Podcast transcription

Pontus: Welcome to Wrapped in a Warm Blanket, a podcast with heart-to-heart talks about Angelina Jordan’s artistry and how it affects our inner world, co-hosted by Alan Papier and Pontus Österlin.

Pontus: Hi, Alan.

Alan: Hi, Pontus. What shall we talk about today?

Pontus: I’m not sure. Do you know?

Alan: I think we should start with Angelina Jordan and then carry on with Angelina Jordan and finish with Angelina Jordan.

Pontus: That sounds like a good idea.

Alan: What Angelina Jordan does is she uses her music as a vehicle because she very, very clearly, very much all along, has always said that she wants to communicate love through her music.

If you’re walking along and you see a man throwing a stone into a pond, three things are going on. There’s the man himself. There’s the stone and there’s what happens in the pond. The man himself. The person, in this case, is symbolic of Angelina, the artist and the musician, the person creating the art. The stone, the shape, the size, the composition of the stone, it may vary, but that represents the art itself or in this case, the music. But when it hits the pond, the direction of the ripple and the extent of the ripple and the ever-widening effect of the ripple, that is something which is a different category. It’s the ripples inside of us, which is really the focus of this podcast.

Everyone and their grandmother have been analyzing her vocally and what she does and how she does it. But there’s much less emphasis on the detailed reaction of how it affects people. So it’s not just how it affects me and how it affects you. There will be many, many other people. But it’s the depth and the diversity and the total variation of how people are affected, which could and should be explored.

Pontus: Yeah, I think so, too. I mean, one of the the mysteries is why is it affecting so many people on such a deep level? I mean, I can speak for myself. The first time I heard her, I was in a pretty bad place mentally. I mean, it was, the whole pandemic was going on. And I was suffering a bit from depression or… Well, not depression really, but I was feeling low. I was feeling blue and and I sort of just by accident got to see the clip from AGT, America’s Got Talent with the Bohemian Rhapsody.

And instantly I just jumped on the wagon, if that’s what you say? And after that… I can’t really recall what happened exactly, but somewhere in those 5-10 videos I just went through, it got to me in a way that no artist ever got to me. I mean, we’re talking about a very young person affecting me in a way that actually… In a way that I want to be like a better person in some ways.

Alan: What you’ve just said, I think, is a very, very clear and accurate and concise description of the Angelina Jordan effect, and many, many people will say something very, very similar to that. I think what she does is a combination of things, she makes a person more emotional. She heightens our inner emotional world. You know, if you ask almost any artist, if they are able to verbalise and you say, what do you hope to achieve with your art? They may say, oh, I want to make something beautiful or I want to convey beauty.

But what she [Angelina Jordan] does is she makes a person feel more. And that is something which is extraordinary because it happens to so many people, even after being very, very familiar with the song. And because we are feeling more, that is actually a way to make us a better person.

Pontus: And I know in one of your videos, you mentioned Norway, the country, Norway, as a good example of the kind of… Yeah, what did you say in that video, really?

Alan: I said how lucky Angelina Jordan was to be born and raised in Norway because it is not very crowded. And because it is affluent and because her family were affluent, there was not pressure on her to start touring at the age of eight or 10 years old. And so she was able to stay focused on her school and her normal childhood. And so in that way, she’s lucky on many, many different levels. She’s first and foremost Norwegian. And that will always stay with her. And that’s actually a very big advantage because when you grow up with that innocence, that innocence stays with you as a basis. And also, Angelina makes no secret about the massive influence that her granny has been with her. And, you know, I take my hat off to both of them to forge this type of bond.

Pontus: Yeah. It’s really eye-opening to read her book. Have you read the book?

Alan: Yes, I have.

Pontus: Yeah. Between Two Hearts, it’s called In English. I thought that was a real eye-opener. And you can see that she’s doing some kind of well… She’s a true artist in that sense that she can do a lot of things. She can draw, although it’s her grandmother’s paintings in the book. We know that she [Angelina Jordan] can and likes to paint. She has that probably from my grandmother. And, of course, she can express her feelings in words.

Alan: When you have in your heart… When you have kindness and you have benevolence and you can express it directly and indirectly through music and through your persona, it becomes like the difference between having one speaker and two speakers and four speakers. If you have four speakers in the room, the sound becomes quadraphonic. It’s that much richer experience. And Angelina is able to do that between her persona and her singing and her lyrics and even the writing of her book. So she’s communicating that in many ways, on many different levels. And it’s all consistent.
And I’m a big fan of making a distinction between acts of kindness and uninterrupted acts of kindness because that puts it more into perspective when acts of kindness are uninterrupted. I, like you, was moved and I thought something extraordinary was going on and I actually could not put it into words. And a lot of my videos are trying to put it into words. But now that we are stripping away the music in this podcast, we only have the words. And so we are focusing on the ripples, we’re focusing on the end product, and we’re not talking about the music. And because we’re not, we’re talking about the heart of the matter, you and I. Right now, we are talking between two hearts.

Pontus: You said in one of your videos: the feeling we get from listening to Angelena, how can we make this last longer? I thought that was quite interesting. How can we make the feeling of joy or the feeling of tranquillity after listening to, anything really or experience anything? How can we take that into our heart and be more like that?

Alan: You used two words when we were discussing this podcast. You used the two words self improvement. And I think that captures very, very clearly what we’re trying to do because, you know, emotions don’t just happen to us. They’re sort of… It’s almost like we’re growing a plant inside of ourselves and we can water it and we can shed light on it and we can look after it and we can nurture it. And in a way, our emotions are not just like, if it rains or if it snows and it’s completely out of our control, it’s something that we can nurture. And Angelina, in a way, is planting a seed and then she’s watering it. And then what we do with that emotion is then almost she’s passing the baton to us and we’re then running with it.

Pontus: For me, one of the sorts of concrete things that I have changed or sort of noticed behavioural change in myself is replying to all those comments that you get on social media, on YouTube channels and everything, because there are always people that have a different view than yourself. And of course, there are the extremes, the trolls or the haters and those I pretty much just delete. I don’t even go into a debate because I feel that those persons are just in it for the provocation itself. But some people that have different views on things I now… With the new me, the new and improved me go into with a different kind of feeling so that it’s more a positive way of tackling things and not just being so… Rooted in my own opinions, I think.

Alan: I think that’s a very, very good phrase that you just used “the new and improved me”, and that is actually what we wish to invite on this podcast. We want to hear about other “new and improved me’s” from other listeners who have experienced Angelina Jordan and have been moved with her. And we want to hear about other people to elaborate on how they are “new” and how they are “improved” because this should not be kept under wraps in a warm blanket. This should be opened up to the sunshine. And we should put light on this and amplify this because this is really, really important what we’re talking about.

Pontus: Go to wrappedinawarmblanket.com to find out more about this podcast and how you can share your stories and experiences.