Local pop act Ryan Petitjean follows up recent single Obsessed with a very mature single “Heartless” – a demonstration of the songwriting progress Ryan is on.  Damian Robinson caught up with Ryan recently to find out more about the new single and upcoming EP.

Congratulations on the recent single ‘Heartless’ – it’s great and has a very unique sound.  Could you tell us a little about the single, how long it’s been in the creation process, and where its origins came from?  

Heartless is a track which is essentially about the feeling of desperation. I started working on it back in November, and it pretty much dominated 90% of the sessions we had since then. My producer Lisa and I worked back and forth for months to create the right sound for the track and as it was a new sound for me, there was certainly a fair bit of trial and error but we got there in the end. 

The single has an interesting sound – in terms of production and recording techniques, what sort of processes did you use to build and master the final sound?

I had a handful of reference tracks and I would send them all to Lisa and pick out sections from each and say ‘I want the drums to sound like that in this section’ or ‘I think the minimal chorus of this track would work well on heartless here’ and we would basically just build the instrumental like that until we had this mash-up of about 15 tracks coming together to create the Heartless instrumental. I purposefully pushed myself with this track to create something different to anything I’ve recorded because I wanted it to sound a bit chaotic and maximalist because that’s how the lyrical content had me feeling when I was writing it. 

The single has been played live a few times, how are you finding the reaction?

I’ve actually only performed the track live once so far, at this year’s Stockton pop-up pride, but it was such a great audience and I had so many people coming up to me after the set to ask where they can follow me to keep up to date with upcoming releases which was obviously really nice to hear. The reaction on social media has been great too

Heartless follows on from debut single Criminal and follow up Obsessed.  How’s your songwriting skills been developing and where would you like to go next?

Criminal and especially Obsessed were written when I first began songwriting and I’m so proud of them both, but there were a lot of songs I wrote during that time that I wasn’t confident enough in to release. I feel like now, I have more experience and I know what I want to convey with my lyrics and if people don’t like them – that’s fine. I’ve realised that music is so subjective and you can never please everyone so I may as well just write and release what I want to, which has allowed me to take more risks , especially sonically with this new track.

In terms of the rest of 2024, what’s next, what do you hope to achieve, and where can we catch you?

The next few weeks will be all about Heartless, but the track is part of a 7 track EP I’ve been working on since the start of the year, so you’ll be hearing more of that in the next few months which I’m excited to share. In terms of achievement – I know it sounds cliche but I just want people to listen and enjoy the music – to keep up to date with all future releases, gigs, music and more – make sure to give me a follow on Instagram and Facebook @ryanpetitjean.

Heartless is out now.