitarist.

She followed with the slower “Sugar and Salt”, that has a bit more of a country vibe than some of her more indie tunes. Asking where all her codependent people were at, she played “Friends” off her album Side B. After, she talked about how she had been in Nashville for about 8 years, and shortly after moving, she made a list of all the songs she wish she’d written, and then she tried to track down all of those songwriters that wrote those songs. “It was very aggressive, but that’s just the way that I am.” In addition, she wrote down a dream list of who she’d want to collaborate with, and one of them was Keith Urban, who is featured on her song “If I Were You”. “Little did I know that 8 years later, we would have a song together. It’s just really, really cool, it makes this song even more special because when I wrote this song, it was actually the first song I wrote about Bryan, which is hilarious because it’s basically saying, ‘Get the hell away from me’”.

She can switch styles so seamlessly, evident when she played her cover of “I Feel It Coming”. Jacqueline talked about how since this was a headlining gig, she can play songs she never plays anymore. Talking about “Overdue”, she said, “This was the first song I ever released as a solo artist…I guess it hit a nerve; for me, I wrote it in a time when I was very lonely and really hoping to find someone, and it kinda just came out one day. It was like a journal entry…It’s really cool to feel that this song has connected with so many people over the years and it’s meant a lot to other people the same way that it did to me when I wrote it.” Everyone really related to this song and sang along.

She followed with her beautiful “Kids These Days”, “Sad Girls” with a story about getting poison ivy for six weeks after shooting that music video, and a new song “When It Rains”. After a few more songs, and an encore, her fans went home happy after hearing all of their favorites, old and new.

To keep up with Jillian Jacqueline follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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