The 'American Idol' star trades rock for electro-pop on her new album "Funny"
EAST BRUNSWICK -- For Jax, the exuberant East Brunswick singer whose "American Idol" journey we chronicled in 2015, the future seemed fully illuminated.
At 18 years old she finished third on "Idol," and proved again and again she was the season's most capable entertainer. The songstress born Jackie Miskanic seemed fully prepared to unleash her airy, pop-rock sound and winning smile on the mainstream and attempt the leap from reality TV star to a force in the music industry.
But in a blink, everything dimmed. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The decision last summer was to remove her thyroid, a gland adjacent to her larynx and vocal cords -- a nightmarish surgery for a professional singer.
"I had to relearn how to sing," she tells NJ.com in a recent interview. "I had to retrain my muscles."
Somehow, Jax's crystalline chops came back even stronger, with a new bit of rasp adding color and definition to her tone. And her overall recovery was swift; in November she ran her first marathon, in New York.
But the true silver lining here is that the singer's harrowing experience humanizes her debut EP "Funny," released Friday, in a way she likely couldn't have otherwise. Jax unveils a fearless, hopeful mentality on the electro-ballad "Stars" -- centered on the hook "Stars can't shine without darkness" -- and leonine lines like "the struggle makes me feel so alive."
Despite the tune's innately personal approach, Jax still wanted her message to be universal.
"I didn't want it to be a song about cancer," she says. "I wanted it say 'here's a song, take your story and relate and connect with it the way you need to.' I want it to bring light to people, and for it to be cathartic the way writing it was for me."
To those who have followed Jax, and knew about her illness last summer, "Stars" may be the most predictable track off an album that is otherwise far removed from the music she performed on "American Idol."
While on the program penultimate season, Jax was billed as the season's pop-punk princess of sorts, wailing tunes from Paramore, Jet and Bon Jovi.
But "Funny" is almost completely bereft of guitar music; booming digital claps reign over a pop-soul style much closer to radio stars Ellie Goulding or Ed Sheeran.
Her sharp vocals still beam through, though, and lyrical content is focused heavily on love problems, especially the grooving opener "Sleep Like a Baby."
"It was a detail of a relationship going sour, where one end is unaffected by it and the other is still hurting -- clearly I needed to get some stuff off my chest," she laughs.
A list of producers and co-writers fueled her fire, namely pop-rockers Nash Overstreet and Colin Dieden, from Hot Chel Rae and The Mowgli's, as well as Larzz Principato, who co-wrote with Halsey, New Jersey's breakout pop star of 2016.
As Jax plans for tours and appearances centered around the album's release -- no local dates are booked yet -- she says she's still floored by her fans, and their support while she stepped out of the spotlight to heal.
"To see that amount of love that came out of it all was mind-boggling," she says. "Even people who weren't going through something health-wise, people going through something in general gravitated toward it, I think."
She admits she's still not accustomed to being recognized in public: "It's crazy that this is real life" she says of the "Hey Jax!" hoots she gets everywhere she goes -- even more so than when she was on "Idol," she says.
And with her story a bit more varied now, she's ready to deliver her new perspectives to the masses and make the jump to the mainstream that "Idol" stars have struggled to do over the last few years.
"It surreal to have this weight to my voice now, to put out something that will hopefully connect people from their story to my story," she says. "I actually feel like I have a bigger stage now."
Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier. Find NJ.com on Facebook.