Inside the Fearless Imagination of Kailan McGee as the Award-Winning Songwriter Moves Beyond Genre and Deeper Into the Art of World-Building
From the sprawling emotional landscape of The Songstress’ Empire to the moonlit mythology of Lady of the Moon, the Canadian singer-songwriter is constructing a career around creative freedom, narrative ambition and a refusal to make the predictable choice.
There is a revealing contradiction at the center of Kailan McGee’s music. The more recognition she receives, the less interested she appears to be in making herself easier to categorize.
For an artist whose relatively young recording catalogue has already moved through folk, country, rock, pop, atmospheric storytelling and increasingly elaborate conceptual territory, convention has never seemed particularly useful. McGee’s creative instinct is expansive rather than reductive. A song can begin as confession and end as world-building. An album can function as autobiography or mythology. A country award can become confirmation of possibility without becoming an instruction to remain country. And a career, in McGee’s hands, does not have to develop along a straight line simply because the music industry prefers one.
That independence of thought has become one of the most compelling qualities of an artist entering a particularly imaginative chapter.
Originally from Cobourg, Ontario, McGee did not arrive at songwriting through the calculation of building a professional identity. Its earliest purpose was considerably more private. Art, poetry and music had long occupied her internal world, but songwriting eventually became a form of emotional processing—a place where language, melody and experience could meet when ordinary expression was insufficient.
Poetry had already taught her the possibilities of phrasing. A guitar gave those words somewhere new to live. On the first day she began experimenting with the instrument, working from a chord chart and following sounds that corresponded with what she felt, McGee wrote “Failed Love.” Years later, that first song would find its place on her debut album.
The detail matters because it reveals something fundamental about the artist she has become. McGee did not first learn songwriting as a commercial discipline. She learned it as a means of discovery.
That distinction still defines her work.
When The Songstress’ Empire arrived in January 2025, restraint was clearly not part of its vocabulary. At 21 original songs, the album was an unusually expansive introduction—a debut that behaved less like a carefully edited calling card than an opening of the doors. Rather than isolate a single marketable version of herself, McGee allowed contradictory moods, styles and impulses to coexist.
The result crossed musical boundaries with unusual ease. Folk and country could share space with rock, pop and more atmospheric turns, while the songwriting remained the connective tissue. It was less an attempt to demonstrate versatility for its own sake than an argument that an artist’s identity need not depend upon repetition.
That philosophy found an audience. Thirteen songs from the project charted across Canada and the United States, while “Long Live the Night” earned a Canadian Independent Music Video Award nomination. Further recognition followed through three New Music Award nominations—for Artist of the Year, Country Artist of the Year and Country Song of the Year—before McGee was named Country Artist of the Year at the 2026 New Music Awards.
For many emerging artists, that moment might have supplied a ready-made strategy: identify the category in which the industry has responded most enthusiastically and build the next chapter around it.
McGee did almost precisely the opposite.
Her relationship with genre has always been deliberately loose. She has used the phrase “femme folk” to describe the unusual character of her music, but even that feels more like a useful description than a boundary. Her influences make the point more effectively: Joni Mitchell and Tom Petty exist in her listening world alongside Iron Maiden, Rush, Lady Gaga, The Pogues, David Bowie and Kate Bush. What connects those names is not genre. It is conviction—the sense that distinctive artists become enduring ones by establishing their own creative grammar rather than obediently inhabiting somebody else’s.
That philosophy becomes particularly important in understanding Lady of the Moon.
Released April 1, 2026, the eight-song concept album represents not merely another collection of material but a significant reimagining of what a Kailan McGee record could contain. Where The Songstress’ Empire drew heavily from personal experience and emotional vulnerability, Lady of the Moon moves outward—into folklore, fictional characters, supernatural forces and a carefully constructed mythology centered on the Black Forest of southwestern Germany.
Its architecture follows the eight phases of the moon. Each song occupies a place within that lunar cycle; each contributes another piece to an interconnected fictional realm populated entirely by female characters. The moon’s longstanding association with femininity became a structural foundation, but McGee pushed the concept far beyond symbolism. More than 70 pages of notes involving characters, plot, landscapes, timelines and poetry were developed during the project’s creation.
That amount of preparation says much about the seriousness with which she approaches imagination.
World-building can sometimes function as decoration in music—an aesthetic placed around songs after they have been written. For McGee, it became part of the songwriting itself. Characters required histories. Supernatural laws needed internal logic. Individual songs had to survive independently while simultaneously advancing a larger narrative.
The album opens with “The Black Forest,” representing the new moon and establishing the landscape and lore through which the remaining songs travel. The title track follows as the waxing crescent, introducing the Lady of the Moon as a guide through the nocturnal realm. From there, the record moves deeper into its mythology: the immortal siren Phaedora; the supernatural “hellfire” experienced by captured souls; witches emerging beneath the blood moon; the ghostly Eryndor and her pursuit of resurrection; and Bellflower, perhaps the record’s most tragic creation, whose betrayal, bitterness, bargains and immortality turn her story into a dark meditation on consequence.
By “Clairvoyance,” aligned with the waning crescent, the cycle approaches completion.
What makes Lady of the Moon particularly significant, however, is not simply the intricacy of its mythology. It is what the project reveals about McGee’s developing understanding of herself as a songwriter.
Fiction gave her another route toward truth.
Writing autobiographically requires an artist to expose personal vulnerability directly. Writing characters allowed McGee to investigate vulnerability from a different distance—to create emotional lives, histories and consequences without being confined to events she herself had experienced. The imaginative possibilities widened immediately. Once the writer no longer had to ask only “What happened to me?” an entirely different question became available: “What can I imagine?”
For McGee, that question appears to have changed everything.
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There is also a visual dimension to the transformation. A painter as well as a songwriter, she has increasingly treated visual art as another extension of her musical universe. In an era when independent musicians are routinely expected to function simultaneously as recording artist, content producer, marketer, visual director and social-media personality, McGee’s response has been to pull those obligations back toward creativity itself. Instead of allowing the demand for constant visual material to become detached promotional labor, she began making artwork connected to the songs.
It is an important distinction. She is not attempting to escape the realities facing contemporary independent artists; she is attempting to prevent those realities from dictating the reason the art exists.
Collaboration has helped give physical form to these increasingly detailed ideas. Producer and husband Kevin Comeau has become central to translating McGee’s internal worlds into recordings, contributing bass and keyboards as well as mixing and mastering on Lady of the Moon. Guitarist Darrell Wallace brings texture to its atmosphere, while drummer Graham Shaw—an extensive presence throughout McGee’s recorded catalogue—provides rhythmic adaptability suited to music that rarely remains within one stylistic vocabulary. Her brother, drummer Jacob McGee-Gauthier, also appears on “Hellfire Tonight,” continuing a familial contribution that has found a place across her albums.
Yet even within collaboration, McGee’s artistic center remains unusually clear.
Perhaps that clarity explains why recognition has not made her music more conservative. Success can subtly encourage repetition. An artist discovers what audiences respond to, what radio understands, what awards organizations recognize, and the temptation is to reproduce the conditions of that approval. McGee seems considerably more interested in discovering what she has not yet attempted.
Her next album is already written and moving through pre-production.
And once again, she is changing the rules of her own universe.
The forthcoming project remains rooted in conceptual storytelling, but rather than inventing its characters from nothing, McGee has turned toward figures from Greek mythology—particularly those history has remembered as monsters, villains, outcasts or the misunderstood. Her intention is not simply to retell familiar legends. She is interested in perspective: what happens when the character traditionally positioned as the threat is permitted a history, an explanation, perhaps even sympathy?
The Minotaur provides one example. Centuries of storytelling have made the creature synonymous with monstrosity and the labyrinth. McGee is interested in what exists before that reputation—in the circumstances of a being born into consequences created by others, burdened by a curse he did not choose. It is precisely the sort of inversion that fits her increasingly recognizable artistic instinct: approach the familiar from an angle that destabilizes it.
Seen together, these records begin to suggest that McGee’s real genre may be curiosity.
The Songstress’ Empire asked how much of one artist’s emotional life could fit inside a debut. Lady of the Moon asked how far that artist could travel beyond autobiography and into a universe of her own design. The work ahead asks whether characters condemned for centuries might sound different if the storyteller stood beside them rather than opposite them.
Different subjects. Different musical possibilities. The same refusal to settle.
There is something refreshing about that position at a moment when emerging artists are constantly encouraged to define their “brand” as quickly and efficiently as possible. McGee’s catalogue proposes another model. Identity does not necessarily mean making the same record repeatedly. Sometimes identity is the set of instincts an artist carries into every transformation: a recognizable voice, unusual language, melodic intuition, fascination with complex subjects, theatrical imagination and the willingness to risk confusing expectations in order to remain creatively awake.
McGee has said she does not want her music to become safe. That may ultimately prove more consequential than any genre designation attached to it.
Because ambition in art is not measured only by scale. It is measured by how willingly an artist accepts the possibility of failure in pursuit of something she has not already proven she can do. Twenty-one songs for a debut is ambitious. Abandoning an obvious commercial lane after receiving recognition within it is ambitious. Building an album around eight lunar phases, female mythological figures and dozens of pages of invented lore is ambitious. Following that project by attempting to reconsider some of Western mythology’s most infamous creatures from the inside out is ambitious.
More importantly, those choices establish a pattern.
At this stage, Kailan McGee’s story is not one of an artist arriving at a final form. It is the story of an artist becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea that there may never need to be one.
That may be the most promising thing about her.
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Awards will become part of the biography. Chart positions will provide useful milestones. Albums will accumulate into a catalogue. But careers with genuine longevity are ultimately remembered for something more difficult to quantify: the existence of an artistic point of view strong enough to survive change.
McGee is building hers by changing deliberately.
From a songwriter who once reached for a guitar because she needed somewhere for her emotions to go, to an artist now constructing forests, ghosts, sirens, witches and sympathetic monsters around them, the distance traveled has already been considerable. Yet the principle underneath it remains remarkably consistent. Create because creation itself is necessary. Follow fascination rather than expectation. Allow recognition to arrive without permitting it to become instruction.
And above all, resist the temptation to become predictable.
For Kailan McGee, the moonlit world she has created may be fictional. The artistic philosophy illuminating it is anything but.
Featuring Vangie Kailan McGee alongside exclusive interviews, editorials, and contemporary culture features from the August 2026 edition
Every record reveals something about the artist who made it, but in Kailan McGee’s case, the questions surrounding the work are becoming as compelling as the worlds contained within it. What drives an artist to move away from the familiar just as recognition begins to arrive? How does personal experience evolve into mythology, and how does creative freedom survive in an industry increasingly shaped by categories, algorithms and expectations?
For this issue of Lifoti Magazine, Melissa Ryan continues the story in conversation with McGee, moving beyond the finished recordings and into the imagination behind them. From the earliest impulses that made songwriting necessary to the elaborate mythology of Lady of the Moon and the conceptual territory now taking shape beyond it, McGee reflects on the choices, convictions and creative restlessness defining her journey.
Q&A with Kailan McGee
1. Before the records, recognition and increasingly ambitious worlds surrounding your music, what first made songwriting feel necessary to you—and when did you begin to understand that it might become more than something you simply loved doing?
Kailan McGee: Songwriting is something that I came to as a therapeutic approach to life. I didn't realize how badly I needed an outlet until it was staring me in the face and seemingly begging for more.
Before songwriting, the arts, music, and poetry were such big parts of my life that it is hard to pinpoint a place in time where everything was changed. I am told that before I was old enough to communicate through language that music was already showing me the way. At one year old I was creating visuals, pen to paper, to the music that my family would introduce me to. So separating the art from me seems like a near impossible thing to do.
With certainty though, I can say that my view of myself changed after the completion of my first song.
Poetry was such a huge part of my life before I got into the art of songwriting and it, even then, felt like something bigger. There was no better feeling to me than using language and strange and eloquent phrasings to convey a deeper and more meaningful message. Creating something from nothing was the ultimate drug to me. It felt better than any feeling I had ever known. So, when I got my first guitar, I already knew that was the push I needed to align myself with the bigger vision I saw within me.
The first day I picked up said guitar, I sat in front of a chord chart and played with sounds that felt like how I was feeling. That same day, I wrote my first song, titled, "Failed Love" which eventually found a home on my debut album, titled, "The Songstress' Empire".
I kept writing. I kept pushing myself. I kept playing my frail and vulnerable songs at open mics. They were recieved by a very specific songwriter-type audience, but it felt bigger than me at that point, even still. It wasn't until a decade later, when I met my husband and now producer, that I felt real confidence in my abilities. I would play songs for him and he would react as if these songs were bigger than myself, too- and so this gave me the confidence and clarity to push myself even more.
2. You come from Cobourg, Ontario. How much of the artist you are today can be traced back to where you came from, and what has remained with you from those beginnings as your musical world has expanded?
Kailan McGee: Keeping my eyes on my roots has always felt like the way to approach moving forward in my life. Every part of my artistic journey can always be traced back to where I came from. I think this truth should remain for all artists.
3. Your influences stretch from Joni Mitchell and Tom Petty to Iron Maiden, Rush, Lady Gaga, The Pogues, David Bowie, and Kate Bush. Beyond their obvious differences, what quality connects those artists for you—and what did they teach you about what music was allowed to be?
Kailan McGee: I realize this is quite the diverse array of influences. What connects all of these artists, for me, is their unapologetic nature in creating art their way. They create for themselves first, and that is the most admirable quality that an artist can have, in my opinion. Their music has touched people over decades because of its authenticity...
We live in a world where industry shifts have left shells of artists creating art that is the vision of what someone else sees for them, rather than letting the art bloom within the artists like it should be in the true fashion of naturalism. The sync-up of visual aids to social media surfacing and changing music into something completely different, has, in my opinion, begun to dismantle the creative process as a whole. The proliferation of AI has also disconnected us from the healing nature of the creative process. And so, when I reflect on what a "true artist" is to me, these artists fit the mold. When we think about what it means to be a "timeless" artist, it means you've managed to convey a vision or emotion that has resonated with people over the course of time. This is what makes music so important. Humans created it. Humans are messy, and we make mistakes, but creating is in our nature and is what seperates us from every other bioligical life form. These artists have connected the dots for me, in that, I know I can do it my way, because they've paved the way for me to do so.
4. You've described your sound as a “unique brand of femme folk,” yet your work continually moves across genres. At this point, do genres still help you understand your own music, or are they primarily something the outside world uses to understand you?
Kailan McGee: Honestly, I say it often, but it has never made sense to me to put artists into a box of genre. It's like going to an art gallery and only starring at one painting. Or going on a safari and only seeing the elephants. There is so much more beauty to explore outside of what we've already seen. And each new thing that we begin to explore, implores and inspires us to broaden our horizons and therefore aids in the creative process. The more we see, the more we have to write about. The more we experience, the more we have to write about. The more we explore, the more we have to write about... Being an artist is also about understanding what we're capable of! If we're not learning, we're not growing! So that's true of all avenues of life.
And, honestly, "femme-folk" is something that has surfaced as a way of describing my music. It is only flattering to me that my music has such a unique style that people have needed to provide their own way of describing it.
I write what I want to. I write where my heart takes me. This may not be well-received by everyone, always, but it proves to myself that I can one day look back on my legacy as a songwriter and know that I did it my way. I don't want to stay in a lane or a genre, because life is bigger than that! Would you only eat one flavour of ice cream for the rest of your life? Probably not. So, for me it will always be about creating to diversify my capabilities.
5. Your debut,The Songstress’ Empire, arrived with 21 original songs—an unusually expansive introduction. Why was it important for your first major statement to reveal so many sides of you rather than presenting a carefully narrowed version of Kailan McGee?
Kailan McGee: Well, as you get to know me, you'll probably start to realize that I really don't do anything narrowly. Showing the facets of myself that have previously existed, alongside new discoveries of myself felt necessary in my debut album. Life can be so messy... We all experience life so differently, and yet we all have such similar experiences. We are all just existing and going through life on this blue rock drifting though space, so why hide anything at all? Existence feels so meaningless when we pull back the magnifying glass- so, why wouldn't we want to deliver an honest representation of the true nature of what it is like to be a human? The Songstress' Empire delivered that message for me.
6. Thirteen songs from that record went on to chart in Canada and the United States. When music that began within your own creative world started reaching listeners beyond it, did that recognition change your understanding of what might actually be possible for your career?
Kailan McGee: I feel like in one way or another, it is human nature to want to be recognized for a job well done. So, ultimately, being recognized in that way felt nice. However, it's a slippery slope... When we start creating for recognition we lose a bit of the heart behind it. Mostly, I just want to make sure I am always staying authentic to my vision. My favourite bits of recognition stem from the experiences of individuals. When I recieve a message from someone and they tell me that my song got them through a tough day, or tough time in their life, that is the ultimate confirmation in understanding for me. One of my favourite artists' quotes comes from Tom Petty, he said, "Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There's not some trick involved with it. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things..."
To grow up loving that quote, and then to have my music do that for other people, is the ultimate gift back to myself.
All that to say, no, I don't know if I will ever understand what might be possible in my music career. No matter what happens, the only constant is change, and so therefore there is no way of knowing what comes next in mu career.
7. You subsequently received multiple New Music Award nominations and were named Country Artist of the Year in 2026. Awards can validate an artist, but they can also create expectations. What did that recognition mean to you, and did it change the expectations you placed on yourself?
Kailan McGee: Again in the same a bit here. It feels nice to be recognized for sure... And it felt nice that the award acknowledged my genre-blurring approach to songwriting... But, again, creating to win an award means I am putting others expectations of myself, above myself. To me, that just can't be the way for art.
8. There is an interesting tension in being recognized within country music while building a career around stylistic freedom. Have you ever felt pressure to capitalize on the genre in which you've received recognition, even when your creative instincts were pulling you somewhere else?
Kailan McGee: A hard no here. To be honest, I truly don't know if I am capable of trying to capitalize on anything within my art. If someone tells me I need to be a certain way, I won't be that way... If someone tells me I need to do a certain thing, I won't do that thing... Being stubborn isn't always a flex, but when it comes to preserving my artistic vision, I have to be! The arts are one of the few places left in our world where we, especially as indie artists, hold the power of freedom. In my opinion, we need to push this as far as we can because music holds the highest and purest form of power.
9. There is a difference between versatility and identity. Versatility allows an artist to move between styles; identity allows the artist to remain recognizable while doing so. Beneath all of your genre changes, what do you believe makes something unmistakably a Kailan McGee song?
Kailan McGee: I feel like the definition of identity becomes cyclical for artists, and especially for me. Even if we create our world revolving around creative freedom, as you've previously inquired about, there is and always will be an underlying expectation of who people want you to be. So, when I write, I want to make sure that expectation of me is never met. I write about what piques my interests and so I think the nerdy nature of myself will always be recognizable because of that. Furthermore though, my voice, my melodies, my phrasings, and my word play also make me distinguishable as an artist.
10. After the scale and more personal foundation ofThe Songstress’ Empire, you could have made a natural continuation of what had already worked. Instead, you moved toward concept-driven songwriting. What were you searching for creatively that your first record had not yet given you?Kailan McGee: I was searching for a new type of depth. I was seeking what else I may be capable of, too. The Songstress' Empire allowed me to face emotions and to draw on personal experiences, which asked a lot of me being vulnerable- Lady of the Moon has allowed me to venture deeper into my mind and to use my imagination to try to portray vulnerability in fictional characters- Each of these albums represent almost opposite a songwriting skills- and, you bet that this was on purpose.
11. That evolution led toLady of the Moon, where personal narrative gives way to mythology, fictional characters, lunar phases and an imagined world. Did stepping outside your own biography paradoxically allow you to discover something more personal about yourself as a writer?
Kailan McGee: Yes, absolutely! Moving into concept-driven art has expanded my whole world! Writing based on personal experiences, looking back now, seems so limiting! When you use your imagination, not even the sky is the limit!
I also find that when I am writing these characters, it is much easier for me to dig deep in the creation of fictional vulnerability than it is to get that vulnerable with myself. There is a heavy expectation on artists to portray their emotions in a way that is well recieved, and that expectation causes my battery to drain much faster than creating a character does. Plus, when you create a character, you get to shape that character's whole world! You can write about anything, and just that realization blows the roof off of the creative process for me!
12. More than 70 pages of notes involving plot, characters, landscapes, timelines and poetry went into an eight-song record. What does that level of preparation reveal about the way your imagination works when an idea truly takes hold of you?
Kailan McGee: That my brain can be a scary place to be! Haha!
More seriously though, I think this level of preparation is a fun and underrated part of the creative process. It is so fun sitting in the middle of the floor, with scattered notes all around, in my mad-scientist era, while developing a whole universe. Once the characters are established and you can start making these parallels in the songs so that they can stand on their own, but simultaneously remain as something bigger picture, the sense of accomplishment feels surreal! To me, making an album should feel like taking a class of your own subject matter. I know this concept album is ambitious, but I couldn't be more proud of it.
13. The women inhabitingLady of the Moonexist within a world shaped by folklore, darkness, tragedy and lunar symbolism. When you look at those characters collectively, what ideas about femininity, resilience or power do you think emerged—even ones you may not have consciously planned at the beginning?
Kailan McGee: Well, to give a proper answer to this question, I will start by giving you a briefing on the songs and characters:
🌑 The Black Forest (represented by the new moon) is ironically the brightest song on the album. This song introduces the mythological creatures that will follow on the album as well as the introduction of the landscapes and mythological lore.
🌒 Lady of the Moon (represented by the waxing crescent) is the title track of the album. Introducing the character that leads you through the mystical realm only lit by moonlight, as your tour guide.
🌓 Song of Phaedora (represented by the first quarter) introduces the siren character who's soul is centuries old. And though she longs for love, instead she must lure men to their death to maintain her immortal life.
🌔 Hellfire Tonight (represented by the waxing gibbous) introduces "hellfire" which is something that I created within the realm. Later in the album, we will be introduced to a character called Eryndor who uses "hellfire fury" to trap the souls of her victims so that if enough souls are maintained, she may be resurrected. Hellfire Tonight is what Eryndor's victims experience as their souls cross over.
🌕 The Legend of the Wild Moon (represented by the full moon) represents what happens in the Black Forest on the blood moon. The sightings of the witches happen on the eve of the blood moon and no one lives to tell the tale of the sinister and harrowing alchemy that is certain to follow.
🌖 Ghost of Eryndor (represented by the waning gibbous) introduces Eryndor, the character who uses "hellfire fury" to trap the souls of her victims so that she may be resurrected. Her character is seen in a white dress, carrying nothing but a candle, on the new moon in the Black Forest, which she turns into "hellfire fury" to trap her victims. It is said that if you light a candle on the new moon for protection that your soul will be safe from Eryndor.
🌗 Bellflower (represented by the last quarter) introduces maybe the most tragic character on the album. Bellflower is a beautiful woman born at Bog Mountain in the Black Forest. Once she finds love and becomes pregnant, the man she was set to marry has second thoughts, and he ends up banishing her to foreign lands. Her story is her navigating life in these foreign lands. She grows so bitter in seeking revenge, that she sells her child to the witches of the Black Forest in exchange for eternal youth and magic powers. After a century without aging, she grows so tired of men pursuing her hand, that she casts a spell on herself to age herself. Once aged, she realizes that she will still remain immortal, just now in the body of an old woman. This is a be careful what you wish for type of story-telling song.
🌘 Clairvoyance (represented by the waning crescent) is about what happens to Bellflower as she begins to attain the power of Clairvoyance.
So each of these tragic characters have their souls tied to the Black Forest unless they can steal enough souls to save their own. So they're stuck in this endless cycle of being not-quite-human but having the emotions of a human.
I think that the story of Bellflower is the most relatable. Though extreme, most of us have lived a similar story of being within the throes of heartache and having to learn to navigate a new path in life.
I think all of these characters teach us about resilience, though, in that, we have to adapt to our circumstances, no matter how tragic.
14. You've spoken about embracing the strange and unconventional in your music—eerie language, spectral textures and unexpected structures. As more people discover your work, how important is it to protect that instinct rather than allowing greater visibility to make the music safer?
Kailan McGee: I've found that weird attracts weird. And so, my music is a reflection of my weird nature as a human being. To protect that instinct is of rhe utmost importance to me! Most importantly though, I don't want my music to be safe. I don't want to grow comfortable. I want to always challenge myself, so that, like we've talked about, I can look back and know that I did it my way (queue Frank Sinatra)
15. “Lady of the Moon” and “Hellfire Tonight” have stood out to you as songs that became particularly vivid during the creative process. Looking beyond those two songs, is there one piece anywhere in your catalogue that you believe reveals something essential about you as a songwriter?Kailan McGee: Yes. The opening track to the album, The Black Forest, is a song that says everything that I want to be portrayed about me as a songwriter. The song is an odd structure, with far too many verses, it is jam packed with odd words, and far too many syllables-- and then it has an anthemic wordless chorus with resemblance to a battle cry as your introduction to the album. Everything about this song is unconventional, yet, somehow, it feels to me like it has existed before I even wrote it. That is what I am trying to achieve as a songwriter.
16. You are also a visual artist, creating paintings in connection with your music. Do you experience painting and songwriting as two separate disciplines, or are they ultimately two languages through which the same imagination is trying to communicate?
Kailan McGee: For me, art is such an extension of who I am that it is hard to say... But what a fabulous question!
It feels as though merging the two skills has allowed a new world to open up for me. However, they still do feel like two different practices.
Doing the visual art for these songs, started as a way to resurface creativity into the moden artist's expectation to produce content. Rather than doing a draining video component to each song, like I had done for my first album, I wanted to introduce a new way to add a visual aspect to these songs all while staying creative.
17. As your work has become increasingly conceptual, collaboration inevitably becomes part of translating what exists in your imagination into something other people can hear. What have you learned about choosing collaborators who understand your instincts while still being willing to challenge them?
Kailan McGee: Well, first of all, the collaborators on Lady of the Moon are some of my favourite people in the world! This album is rich because of this fact.
Choosing these guys to work out my vision for this album was one of the easiest decisions I have ever made! They all bring something unique yet cohesive to the table which is so important in a concept-driven storyline.
Kevin Comeau, my husband and producer, is the ultimate wizard. His talent is legitimately limitless. His work ethic inspires me every single day. The way he knows how to breathe life into my visions is truly nothing short of amazing. I am so fortunate to get to do what I love the most with who I love the most.
On this album he did, bass & keyboards, as well as mixing & mastering.
You can find out more about Kevin Comeau by visiting his socials @kevincomeau_cl
Darrell Wallace, a dear friend, is yet another next-level wizard. His texture work with guitar is unparalleled. When I handed some of these songs to him, I had no idea what to expect, though I knew he would understand the assignment. When he sent the songs back to me with his ideas, I will never ever forget, for the rest of my life, the feeling I had in that moment. I got so excited that tears formed in my eyes. I am honestly so lucky to be able to work with him! You can find out more about Darrell Wallace by visiting his socials @darrelljwallace
Graham Shaw, another dear friend, is maybe the most wizard of all. He has done drums on almost every single song in my discography. His ability to listen to a song in full, absorb said song, and decide and execute in the same moments just what the song needs, and put it exactly where it need to sit, is absolutely brilliant. As we've talked about, my songs span across a lot of genres- and so his ability to give the drums and percussion the life that he manages to, blows me away! He is also an incredible audio engineer and is open to working with others! He operates out of Nik Nak Studio, in Ontario- a quaint little family run opperation, with warm vibes and warmer people. You can find out more about Graham Shaw through his socials @niknakstudio
Jacob McGee-Gauthier, my brother, was such a special addition to making this album. He did drums on Hellfire Tonight, and it was a special experience for all involved. Jacob is a drummer from Cobourg, Ontario, who chooses drumming as a hobby first and foremost. So, he was really excited to join us in the studio and to get his hands on this track. He has done drums to one song on each album of mine, and it is really special to me to have that sitting in my discography. You can find out more about Jacob McGee-Gauthier through his socials @jacobmcgeee
18. Independent artists today are often expected to be songwriter, performer, visual storyteller, content creator, marketer and creative director at once. How do you navigate those demands without allowing the business of being an artist to overwhelm the private space where creativity actually begins?
Kailan McGee: This is an undeniably relevant question in today's music industry. The moden artist has a heavy weight on them. A weight that often times seems to feel unmanageable, and so heavy that it is hard to form any sort of balance. I think it is very important for artists to set their own boundaries for the expectations put on them. Realistically, the industry shift has put so much on an artist to juggle, while simultaneously, proving that there are in fact no rules to industry success anymore. I think that artists need to create for the sake of creating, and create for themselves. When something gets too much, and starts to take away from the creative process- simply stop! Allow yourself the time to recoup and recharge or your art will reflect this.
We touched on this earlier in this interview. Visual components are so important for music these days, but doing a video and all of the other pieces of content required to roll out the release of a single is so draining. That is why I started doing visual art components to my albums. I did this as an extension of the creative process, while still providing some sort of visual.
19. Your career is beginning to accumulate many of the things artists are encouraged to pursue—chart activity, nominations, awards and a growing catalogue—yet your work appears to be becoming more ambitious rather than safer. As your profile grows, what part of your artistic freedom are you most determined never to compromise?
Kailan McGee: I think I need to reiterate what I've already touched on in this interview. I don't want to compromise doing it my way. I want to always be drawn to things that are nerdy in nature. I want complex themes, and eloquent language to surface in my work. I don't want to do anything in music safely! I want to challenge myself and grow as an artist so that I can be proud of the art that I put into the world.
20. Your next record is already written and moving toward pre-production, and you've indicated that you're remaining within the concept-album world while introducing another challenge and another twist. Without revealing what you want to keep secret, what didLady of the Moonteach you that has changed the way you're approaching this next body of work?
Kailan McGee: Lady of the Moon taught me that I like being the imaginative storyteller. But, this next body of work is much different than Lady of the Moon.
The album title has not yet been announced, but I can tell you that there is a whole new approach to the characters within this world.
For this next album, I didn't create the characters like I did for Lady of the Moon- instead, I took characters that have existed for centuries, and told their story my way. These characters are all taken from Greek Mythology. I have chosen the downtrodden, the misunderstood, the monsters, and villians, and told their story through a sympathetic lens.
This was a whole new challenge. Some of these characters are so well known. The Minotaur, for example, has been widely known for centuries. The story has been passed down through many-a-translation, and he is known as this monster who eats humans for sustenance. My version, is that he couldn't help being born, and further, he couldn't help being born the product of a curse placed on him because of his father's actions. So these songs are to shed light on why these characters are the way they are. I dive into their predecessor stories to begin to dissect and understand why they've had this vilified light cast upon them for centuries.
21. Finally, you are still at a relatively early point in your recording career, but you've already moved from a sprawling genre-crossing debut into increasingly deliberate world-building. When you imagine the body of work carrying your name years from now, what do you hope people will say Kailan McGee was brave enough to attempt?
Kailan McGee: In honesty, I hope that each body of work that I release is able to hold complex enough themes, to be bold in nature, and to stand strong enough on his own that it presents itself always as bravery.
I love when people resonate with my work, and I love when the music nerds hop into my DMs to pick my brain about my work. I am not trying to impress a specific audience, I am just trying to write about what interests me.
All in all, I think releasing a 21-track debut album is brave.
I think that taking a whole genre shift and moving into a concept-driven fictional world that I built from the ground up is brave.
I think writing about characters that have been viewed as monsters for centuries and telling their story in a new light is brave.
I hope I am noted as someone who is generally regarded as brave for the unique nature of my work.
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Explore More
- Kailan McGee on YouTube
- Instagram: @kailanmcgee
- Listen & Connect: Spotify and Apple Music
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