Ninety minutes. It’s enough time to binge-watch a couple of episodes of CSI or, if you’re Calgary-born musician Kiesza (born Keisa Rae Ellestad), write the hit single “Hideaway.”
She was on her way to the airport when producer and co-writer Rami Samir Afuni played her the track’s deep house beat. Inspired, Kiesza popped back in the studio for just long enough to dream up the melody, lay down the vocals and still make her flight. The song’s critical success came nearly as quickly: She uploaded it to SoundCloud in January 2014 and made an attention-getting, single-shot video (below) before the single’s official April 2014 release. Idolator raved that it was “truly one of the great new pop discoveries of 2014.”
But Kiesza’s rise to prominence in the genre of pop-inspired house was not nearly as accidental as the origin story of “Hideaway” makes it sound. The artist dabbled in a number of creative pursuits throughout her childhood and adolescence (including dance and fashion), and she always felt a special connection to music and songwriting. “My early childhood was very much shaped by my mother and her Chicago house and Michael Jackson influences, which I think my brain developed around,” says Kiesza.
Despite her mother’s penchant for big-voiced singers like Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand, it was Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” that provided Kiesza’s first songwriting inspiration. Listening to it, she says, was “the first time that I ever actually paid attention to the songwriting. [Before] I just listened to music, danced to music, vibed to music, but then that was the moment that I was like, ‘Wow, this is a well-written song.’” Eventually this passion led her to study music at British Columbia’s Selkirk College and then at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
Nevertheless, it took time to find her musical footing. “I was a folk singer when I started out, which I loved doing,” she says. “But I also felt like I wanted to do more than just play guitar and be stuck behind my instrument. I wanted to be moving onstage, a little more like a rock star.” Her debut major label album, 2014’s Sound of a Woman, showcases this transition. “I have a lot of fun, upbeat dance music,” she says. “I have some really strong ballads, and then I also have the music I play on the piano and the guitar.”
Sound of a Woman does more than just highlight Kiesza’s artistic abilities; it’s also a deeply personal record that centers on a now-ended relationship. “It’s the progression of a love story,” she says. “It’s all the emotions that you go through from start to finish.” Now she credits the relationship that inspired the LP with helping her to find her “inner strength.” That maturity is almost certainly something we’ll hear on a follow-up release. “I think maybe the next album might have a little bit of a different perspective now that I have more of a clean slate in my mind.”