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Jason Derulo And His Great Lost Box Set

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Fraser McAlpine | 09:42 UK time, Wednesday, 3 March 2010

Jason Derulo

If there's one thing we at ChartBlog Towers all agree on, it's that we don't work in a tower and there's only me here. But if there's ANOTHER thing we all agree on, it's that you don't get a No.1 single without a lot of dedication and hard work. And luck, dedication and hard work and luck, and sex appeal. And some money for marketing. And probably a decent video. And sometimes it's a matter of good timing too, no bigger records around that week...

...it's not easy, is my point. So, Jason Derulo has a No.1 single, which means he's managed to harness the power of ALL OF THESE THINGS. Now would be a good time to ask him a thing or two, right? Right...

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ChartBlog: Hi Jason, how are you?
Jason: Fantastic! How're you doing?

ChartBlog: I'm great! It's good to hear that you're fantastic. Are you at all sick of people singing "Jaason DeRUUUUlo" at you yet?
Jason: No.

ChartBlog: How often does it happen?
Jason: A lot.

ChartBlog: Nice to have a musical name though...
Jason: Yeah, I'm gonna do like Prince and have, like, a symbol, and not spell it out.

ChartBlog: That's what people want. They want a little bit of intrigue, a little bit of mystery. We're in Lady GaGa world now.
Jason: Right!

ChartBlog: You ever tempted to go that way? Do the massive staging and the costumes?
Jason: Umm, a massive performance yeah. My fashion is not so flamboyant.

ChartBlog: You're more of a jumper-over-a-shirt kind of a man, rather than a see-through-dress kind of a man...
Jason: Yeah, exactly!

ChartBlog: So, talk to me about songwriting. Two songs, two different productions, two big hits. Did you go with the rockier production on 'In My Head' to distance yourself from 'Whatcha Say'?
Jason: Yeah man. It's a reinvention. I really try to reinvent myself on every song and that one happens to have the rock edge, another influence of mine. I'm excited for people to get to know me, because you can't get to know somebody after one song, you have to dive into the whole project. So people don't really know what's to come yet. But there's all kinds of different genres meshed on this entire album so you'll hear a lot of reinvention.

ChartBlog: What kind of genres?
Jason: Well there's a song which is an interpolation of a part from Flashdance. That one's called 'The Sky's The Limit'. Then there's a song called 'What If', which is a piano ballad. It reminds me of a Beatles hook. The whole song is just one big hook. All the words are...I don't want to say it's written really well but I do wanna say it.

ChartBlog: Hey, you're allowed to! You sing your own name at the start of your songs, it's impossible to be too arrogant now!
Jason: [laughing] Yeah! The song is very memorable. It's abut meeting someone for the first time. Cos you never know what effect that person's gonna have when you first meet 'em. So I'm telling this girl y'know, what if in two years, three years from now we'll be married with children and living in a log cabin?

ChartBlog: So you're really going for range here. I would imagine the problem with having a debut hit which is largely based on a sample of someone else's song is that you almost have to prove yourself twice...
Jason: Umm, well it's never been that because I always knew what I had in the bag. A lot of these songs were already done, y'know I recorded 300 songs for this album. So I knew what people thought, but I was never worried cos I've done the homework.

I've been working on this my whole life, it's not something I picked up yesterday. I'm not the guy who got this by chance. I made a lot of sacrifices to become the consummate artist. I always knew what people thought, because I had autotune on the song, but it was just for the sake of the song, not using it as a crutch.

ChartBlog: Imogen Heap sang through a harmoniser anyway, so you'll have had to have done that to fit in with her vocals.
Jason: Absolutely. So yeah, people will get to know me soon. I'm not worried. It's exciting, it's exciting times.

ChartBlog: 300 songs though. That's a massive box set! When you're all done, and people come to investigate your demos, that's 285 songs they can whack out!
Jason: I don't think people should hear all those songs though, because those songs haven't got my stamp on it, y'know? There are a lot of songs on the internet like that, y'know, there are a lot of leaked songs, that probably never should've seen the light of day.

ChartBlog: Tell me about the one that you really know that you definitely, definitely don't ever, ever want anyone to hear. Not even your own children.
Jason: Umm, well there's songs like 'Diva', which was written for a female, and it sounds like I'm talking to a guy. It's like "I'm a pretty lady!", it's crazy. No-one should ever have heard that.

ChartBlog: [after some time] And yet I just have. That's amazing.
Jason: Yeah! So there's all kinds of material on the internet which probably shouldn't be there. I don't think it's fair. When they were releasing a lot of Tupac's old stuff, I didn't think that was fair to him. Not every song is going to be good material. I think that it's unfair that you put something out against someone's own will.

ChartBlog: Oh, well then I won't post that pretty lady thing on the web after all.
Jason: Thanks a lot man!

THE END

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Here's Jason doing his Live Lounge for 1Xtra. Sadly 'Diva' is not one of the songs on offer:

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