Seago

Seago has spent much of the 2020s searching for his own way to bloom as an artist. Listen through earlier projects like Lawn and Silver, and you’ll be whisked to several different stylistic corners—indie pop, yacht rock, disco, R&B with flecks of hip-hop. But whatever the combination, it remains unquestionably Seago, consistently malleable, assured as a summer breeze, and blazing a trail all his own. “As an artist, as a songwriter, as a creative person in general, I can make music that’s whimsical with a bit of melancholy, masked with humor and wit, and have it not be a drag.”

While his jaunty single “Cheapshot” is his biggest song, netting him placements on playlists like Fresh Finds and Lorem and leading to over two million streams just on Spotify, he cites “Downtown Guy” as his most “impactful” song because of how it revealed the value of making music that moves people, regardless of its place in the algorithm. Its composition is sunny, all peppy drum fills mixed with DayGlo guitars and soft pattering keyboards interlocking like a friendship bracelet. Like in all of his songs, he’s earnest without being pretentious, bad luck coming off as a good-natured lesson to carry him forward.

The polymath born Jordan Kelman had to learn how to indulge his inner dreamer. He grew up in Brampton, a suburb of Toronto, and while music was always on the fringes of his life, his first passion was wrestling. As the son of a wrestling coach father, the sport came naturally to him, but a love for the arts always tugged at his heart. But by the time he got to college, his feelings were harder to deny. He wasn’t sure if making music would become a profitable thing, but eventually, he and his dorm mates began meeting up to make beats and write songs, staying up until 7AM most days. It came to a point where Kelman’s father called him out for missing too many practices and he gave him an ultimatum: wrestling or music. He quit wrestling on the spot.

After graduation, Kelman was determined to further sharpen his songwriting skills. He reached out to a representative from Canadian music royalties program SOCAN who, through pandemic-mandated Zoom sessions, helped him understand just how difficult sharing your music on a large scale can be. Taking the initiative, Kelman formally created the Seago persona and put together his first EP, Lawn, as a proof of concept he could shop around to the industry. Lawn got its name from an idiom Kelman’s father used to say about judging people’s inner lives by their outer appearances, particularly with how well a house’s front lawn was manicured. “Driving around our neighborhood, he would nit-pick people’s lawns and talk about how they as people weren’t well put-together,” he says.

Though initially intended to be a highlight reel for labels, Lawn flexed the ingenuity of his lo-fi recordings—the vocals for “Frisbee,” one of the EP’s singles, were recorded entirely in his car on a USB mic. After meeting his now go-to producer Harper through a mutual friend, he was ready to take these ambitions to the next level on his follow up, Silver. Kelman’s musical wit has continued to pay off since Silver’s release, with songwriting opportunities, opening slots for artists like Mavi, Nemahsis, and Alemeda, and spotlights from Spotify and publications like Pigeons and Planes falling into his lap. But ultimately, Seago is grateful to be recognized, not just for fulfilling the dream he thought he’d have to leave behind, but as an artist no longer afraid to go after what he wants.