Stepping back to an earlier period, we jog our memories to a pre ‘Live Lounge’ generation when acoustic music was highly popular, yet paired with the MySpace generation rapidly feeding their sounds to the globe. An upbringing synonymous with past generations, Jamie Woon was steadily nourishing his sound and growing up in a musical family meant that sounds were naturally infused into the young artist. Having a singer for a mother proved a key influence on his musical exposure; singing a lot of backing vocals, as well as making her own Scottish Folk records, were most certainly key events in building a strong frame in her son’s life, mimicking the influences passed on from her own parents who had become accustomed to the stage during the war.
Rhythm and Blues was the genre of music Woon listened to a lot during his early life. ‘What I love about R&B is how fun people are with the lyrics; it is flamboyant’. Boys 2 Men, TLC and Michael Jackson – the latter listened to exclusively over a three-year period – were just a few of the influences to have infiltrated the soulful sound he shares with us today. After the all-too-excessive period of Michael Jackson, he began listening to more chart hits being played by the likes of Capital FM and its counterparts, before mainstream listening gave way to the new chapters of Oasis and Radiohead. Woon elevated his melodic foundations to a more serious level around the age of 15. Whilst the world was being introduced to a new wave of guitar bands in the 90s, Woon was transitioning from saxophone to a new familiarity with the guitar, reflective of particular genres of that time, and the young teenager subsequently began song writing…
Read the full story in Edition 02
Photographer: George Naylor
Music Editor: Phillip Goodfellow
Stylist: Kitty Cowell
Grooming: Josie Chan
Words: Rachel Abebrese
