Releasing her latest single ‘Come My Way’ on Feb. 16, the 21-year-old singer-songwriter and junior music industry major Gianna Jones is making her mark in the musical world continuously releasing R&B tunes while also collaborating with student producers and videographers.
The song’s beat maker freshman music industry major Patrick and producer senior music industry major Jordan work together as a team to work on completing each song she releases including “Come My Way.” After finalizing the recording, Jones made a music video with the help of Geekeddfilmz, a student videographer who filmed the video. Jones directed the music video while the videographer and I sat down to edit together and add effects.
“My producer has produced all the music I’ve dropped since I’ve been at Rowan and he’s great, he’s very talented and he’s helped me with so much, and my beatmaker, he makes the best beats ever,” said Jones. “He’s the only person that I can say I’ve found to understand my sound, my style, and what I’m going for. He understands the Y2K, 2000’s vibe that I have.”
With the influence of Rowan Music Industry, as a newly signed artist Jones decided to create this new song to promote her introduction to the label. Jones states this song is about getting a person to come your way. She aims to use authentic beats in every song she puts out and she spent weeks trying to produce a beat for her new single with her team. After finding the beat, Jones began freestyling to see what came to her and wrote down everything that came to mind.
“It brings me so much happiness when I’m writing, just knowing that I can create an entire story just using a random beat,” said Jones. “I also feel like I’m able to tell people my story in life because I’ve personally gone through a lot of stuff in my life and in a lot of my music I talk about things that I’ve gone through. It brings me happiness and peace and makes me feel like I have the power to be successful.”
Following the release of the single, Jones has been receiving positive feedback in her Instagram and YouTube comments. She has a performance on Feb. 26, where she will sing “Come My Way” for the third time in front of a live audience as well as other songs including “Losin Control” and “RISKY” at Prof’s Place in the Student Center. Jones has another performance coming up this April at the Rowan Music Arts Festival and intends to perform more in the future.
“This past year it’s made me feel so overwhelmed with happiness at how people are kind of understanding the sound I’m going for,” said Jones. “They are like, ‘Yeah you got that 90s, 2000s vibe I like that, you remind me of Aaliyah,’ that just makes me feel really happy when people understand the sound I’m going for and style I’m going for and understand what I’m trying to do.”
Jones plans to collaborate with other artists and has had multiple student artists contact her who were interested in working with her. Her first show in December for the Touring and Promotion class featured her first collaboration song “On My Mind” with sophomore music industry major Joey Kelz. This is the only collaboration song she has so far but she intends to work with more artists.
“I’ve had a lot of people hit me up saying they want to do future projects with me. It’s just all about them working out the details and stuff and seeing how they want to do it,” said Jones.
After writing a song titled “Again” and performing the unreleased tune at a show, the crowd encouraged her to release it. This song will be her next project which is planned to be released in May and she is currently working on finalizing the record. Jones intends to create a full music video for her next single that will utilize a professional camera and have more team members assisting with the creation.
“I kind of had this whole vision where it would be based off this movie called ‘Honey’ which is a movie about a girl who’s a dancer,” Jones explained. “I kind of wanted to make the cover based on the movie and take inspiration from the movie and make the video like the movie, it’s just an idea.”
Inspired by songwriters such as Muni Long and Leon Thomas III, Jones wants to be a songwriter for other artists and start a small business to become a ghostwriter. She wishes to be a person who can write for big artists one day while also still creating her music. In her career, she plans to combine her skills as a songwriter, artist, and performer.
“I started dropping songs on all platforms, now I have a music video, and now I’m signed to my school’s record label. It’s like, I feel like I’ve come so far in such a short amount of time,” voiced Jones. “I feel like maybe I do have the potential to get to where I wanna go if I just keep going.”
Jones also has plans to release an EP by her senior year. To graduate, Jones needs to complete a Capstone project and it is required she makes an EP for this assignment. During her senior year, she will be working on her Capstone project during the Fall and Spring semesters which is due by the end of the school year. She is looking forward to her upcoming EP and encourages students to listen to her music through Spotify and watch full music videos on YouTube @OnlyGiannaMusic.
“I’m very excited for everyone to meet the new R&B princess that I’m trying to put out to the world,” said Jones.
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