By: Staff Writer
June 29, 2021
A Jamaican singer/song writer is hyped over her new single “Your Smile,” off of her sophomore album and waits for new collaboration effort with South African DJ to be released in July.
Janine Coombs, also known as Janine Kuhl/JKuhl, an Indie Jamaican recording artist, singer/song writer told Caribbean Magazine Plus about the release of her single “Your Smile” off of her second album, Sweet Sway, where she said that while the single is not new but on the Sweet Sway album launched last September, “But the song was launched before the album. You always have to promoted it and push it out there, get radio airplay,” But it is not out there the way she likes so to new fans the music is always fresh.
“It’s one of the songs that I produced myself, which I’m proud of. So I got my musicians together and I wrote it and I got them to play bass guitar. That kind of stuff. Then I sent it off to my friend in the UK who mixed it properly and mastered it and got it done.”
This is not the first song JKuhl wrote and produced on her own, as another single off of Sweet Sway, “Coffee” that this Magazine has featured previously, was solely produced by her.
JKuhl also said she can’t have a favourite of the one she likes the most, “They’re all unique because like Coffee is jazz/fusion ballad and your smile is this reggae ballad with a Mo-town kind of fusion thing. They’re just so unique, so I can’t have a favourite.”
Believe it or not Your Smile was created from a daydream about men she was having. It took her two months to write the lyrics, then the music and then lay it all on track as opposed to Coffee that took her two years to put all of the lyrics together and arrange.
“The melody just came and the words the came and that created the verse and then the chorus came, everything just flowed easily, she said. “So you know, it really flowed and, and the movie in my head was just there. So I just wrote everything, images, everything, even images are still there and then the music just flowed easily and I knew I wanted something with a reggae fusion, so I had the guitar, and then I sat down on my keyboard with my friend john mark and we wrote, we came up with the right chord progressions and everything really flowed. That’s exactly what we wanted.
“But with coffee, I was playing around with the words then the chorus came, but nothing else came. For years. Nothing seemed like a verse and then one day, I’m on the bus, going somewhere and things started to come and the melody started to come, it just started to flow and then eventually more words came in.”
She said: “I was just like, daydreaming I think and I created this movie in my head and I created this movie of this guy and my thing is that you know guys are always talking about ladies that a lady’s smile is nice. So what about from a woman’s perspective about a man? Or, depending on how you turn it, I’m thinking like a man about myself. So when I sing you bring the sunshine into my life, I’m just talking about this guy. However, I don’t say you boy or you man, I just leave it open. So anybody can sing it to anybody.”
Sweet Sway is picking up steam digitally as people from around the world as far as China have been downloading the song and asking her to come and perform other tracks from the album. JKuhl said she would like to take up all of their offers, but organising a tour takes time, resources and lots of management she doesn’t have but she is thankful that this COVID-19 has given her the ability to see how to use the internet to promote her skills and talent.
JKuhl also has a collaboration effort coming out in July with a South African DJ that she said is a “Remix album” that she is “excited” to be featured on in order to bring her to a wider audience from the African diaspora.