Lights is really cool to be so hot.
The 23-year old singer-songwriter-producer-multinstrumentalist has 24 million plays on MySpace, a JUNO award and rave reviews by critics including those at Rolling Stone. Yet Lights (yes, that’s her name) is the epitome of down-to-earth when talking about her new EP “Lights Acoustic.”
If you go
Lights
Where: Jammin’ Java, 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna, Va.;
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
Info: Sold out at press time; 703-255-1566; jamminjava.com
“I think initially people can misconstrue pop music by a female and don’t what you are and I show them,” Lights said. “From the moment I started playing music when I was 11, I spent eight years trying to different genres, and chose what I liked the most. It’s the best, most efficient way of telling the world who I was.” Lights said she dabbled in metal and then landed in electro in 2006. The latest incarnation of her sound — electro pop — felt something like home to Lights that is likely why the Toronto Star calls her “the very epitome of D.I.Y. pin-up cool.” What that means is that Lights uses synthesizers and keyboards, manipulating them and changing them to suit her tastes.
“It’s the first time I felt honest,” she said. “I just went with it and I ended up where I kept following what I loved and my inspiration peaked.”
Not that it’s always been an easy fit. Last year she was on the concert circuit playing the festivals with the likes of Iron Maiden and other bands that are far from Lights’ musical style. Still she takes such bills in stride as she shares her music, looking to gain some fans as she goes.
“It really is a testament as to your integrity as a musician,” she said, speaking of playing the Warped Tour last year.
She said, diplomatically, that it “is not typically an electro pop festival. It’s just a matter of making sure you are playing the best you can every night.”
Perhaps that calm is because Lights knew ever since she was a child that she would be a musician.
“I knew from the minute that I was 2 … that is was what I was meant to do,” she said. “For those reasons I took a lot of risks and put everything in that I had. If you have a Plan B, you’re just not working hard enough on Plan A.”
