In the Jungle with Megan Lara Mae

Originally from the West Midlands Megan Lara Mae has been storming the alternative pop scene with her new single Jungle.

Travelling regularly from Brighton to West London she recorded her ideas on what it meant to walk an unconventional path. The song, a rebellion against conventionality and the pressure surrounding teens and twenty-somethings to choose a conventional job; and avoid the arts. Jungle was finally produced in January 2019 by Jack Wintermeyer and has now been released as of April this year. A perfect time for the release of such an encouraging song; it gives us some creative inspiration.

She’s been releasing singles since 2016, and her newest, Jungle, might be the best yet.

Why the name Jungle you may ask? Jungles are seen as wild and dense. You can easily get lost in them, like art. The song is all about owning the ‘process of being lost and navigating the density of the jungle with confidence, skill and humility’. A positive song with a positive message.

She’s thought about all aspects of the single’s design. The cover, in-keeping with others, uses colour to produce an effective experience. Her husband, Joel, helped this process by photoshopping an image of marble, taken on a trip to Kew Gardens, to purple,to create a melancholic tone and experience for us as listeners.

The single has captured more of the alternative grunge pop scene than previously and its themes emphasise rebellion, in a new way. She speaks about her own experience in her original plan to go to university to study Physics. The point being that us young people should not just follow what our peers and family expect us to do, but follow what we ourselves believe is best.

To conclude, we asked her, her musical inspirations. Jungle like the rest of her music has not been influenced by a particular artist per se but more broadly by the feisty pop genre.

Like the cover, she’s placed a huge emphasis on the effects of multimedia on our musical experience in the music video too. She did this, by contrasting neon with dark, melancholic colours, in costumes and light. The video was released on 12th May, so for anyone unfamiliar with her work, I wholeheartedly recommended you check her out.