The trend of feeling like the “main character” is a new complex of 2020, but some artists have been romanticizing the mundane in their art for a while now. An artist constructing this reality in their music is one of Florida State University’s own: Soft Glas. Joao Gonzalez is a Florida Native from Coral Springs who made music that makes Florida seem like paradise in his 2017 album Orange Earth. His songs outside of that album resonate in their vulnerable specificity, and he continues to make simplicity feel like magic in his music.
His next upcoming single “Cyclones” is set to be the first from his upcoming album. When asked about the inspiration for it, he stated, “I had already moved back to Coral Springs last year and I was in this very weird transitional phase. I was just at home every day, stirring and stewing in my own thoughts and emotions, and my head felt like this storm constantly brewing, but I wasn’t doing anything. I was just sitting around working on music every day. So, it became like this inner monologue/dialogue of trying to understand what I was feeling at the time and my anxieties; the lack of stillness that I felt. This very turbulent time in my head. But I was oddly optimistic that I was going to be able to overcome it.”
Joao further said, “So that’s what the song is about. It’s kind of like talking through what I’m feeling and what I’m worried about, what I’m scared of, but thinking that I’ll be able to overcome it which is probably the first time I’ve had such an optimistic song about my mental well-being because usually when I write about my anxiety or my overall mental well-being it comes from a place of like fear or just not really knowing what is going to happen. But with this song, it definitely felt like I had control. It’s kind of talking through an anxiety attack and coming through the other side and feeling good about it.”
Joao’s description of the lyrical content of this song probably resonates with a lot of us in the muck of 2020. The song is a product of pre-quarantine, but Joao feels as though it was like he predicted what was to come in some way. The sound is slightly varied from his previous music because he stated, “I wore some of my biggest inspirations on my sleeve.” These include his father, who grew up with a career in jazz, which serves as a heavy influence on his sounds. As far as contemporary artists, he lists Solange, Frank Ocean and Death Cab for Cutie as some of his biggest inspirations.
When asked if he still pulls his artistry from his youth in Coral Springs, he stated, “Yeah, I definitely do, but I feel like it manifests itself in different ways. With Orange Earth, that nostalgia was very romantic and optimistic and almost rose-colored. But now that nostalgia is almost melancholy. And those same moments… I look back at them almost sadly. They represent something that I’ll never have again, or they remind me of how old I’m getting or like how old my parents are getting. So, it takes on a different form now. It’s the other side of that same coin. Where something that made me happy before now makes me very sad. Florida deserves to be trashed on in some ways, but it does have very specific magic. Maybe I took it for granted but it’s this very specific paradise in a lot of ways.”
This strong nostalgia resonates with a lot of us as Florida natives, especially if we left home for college. Although he often writes about the past, his vision for his future as an artist was optimistic. When asked where he sees himself in ten years, he said, “I think I would love to be able to branch out and explore different passions of mine. Scoring films would be amazing. That’s definitely something I’ve always wanted to do and I hope that in ten years I’m doing it more frequently, and I hope to do sound design. I don’t want to be caught up in just one facet of being a musician. I don’t want to just be a touring musician or a studio musician. I want to be able to branch out, and I hope in ten years I’ll be able to do that on a significant scale. And obviously, I hope to still be making albums and touring, but I would love to expand.”
Whatever he does as an artist, Joao continues to construct fantasy around normalcy, and his art is a wake-up call to romanticize everyday life. His music is relatable, but he has a way of adding a cinematic aspect to life through music.