Midwest BEAT Magazine

What at first glance looks like a typical product spit forth and packaged from a cookie cutter industry, yet upon closer evaluation proves to stand far removed from anything else on shelves?

The answer to that little riddle is just that, a Riddle. Jessica Riddle to be exact, a truly remarkable and refreshing young talent that will be around making music long after the reigning teen queens become fodder for "Where Are They Now?" articles.

Although she may be the newest, freshly-scrubbed face on the pop music scene, once you get past the fact that Riddle is an attractive young lady with a wry smile and a gorgeous set of dimples, there is nothing akin to her and the rest of the pre-fab teens currently keeping the pop music scene at bay.

    "God, I'm so tired of being washed up in the whole teen thing. In most interviews I've done, I get asked what I have in common with Britney or something stupid like that," sighed Riddle, who performs Nov. 3 at Chicago's House of Blues with Brit pop stars BBMak, to promote her debut album, Key of A Minor, on Hollywood Records.

    Being stereotyped is the most frustrating thing in Riddle's career right now. "People always want to lump me into that whole teen pop scene. Those kinds of questions drive me a little crazy. It's like -'Hey, did you even listen to the record?'   My stock answer to questions about what I think of all that is a quick -'Nothing!' - because I really don't feel anything in common with Britney or Christina or Jessica..."

   The latter artist is an especially sharp pain the ass for Riddle. Is seems that a few journalists, so badly wanting to jump on the prep-pop bandwagon, have taken interviews with Riddle thinking she was Jessica Simpson. "I don't understand why there is this confusion," she said. "My music doesn't sound anything like Simpson's music. But it has honestly happened a lot, that people think I'm her. I have to clear my throat and say, 'Ummm, excuse me, but I'm the other Jessica!'"

   This writer came to find Riddle while scrounging through a stack of promotional CDs in the quest to find something "fresh" to listen to while building the pages of last month's issue of Midwest BEAT.

   The simple but stark pastel sketch of a baby grand on the cover grabbed my attention. Could anything packaged so subtly come from an artist who was
anything but confident in their musical output?

    Expecting piano jazz or some variation of such, I popped the CD into the stereo and as the sparse arrangements and simple melodies cascaded over me, I was embraced by thought-provoking lyrics being sung with the kind of haunting honesty that I had not heard since unwrapping my copy of Carole King's Tapestry album as a teenage back in the Seventies.

     Pain, confusion and sense of self-discovery dripped from the singer's voice. In perusing the CD jacket, I learned to my dismay that Jessica Riddle was not a weathered neo-folky who'd been beaten up in clubs for umpteen years, although her world weary sound carried that sense of despair and longing.

     Looking out from the inside of the cover was a young lady from Los Angeles, who had put to music the heartbreak of having had her childhood stolen by a paralyzing fear of an alcoholic father.

    "Fiona, Alanis and Tori are artists that I can relate to," she said returning to how outside of the teen circle she often feels. "I just don't relate to the whole Britney kind of thing. Maybe it's because that whole 'teen (innocence) thing' is lost on me since I had to grow up so fast and didn't really get a chance to go through that phase.

   "At age 13, I didn't have time to worry about my hair style or tweaking my eyebrows or what scent of body wash to use," she continued. "I was too busy just trying to get through another day."

    Riddle described her father as a very talented but frustrated folk musician. She credits him with having instilled a love of music in her at a very young age. "My dad was the musical side of the family and we had that very strong bond when I was a little girl," she recalled. "I would sit next to him at the piano and play along with him watching his hands and and moving mine with his. That's how I learned to play."

     Music is where Riddle found solace during the turbulent years that preceded her parents getting a divorce when she was age 13 and then later as her mother and siblings pulled together to stand strong.

     Riddle said that when she first started doing interviews and talking about the songs she has written, she claimed that she was venting over her parent's divorce, but today she has come clean. "It wasn't the divorce," she said. "It was all the abusive things that lead to the divorce that fueled those songs. Their divorce was really an escape for me from everything. I was begging them to get a divorce. It wasn't the divorce that was so hard on me and made me start writing songs, it was everything that happened before the divorce."

    Once her parents finally divorced, Riddle threw herself into her music and wrote songs to express her confusion and purge herself of the pain she felt.

    "I'm Sorry" and "My Girl" are two songs Riddle said were inspired by her father. "I always play them back to back, because they relate to each other," she said. "On the album they are back to back and when I do them on stage, I play them the same way."

Most of the songs on Key Of A Minor are five to six years old. "I was like 13 and 14 when I wrote most of the stuff that is on this album," she said. "I have like volumes of songs that I have written since then and I do one or two new songs in the show, but these are songs that I felt the need to put on this first record and ones that I think are relevant to who I was and who I have become."

The songs being were written while she was minor gave birth to the album's title.

    Because of her youthful look, her age and her being signed to a Disney-owned label that is home to many popular teen artists, Riddle has inherently attracted a younger demographic than maybe her music warrants, but that is totally cool with her.

    "I know that a lot of young girls listen to my music, because I see them at the shows and I meet them after the shows when I sign autographs and talk to them," said Riddle, recalling her recent summer tour with Savage Garden.

    "Most of my audience right now consists of 13-16 year-old girls, but I think the people who will end up being longtime fans are probably like 25-30 and generally women."

    The press has drawn comparisons between Riddle and Fiona, Alanis and Tori, which the young artist if thrill about.

   The only correlation with those artists to this writer, might be the strong feminist streak and independent attitude of Riddle's work.

   Unlike Fiona, Riddle is not a whiner. Unlike Alanis, Riddle is not a bitter bitch who wants to castrate all men because of a few bad relationships.

   Like Tori, Riddle is deep and mysterious with a magical way of wrapping up her words in pretty melodies without losing their impact.

    To match the integrity of the music she has written, Riddle has a stellar cast of top session cats playing behind her on the tracks. A nice accomplishment for a freshman artist. "I have to give the credit for that to my producers," she said. "But I will tell you that working with such a talented bunch of musicians has completely spoiled me."

     Getting back to that sparse pastel drawing which first attracted me to Riddle's CD.   "I'm really glad you like that (drawing)," she gushed. "I do a lot of drawing, and that is one I did of my piano. My piano is really my best friend. Throughout my whole life, my piano has always been there when I have needed a source of unconditional love."

    Reflecting back on the first time I heard Riddle sing songs like "I'm Sorry" and "Sadly Beautiful" and "Even Angels Fall," makes me imagine how fellow rock scribe turned management mogul, Jon Landau must have felt upon hearing Bruce Springsteen that first time.

    Not that Riddle is as Landau so aptly put it, "the future of rock 'n' roll!"   Her music is nothing that earth-moving and commercial, but I do feel confident enough to alter his sentiments a little and go on record as saying that I think this young woman-child definitely has a strong "future in rock 'n' roll."