Jae Stephens Built ‘AUDACITY’ From Everything She Was Told to Tone Down

On AUDACITY, Jae Stephens turns songwriting, girlhood, internet culture, and the experience of being told to be “less” into a world of her own.

There is a certain irony in an artist calling her debut album ‘AUDACITY’ when so much of Jae Stephens’ career was spent behind the scenes. Before becoming the artist at the centre of her own story, Stephens was already singing, writing, and producing, eventually working as a songwriter for artists including J Lo and Normani. Growing up in Los Angeles and later finding herself in London’s writing rooms, she describes the progression as almost accidental: “One thing kind of snowballed into another.” Songwriting gave her somewhere to experiment while she was still finding her footing as an artist, and for a while, that distance felt comfortable. “Your job is done when you leave the studio,” she tells me. Eventually, though, Stephens realised she had become too comfortable there, and stepping forward to write for herself became the leap she needed to make. That background also shapes the advice she gives to anyone hoping to enter songwriting now. Stephens is not interested in romanticising the process. Her first warning is simple: “You’re gonna suck. You’re gonna suck for a really long time.” She spent much of her early songwriting life working privately before becoming comfortable enough to collaborate, and that practice taught her to throw ideas out without being afraid of them. Her advice is to write constantly, from different perspectives, with friends and strangers, and above all, to build community rather than treating networking as a ladder to climb. She is particularly passionate about preserving the human side of music, arguing that debating ideas, exchanging skills, and learning from other people is part of what makes songwriting worth doing in the first place.

That sense of community extends into AUDACITY, which began not with a mood board, but with the songs themselves. Stephens explains that as the music came together, she started noticing recurring themes, narratives, and lyrics until a character began to emerge. She then started imagining where this woman lived, how she dressed, and who would listen to her. “Thinking of it from that angle really allowed me to kind of have fun and get kind of campy with it,” she says. The result is an album with its own mythology, drawing on Coyote Ugly, Catwoman and Hester Prynne to create a distinctly feminine reality where women run the world. Even the scarlet letter A, which appears throughout Stephens’ visual identity for this album, becomes an act of reclamation rather than shame.

The colour red became central to that world too. Already Stephens’ favourite colour, it offered the contradictions she wanted: romance and violence, softness and danger, roses, and blood. “It just felt like a very well-rounded colour to describe a well-rounded woman,” she explains. Her stylist Matthew Hammond helped develop the scarlet ‘A’ motif, drawing from Hester Prynne and turning the letter into something Stephens could deliberately wear across outfits, performances, and videos. It is fitting for an album ultimately concerned with the tension between how a woman sees herself and how others expect her to behave. That tension became particularly important after the SELLOUT era, when Stephens found herself navigating a new relationship, a new label and the expectations placed on her as a new artist. She remembers being told what to make, how to dress and, repeatedly, to become “less.”

Looking back, she realised something that became central to AUDACITY: “I only experienced success when I ignored all those people and did exactly what I wanted to do.” For Stephens, becoming more audacious was therefore not about inventing some louder, more intimidating version of herself. It meant trusting the instincts that had already proven themselves, even when doing so risked making her seem “a bit high maintenance” or “difficult to work with.” She is clear that having exacting standards does not have to come at the expense of being kind: “You can be straightforward and still be a joy.”

That idea runs through the album. When I ask Stephens what my three standout tracks, No One Knows My Name, B4U, and Expensive and Difficult, reveal about her, she immediately connects them to self-worth. No One Knows My Name represents the refusal to be intimidated; Expensive and Difficult establishes her boundaries with the blunt declaration that “this is the price to enter,” while B4U allows a little vulnerability to break through the armour. She describes that armour as something she maintains across much of the record, even while acknowledging that there are cracks in it through songs like Soft Side, The Distance and I Miss The City. The confidence is therefore never completely detached from vulnerability. It is something she is actively choosing.

The same playful self-awareness appears in the world around the music. Before the JaeBaes existed as a fully formed fandom, Stephens had a Tumblr account (beyoncebeytwice), where she learned how to talk to strangers, cultivate an audience, and create a shared language with people online. That history eventually became part of the relationship she has with her fans now, complete with inside jokes, lore, and, apparently, a healthy relationship with lying for promotional purposes. Stephens knows who runs ‘The Jae Base’ account and jokes that she would like to “plant like a bug” under their clothes so she could always know what they are planning. She has even embraced being called a troll herself, insisting that sometimes “promo is promo.”

It is this balance of seriousness and silliness that makes Stephens’ world feel lived in rather than manufactured. She can spend several minutes explaining feminist visual references and then immediately discuss the British accent she created for Crush, describing it as an attempt to sound like a combination of Slick Rick and Dua Lipa. When the song passed a million streams, she found herself having to honour a promise to release the demo. “I don’t think my accent was that bad,” she says, leaving the final verdict to the internet.

Then there is London itself, a place that keeps appearing at significant moments in her career. Stephens first moved into the city through songwriting, later returned for her first headline show at The Lower Third, and will now return to open for Khalid. In 2019 she performed background vocals for him; in 2026 she will be on the bill herself. For Stephens, the seven-year gap is less about the number than the change in mindset that happened in between. Once she consciously decided to become an artist and put intention behind what she was doing, she says, “things really changed for me.” The full-circle moments now feel like proof that the decisions she began making deliberately were taking her somewhere.

And she is already looking beyond the album. Stephens wants festivals, a European headline tour and more music, while also reconnecting with an old interest in acting. “This is not the end of AUDACITY,” she says. “There is just the beginning of opening her gates.” Perhaps that is the clearest way to understand the album and the artist behind

it. AUDACITY is not simply about being louder or harder to ignore. It is about deciding that your instincts are worth listening to, your standards are worth maintaining, and the parts of yourself you were once encouraged to soften can become the very things that define your art.

By the end of our conversation, Stephens turns to the people who have been there long before the album had a name. “Thank you, JaeBaes, for lying our way to the top,” she jokes, before getting sincere about how much their creativity, humour, and time mean to her. “I genuinely would not be here without them,” she says.

To her fans, that is the most fitting thing about AUDACITY: Jae Stephens has built a world for herself, but she has left the doors open for you to join her.