We sat down with musician Josée Caron to discuss experimentation, inspiration, and the sense of self that accompanies this process.
Whether Josée Caron is playing in a band with her best friend or mastering EDM for Shutterstock’s PremiumBeat, the Canadian musician, beloved in the LGBTQI community and beyond, genre-hops with ease.
If you ask Josée Caron to describe the music she makes with her band, Partner, there are a lot of things she could say.
Inspired by their dads’ love of classic rock, the music is dancey, loud, and nostalgic. And, with songs like “Big Gay Hands” and “Everybody Knows,” it’s also undeniably queer, as evidenced by their massive following, particularly with fans in the LGBTQI community.
However, in Josée’s words, the answer is much simpler. According to Josée, “Partner makes music that’s funny, but not a joke.”
And, that all starts with the music itself. Josée and her bandmate and best friend, Lucy Niles, are incredibly talented, versatile musicians. After meeting at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, Josée immediately hit it off and became bandmates, starting several projects before Partner, which they said they created to “discuss being gay.”
Josée is the lead singer and guitar player, but she dabbles in EDM too, as evidenced by the work she’s created for The Create Fund.
Below, Josée shares the untraditional process she uses to create tracks for PremiumBeat, and how her queer identity shows up in her work.
Shutterstock: Can you start off by telling us how you were introduced to The Create Fund?
Josée Caron: Tegan and Sarah invited us to one of their Montreal shows, and we were hanging out afterwards and I met someone who was working at PremiumBeat [Shutterstock’s stock music library].
I was really interested, and she said, “If you just send me a track, we could go from there.” So I did, and that was a couple years ago. And I’ve been working on it ever since.
SSTK: What is your process when creating music for Shutterstock, and how would you describe that music?
Caron: My process is about finding something by accident while trying to do something else. The melodies I start out with and try to play over a chord progression are never as cool as the ones that come out of experimenting and seeing what sticks.
So much of creating music is about working with stuff that’s magically already there—the sounds, the physics of it all—and I just take what I can from it, and I’m ruthless with the rest.
SSTK: The goal of The Create Fund is to support up-and-coming artists and diversify Shutterstock’s library or content. How does your identity—and your work—intersect with and support this goal?
Caron: My identity [as a queer musician] is always going to be present in my music. It comes through in the things I pick up on and the choices I make in my compositions.
Someone else might not see the same potential in a sound as I do, but when I hear something special to me, I’ll go all out to figure out if it could be something cool. And maybe that’s an aspect of queerness—who can really say?
I just hope my music makes people smile. I hope it inspires them and their work. I had so much support as a young, gay musician. And I intend to help other young musicians—especially those in the LGBTQI community—learn how to make awesome music, as well.
I hope my work with The Create Fund can be a part of that.
SSTK: What differentiates the tracks you’ve composed for The Create Fund from other stock music out there?
Caron: Stock music can be cheesy when it plays out exactly the way you think it will, so my music is recognizable, but full of surprises. It’s just my personality to seek out the most intense and fun thing that could possibly happen, so I’m definitely trying to bring some attitude to my collection.
I start out with an intention or a vibe for each track—a landscape or a feeling—because it helps bring all the pieces together.
SSTK: Where would you most like to hear your tracks?
Caron: I’ve made tracks that I think would work in ads for beach resorts or extreme sports, but for some reason, I’d love to hear my music being used as hold music—just because it’s so different.
I’d be really excited to hear it anywhere, honestly. PremiumBeat is the ultimate blank canvas, in that way.
Cover image via Tithi Luadthong.