Stream: Jessie Payo, ‘I Love to Be Loved’

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Jessie Payo

Singer Jessie Payo has been a dynamic presence fronting L.A. rockers the Pom Poms and in the Americana duo Pretty Polly with Leeann Skoda. Payo’s voice is that of a classic diva, bold enough to carry a rocker, warm and elegant enough to fuel a torch song.

Payo’s “accidental” new solo single “I Love to Be Loved” falls in the latter category, recalling those halcyon pre-Autotune days when vocalists could shape a song. Produced by Ben Tolliday (Lord Huron, Hozier, Alanis Morissette) and drenched in sweeping strings, the ’60s-style ballad reflects Payo’s reverence for Lee Hazlewood and her love for that era’s cinema.

And we can thank the pandemic for its arrival, as Payo says: “This single was not something that was planned, but, you know … end of times. Anything goes.”

Payo was inspired to make the song after a night at Echo Park’s Bar Henry, where L.A. songwriter-guitarist Brett Farkas was DJing old vinyl. “He put on an old Nancy Sinatra song and mentioned that we should do a song like Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood. He turned to his friend Ben Tolliday and said, ‘Well this is the guy to do it,’” Payo recalls. “We made the classic Los Angeles cocktail plans for the future of actually turning out something like this. Determined to not be the stereotype of “we gotta make it happen, man” then not execute, weeks later I wrote the song in a day, and we cut the guitar and vocals live for Tolliday’s ‘Single Shot’ video series. After that, everything else fell into place with Tolliday and I building on top of the track with timpani and bass in a basement and live strings at Whispering Pines studio.

“We delivered the answer to my dream of a honey-soaked, late-’60s cinematic ballad. I like making soundtracks to the movies in my mind, and this takes me through a summer where I’ve spent many a day escaping alone to the desert. I think of it as a love song to myself as opposed to a lover. This is a delicious feeling I’ve come to grow into being forced into a much-needed sweet solitude.”

||| Stream: “I Love to Be Loved”