Ben Jelen discusses song inspirations, growth

He does his best work when he's depressed.
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- With his chiseled cheekbones, porcelain skin and wispy brunette locks, Ben Jelen looks like he's walked straight out of a Calvin Klein ad. In fact, when his manager first spotted him, that's just what he had in mind for the young Jelen.
But British born, Texas-reared Jelen was quick to set him straight -- he handed the manager a demo of his music. Just a few weeks later, Jelen, 25, was heading out to Los Angeles to audition for record labels -- and soon landed a deal with Maverick Records.
His debut, "Give It All Away," was released earlier this year. While the album, consisting mostly of piano-based ballads, garnered him media mentions and MTV exposure, it wasn't a commercial hit, and Jelen is working on his next record in Athens, Ga.
Breakout star
Jelen, who plays the violin, piano and guitar, talked with The Associated Press about trying to become a star, his inspirations and his songwriting.
Q. You got a lot of media attention as the next star on the rise, but album sales were modest. Was that disappointing?
A. I was really thrilled at the way everything went at the end of the day, personally, even though because you didn't have large-scale radio exposure, album sales were not traditionally what a major label would want to keep working with. ... [But] everywhere we went, we had a huge crowd, played a great show.
Q. You had Internet buzz, and all other types of buzz. Why didn't that translate to radio?
A. I'd say out of everything, I think the hardest to me is that kind of abstract radio race, where you're really not sure what the factors are, and you know it's not completely due to your song or the music, and I think you take a lot of the blow personally when that kind of stuff goes down, even though there's millions of factors playing into it. It's so hard, it's such a commercial music world right now, and I hate having to kind of tailor anything to that. So I'm not doing that. I'm not going to write for radio, like some people do, I think that's kind of a backward way of looking at art.
Q. You first came to people's attention as a possible model. Why not consider that route?
A. Modeling's cool; you get to travel and you can save up money or whatever, but I need to grow from what I'm doing, and if I'm playing music, I'll feel like I'm growing, I'm moving somewhere, but I don't think like modeling you really would.
Q. Do you remember the first songs you wrote?
A. My God, they were so bad! It was whatever I was feeling, which at the age of 14, is kind of petty sometimes. To a 14-year-old it's like the world, but now I'm like, 'Wow, is that what I whined about back then?'
Q. A lot of songwriters write about breakups and sad situations. Do you feel that you do your best work when you're depressed?
A. Yeah, I think everyone does. I'd love to be able to write about something happy, and there's a few songs like that, but for me, it's always like the pain in something that makes you want to write about something. If you're happy about something, you probably could write about it if you wanted to, but you're gonna wanna be with the person. The same with global problems, you don't write about how wonderful things are, you write about what people should be made aware of.
Q. You have a degree in biology. How did you segue into music?
A. I was fascinated by biology. That was another thing that I wanted to do, but the more I got into that, the more I started working in studios, the more I started to realize that I wanted to do music, but I wanted to finish my degree at the same time.
Q. Your father was a doctor and your mom a nurse. Were they concerned about your choice of career?
A. It was tough to get them on board, at the beginning. Your parents, they want you to support yourself, and music is a risky way of doing that. [But] I mean, I got out of college and I never asked them for money again.
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