Music
Press
"A sensual,musical mosaic. Immediately snag a copy." - Billboard
"Janita keeps listeners hooked...HEAR IT!" - Marie Claire
"This belle can belt and pen. Janita teems with vocal wattage and knows it." - Village Voice
It probably shouldn’t be allowed for someone as talented as singer-songwriter Janita to, also, be goddess beautiful… It’s not fair for the rest of us (comparatively) genetically-challenged people, but life is harsh. Last night Janita performed at a packed Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side to an enraptured audience.
She not only writes beautifully powerful songs, but sings with such passion and conviction that it’s hard to take your eyes off her. Her performances are, as one critic says, “alternately sultry and savage”.
Janita was discovered at the tender age of 14 and promptly packaged, primped and preened (or, exploited) by a record company to become Finland’s biggest popstar – the Finnish Britney Spears. She recorded four albums (including one with Sony), toured the world, was chased everywhere by crazed fans, voted sexiest woman in Finland (at 17) and was awarded two Finnish Grammys.
Now she has moved to NYC and reinvented herself. Her personal style is verging on androgynous; she cut off her long blonde hair and wears men’s suits on stage – a reaction to the over sexualised image promoted by her earlier managers, perhaps. But her voice is still there…
Check her out here and on MySpace. - Telegraph.co.uk
Artists who excited me: My heart belongs to a gorgeous young Finnish artist named Janita (now residing in Brooklyn). Listening to her CD now, I’m intrigued with her alt-soul-bluesy-rock style, silky smooth voice, and chill beat. She wore the best hat at the show too, btw, designed by Tom Scott, she told me. Check out her MySpace page for a preview! Her new album, “Haunted,” drops in 2010, and she says she’s performing in New York in January. I can’t wait! - Brian Burgess/CenterOrch.com
Discography
Oma Planeetta (1992 Reel Art, Finland)
Savyja (1993 Reel Art, Finland)
Janita (1998 Sony Music 550)
I'll Be Fine (2001 Carport Records)
Seasons Of Life (2006 Lightyear Entertainment)
Haunted (2010 Engine Company Records)
Photos
Bio
"This woman's got the goods. Stardom awaits." - Billboard Magazine
On the heels of her most commercially successful release to date, Janita returns with her highly anticipated new album, Haunted. The latest in an already acclaimed discography, Haunted is helmed by an artist with the courage and determination to evolve--not only out of artistic desire, but personal necessity.
"What do we learn?" Janita (YA-nee-tuh) asks in the album's opening song, serving as a wry set-up for the answer she provides again and again with each charged moment of Haunted. Undeniably, she's learned a lot. With its expanded emotional canvas for her melodic songwriting--framed by lush, electrified arrangements and her trademark vocals--Haunted is proof that this is an artist who has truly come into her own.
"The great artists aren't afraid to grow while retaining what was unique about them in the first place," says Janita from her Brooklyn home. "Those are the artists I've always admired. So with this album, I felt I had to raise the stakes for myself, regardless of the risks." Risks that, in the end, proved to be as much personal as musical.
Before moving to Brooklyn as a seventeen-year old, Janita had already been a superstar outside of the United States. In her native Finland she was a national icon, the premiere recording artist on radio and television, awash with awards, constant touring and commercial success: a historic and pioneering career, all while still a teenager. She was quickly signed by Sony after moving to New York, capitalizing on her international celebrity. Her eponymous debut was followed by 2001's I'll Be Fine and 2006's Seasons Of Life, the latter scoring her two Top-40 hits on the US Charts. But throughout, Janita saw her own musical vision often being pushed aside for what she was told would be "safer" and in everyone's best interest.
It was another artist, it turns out, who became the catalyst for the changes ahead. "I remember Meshell Ndegeocello came over. She exposed me to music I hadn't explored before. I loved it. Totally devoured it. I moved into Keane, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, and PJ Harvey. A natural progression. Until soon I couldn't find enough depth solely in the music I'd been inhabiting. Until I couldn't express myself solely with the tools I'd been using anymore." Bucking the conventional "wisdom" of her advisors and extricating herself from her label, she began inventing a different, defiant future for herself and her music.
Haunted's title track describes the ensuing transformation, akin to Dorothy stepping into color in The Wizard of Oz ("Coming from my hidden world / Through doors that I've closed / Across bridges I've burned, 'Haunted'"). In "House On Fragile Terrain," Janita declares "I can't be who you'd like me to be," with the understanding that no transformation comes without cost. Timeless string arrangements in "Hopelessly Hopeful" and "Believe Me I Know" meet cutting-edge electronic elements in "Martian" and "Last Chance To Run And Hide," each track teeming with Janita's soulful vocal wattage. "All along," smiles Janita, "it's been music that's kept me sane, from the very beginning of my life…and it continues to do so."
At its core, Haunted embodies the journey of an artist focused not on the ghosts of her past, but on the possibilities of her future. One of her own fashioning. One that for the first time now belongs to her. A future of hope and promise, and she invites her listeners to join her.
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