INTERVIEW: Rochelle Jordan on her upcoming Australian tour: " I’m forever growing, and I'm forever discovering and that's something that will never change about me."
Interview: Shalane Connors
Published: 24 May 2026
Rochelle Jordan’s eclectic upbringing - born in London to Jamaican parents, raised in Toronto and now based in Los Angeles - is almost a metaphor for her music career: a wide range of influences, a melding of multiple different cultures and several new beginnings.
Uploading covers to YouTube when she was 16, she first released music in 2010 and was initially successful enough to sign a record deal, an experience she later called “toxic’. After releasing her debut album 1021 in 2014, Jordan’s musical career went on hiatus until 2021 when she released her second album Play With The Changes. Out of nowhere, her career went into overdrive two years later when her 2014 single ‘Lowkey’ went viral. With over 35 million streams on Spotify alone, Jordan suddenly became the hottest ‘new’ talent in music.
Her third album Through The Wall dropped last year and became her most critically acclaimed release to date, with multiple publications including The Guardian and NME naming it one of the best albums of the year.
One of the most exciting things about Jordan’s music is her genius at true genre-blending, a term that is often thrown around with impunity when it is barely warranted. She blurs the line between R&B, soul and electronic pop with such brilliance it is impossible to compartmentalise any of her songs, which of course is what all good music should do.
On Through The Wall, songs like ‘Bite The Bait’ and ‘On 2 Something’ are pure, smooth contemporary R&B, but skip over to ‘The Boy’ or ‘Crave’ and you are drowning in delicious electronic dance music. ‘TTW’ and ‘Close 2 Me’ are more intense, trance-house songs, while ‘I’m Your Muse’, ‘Around’ or ‘Sum’ take the genre blending to the next level with elements of soul, R&B and club ready dancepop.
Jordan is bringing her Through The Wall tour to Australia next week, kicking off with a show as part of VIVID LIVE at the Sydney Opera House on 26 May. She will follow this up with shows in Melbourne on 28 May and Brisbane on 29 May.
One of the pop world’s most thrilling, charismatic and musically brilliant artists, it may have taken Jordan over a decade to become music’s brightest ‘new’ talent, but now she has truly arrived on the global stage she is an artist you will quickly become obsessed with. Ahead of her Australian tour, Women In Pop sat down with Jordan to chat all about her music and her upcoming shows.
Hi Rochelle, it’s lovely to speak with you today. I want to start with the fact that you've been releasing music, performing and honing your craft for about 15 years now, but what I've noticed is you seem to have deliberately paced yourself throughout that time. You're not constantly feeding the machine like so many artists today are required to do. How do you decide when is right for you to release an album or a track, when to go on tour and when to sit back and take a break as an artist?
It's a very good question. I've always been the type of person that beats to the rhythm of her own drum. I've been like that since I was very young, definitely had my own ideas and my own thoughts, and I think that carried on throughout the years of creating music. I'm someone who really loves to work in my authenticity wholly, I never want to just follow the lines. There's no real blueprint for me, there never really has been. That kind of runs into how I navigate the music business as well. I've always been one to just trust my intuition and really lean into my discernment about how it is that I'm feeling, because I never want my creativity to be hindered in any type of way.
It's not an easy road to take, and, of course, with this kind of mentality, it will take forever! It's going to take a while, because I'm going at my own pace, and there's no one to disturb my pace. That comes with certain sacrifices, and that's a part of being an independent artist as well. As long as it has taken for me to find the ears of the masses I have now, the journey has been sweet because I got to control everything myself. How I look, the kind of music, the genre bending, I can just do whatever I want, no one can tell me now, because I'm the one making my own rules. It's been long, but it's been worth it, and I've been able to just develop how I navigate the music industry in my own way. I'm lucky for that, there was a sacrifice of time, but I was lucky to have that kind of journey.
As a result of that, it seems that you have quite an organic and dedicated fan base that's really stuck with you throughout that time, that must feel amazing.
Yeah, it's honestly amazing. What's interesting is the fact that I'm still growing, even now. I've been doing this for so long, yet there's so much more to do, and to discover, so much more of a fan base to win over. I'm still developing my live shows, I'm still developing my craft, so it's just really cool to be able to collect all these beautiful souls, as I've gone along. You can't pay for it, it's really an amazing feeling.
Through The Wall is your third studio album in 15 years. What's changed for you as a songwriter and collaborator in that time?
I think what's changed is probably me relinquishing a little bit of control these days. Through The Wall is when I allowed writers to come in. I had Parisalexa, who is an amazing pop writer, come in and help me take it across the finish line, I guess you could say. Also, KLSH, my executive producer, who's a writer as well, just allowing this into my space that I'm usually such a control freak over, I want to write all my songs myself, I have something to say, and so on. But having that collaborative effort really took a lot of pressure off my shoulders, and more than anything, I realised that steel really does sharpen steel. To have these beautiful collaborative moments really made me realise how important collaboration is. So I've grown in that sense as an artist, I've let go of some control to a certain degree, a safe amount that feels comfortable for me.
With this record specifically, you can feel the empowerment that I've grown into as a woman, as a self-assured artist who knows who she is, who is almost redefining what pop is, what R&B is, what house is, just melting all these worlds together and creating something that feels fun and fresh. I’m forever growing, and I'm forever discovering and that's something that will never change about me, but I think people can feel that in the music. I'm really happy to be here in this moment, showcasing myself to the masses, because I'm fully realised now that I know where I am, who I am, and where I'm destined to go.
What’s the primary nugget for you with songwriting, are you a lyric girl or a beat girl, or a groove? What do you start out with?
I'm a melody girl first. I can come up with like a million melodies. I love melody discovery as well, if I hear a beat that I vibe with it, my first thought is, for this chorus, how do I make it different? What melody can I pull out that feels cool, or interesting, that makes your ears perk up. That's my very first thought. I'll spend forever just finding different melodies, and then I get confused, and I can't pick one, and it just rolls out of control!
Writing songs for me is such a sacred thing, and such a spiritual situation for me. There's been times where I finished recording, and I listened to the song back, and I'm like, How did this even come together? How does this make so much sense? I feel like I was just used in that moment, and that I didn't have much control over it. It's a very interesting, nuanced experience. I always say I'm a singer first and a songwriter second, because I know I have more control over my voice than I do in this situation that happens between me and the higher power.
With collaborating, do you find the end result to a song is just so different to what you initially imagined? Are you surprised by the outcome?
I'm not surprised, I'm just excited when I hear the outcome. If it's a song that’s kind of dancing on the lines of some of the deeper thoughts and more vulnerable thoughts that I'm having. I'll be more surprised, like, damn, okay. It’s supposed to be a secret, but here it is on wax now. But for the most part, as soon as I hear the beat, I know what I want this to be. So it's usually just dancing around happy by the end of the situation.
I want to jump back to your early days and influences. You were born in London, moved to Toronto as a little kid, and you grew up in quite a musical family, I understand. What sort of impact did that have on you as a musician?
It had a huge impact. I wasn't alone in my thoughts about music, it was already there. My parents are Jamaican, and so they were bringing a bunch of reggae, lovers rock kind of sounds, and playing it throughout the house every single day. It was so musical, and I was just living in these musical worlds, not realising that my mind was being sculpted to be a creator in that sense
My second eldest brother Junior was the one that was very obsessed with music, just playing his cassettes on the boom box every day, loud. He would play like the most insane jungle rhythms, garage, house, deep house, French house, gospel house, the most obscure R&B tracks, he didn't even know the names of a lot of these tracks. What has lasted with me is the understanding of melody, the deep rooted sounds and sonic placements. Hearing the vocalists on some of those tracks are things that I know that I'm doing today that rest so deeply in the core of who I am as an artist.
You are about to embark on your Through the Wall Australian tour. It's your first time back here in three years. You're performing at the Sydney Opera House, it's such an iconic venue that so many artists around the world dream of doing. How does it feel to be singing in a venue like that?
There's really no words to describe that. The last time I was there, me and my DJ Chrysalis, we walked along the coast right by the Sydney Opera House, and we stood on the stairs, and we pointed up at it and it was like ‘we'll be there next time, just dream it, just manifest.’ So for this to actually be the reality that I'm living, it's very interesting. Words are very powerful, you got to be careful, because they become true. It's amazing, and I'm so excited and honoured to be able to perform there, it's really cool.
What's your relationship like with your Australian audience and your international audience, as opposed to that back home? How do you navigate that?
Oh my gosh, I love my Australian audience. Honestly, I feel like we have a connection, and it's interesting, because I feel like Australia is becoming my third home. My first home is going to be back home in Toronto, obviously. My second home, I would say, is LA, because I lived there for so long. But when I went to Australia, and this will be my third time, I developed so many friends, so much community, the shows were outrageous, and the fans were just so excited and really living in the moment with me. I'm sure it's even more so with this new album, so I think I have a very special connection with Australia. It's very special what we got going on. I don't know what it is, I don't know what kind of magic sauce it is.
Who are you bringing on the road with you?
In Melbourne I have an artist called JUPiTA, she's a singer songwriter, she’s going to have her dancers with her, it's going to be super, super high energy. And then I have Chrysalis, my DJ, who's opening the night for me, and she always lays everybody out and elevates everybody right up to the top, and then everyone's really feeling good by the time I get on stage. It's gonna be a party. I'm excited to bring the girls out.
What's happening after the tour to Australia?
We're going to Asia, so we'll be playing in Shanghai and in Tokyo, and that'll be the first time on that side of the world, so that will be really, really interesting and very cool. After that, we have a whole other tour. This is all a part of the big world tour that's being put together, so it's beautiful.
Tour Dates: Tickets available here
26 May - Sydney Opera House, VIVID LIVE Sydney
28 May - 170 Russell, Melbourne
29 May - The Crowbar, Brisbane
Through The Wall is out now. You can buy and stream here
Follow Rochelle Jordan on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube
