Last weekend, I had the opportunity to experience some amazing live performances at The New Schoolās āSunday Sessions,ā an event spotlighting TNS students and their original music. Held at Arnold Hall inside the College of Performing Arts, the lineup consisted of two talented artists who each presented their music accompanied by instrumentalists from the Mannes School of Music.
Joey Konopka is a first-year student at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and hopes to study music starting next fall. He started writing music during his freshman year of high school during quarantine and has been building his artistry ever since. I got the privilege of asking him about his time at the session and got more insight into his musical journey.
What drove you to start creating music?
Joey: “It all started when Olivia Rodrigo released āDriverās License.ā I was inspired and was like ‘OMG this is so good’ so I wrote a song. Then I kept on writing songs and the more I wrote the more I got into it. To be honest, for a while, I was just writing songs to sound edgy and sad, but now, I make music to express feelings I don’t usually express in a serious manner. I guess when I was younger I was just trying to sound like these other artists but now that Iām doing it, Iāve kinda found my voice in this.“
Describe your sound in three wordsĀ
Joey: “Not the music that I have out currently, however, the music that I am making right now I would describe as sad, angsty, and messy.”
Who are some of your biggest influences/ inspirations for your music?Ā
Joey: “I have six, in no particular order: Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Conan Gray, Gracie Abrams, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sabrina Carpenter. They have inspired me in so many different ways and something I love about all these artists would be their honesty and storytelling. I remember when I was 14, even though I couldnāt really relate to these songs, I still somehow found a way to relate to them. I love vulnerability and relatability in music because even though they werenāt balling their eyes out in every single song, they still have this relatability within them.”
What is your creative process when it comes to building up your discography?Ā
Joey: “To be honest, when music hits me it hits me. Sometimes Iām on the piano, on the subway, in the middle of class, or even in the gym and I have to write it down immediately. Sometimes it may just be a few lines or an entire song in one sitting. There are times I do go a week or two without writing a song which does make me worry a lot and then there are other times I write a song nearly every other day.”
What are some hopes and plans for your future music?Ā
Joey: “I am currently finishing up my EP at the moment and am planning on releasing it hopefully at the beginning of next year I also really hope I can get an album out within the next two to three years. For my hopes, I dream of playing in Madison Square Garden and, I hope that I can make music that I wish I heard as a queer 16-year-old from a small town that others never took seriously. I hope to talk about queer experiences that Iāve faced that I havenāt seen portrayed in public media. You see, there’s this silence, well, not really silence but like this weird gray area of the queer experience that I donāt feel artists really acknowledge or talk about because being queer is like seen as this prideful thing where it’s like ‘Woo! Iām queer!’ which, it is a prideful thing but there’s also such a duality to it which I donāt think a lot of queer artists truly present in their music.”Ā
If you could pick one or two lyrics that you loved writing which ones would you pick?
Joey: “I love a lot of my songs, so to pick one or two lyrics is hard. However, there is this song that I performed at the Sunday Sessions that is one of my unreleased called āStained Meā which I wrote with my producer Mike and it goes ‘Iāll never be the girl you hold I had to leave your closet closed.’ Since there’s so much weight within the context of me saying it and I just really love it so much.”Ā
At Sunday’s Session, the vibes were chill, and most importantly the music was amazing! I will definitely be attending more performances in the future.