Tobias Jesso Jr. on manifesting his songwriting career and collaboration with Adele

Tobias Jesso Jr. was only 14 or 15 when he knew his path in life was to become a professional songwriter. He vividly remembers browsing the vegetable section of a grocery store when Tracy Chapman's song Give Me One Reason started playing over the sound system.

"There was a part of me that had a weird feeling like I had written that song," the Grammy-winning Canadian musician tells Q's Tom Power. "It sort of aligned with my soul in a way … like I put myself, my imagination, into the role of being the songwriter of this song."

After that, it became a habit for Jesso Jr. to imagine himself as the writer and singer of any song he liked. Reflecting on it now, he calls it "a manifestation tool."

"It's really funny because I always talk about manifestation being a huge factor of me getting here," he says. "I think it was just a natural progression from my imagination to reality, and I'm very thankful."

Last month, Jesso Jr. was honoured with the international achievement award at the SOCAN Awards, recognizing his contributions in songwriting. He's become one of pop music's most in-demand songwriters, penning hits for artists like Adele, Harry Styles and Dua Lipa.

His first session as a professional songwriter was working with Adele on her 2015 song When We Were Young — but that doesn't mean success came easily for him. "A lot of people will go, 'Yeah, that seems pretty easy,'" he says. "'You worked with Adele. That was your first gig. How lucky are you?' But it kind of negates the 15 years of trying with no success and having nothing."

In 2008, Jesso Jr. relocated from Vancouver to Los Angeles to pursue his music dream. He played backup bass for a pop singer, but it didn't work out. Then, his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer (she's since recovered), he went through a tough breakup, suffered an injury from a hit and run that left him hospitalized, and overstayed his visa. At that point, he decided it was time to go home.

"It was like a month-long period of just the worst luck imaginable that made it actually impossible to keep living [in L.A.]," he says. "At the time, it was like everything was directing me right back home, and so I just went with it."

The experience was extremely humbling for Jesso Jr., who felt some shame and embarrassment at having failed to achieve his dreams. But he didn't stop songwriting. He took up the piano, which he says became an obsession for him that ultimately changed the way he approached music. On his 27th birthday, he wrote Just a Dream, which started him on a path of writing a song every day for a month and half, and recording those songs as demos.

Jesso Jr. sent those demos to a record producer who invited him to come down to California, and in 2015, he released his critically acclaimed debut album, Goon, which was named one of the best breakout albums of the year. Unfortunately, the life of a touring artist wasn't a positive experience for him and almost took him to his breaking point. He had to be "close to blackout drunk" to deal with his stage fright and he hated the pressure of being in the spotlight. For the second time, he had to consider moving back home.

"All of this stuff just kind of weighed on me where I was like, 'I feel like a fraud, but really, all I want is to write songs. Is there any job that I could do that is just that part of it? Because all this other stuff I'm just not very good at.'"

But the universe works in truly mysterious ways, as it was around that time that Adele's manager reached out to ask if he'd ever be interested in collaborating with her. The international superstar was impressed with his work as an artist, but wasn't sure if he'd want to work with her as a songwriter.

"My manager was like, 'This is all he wants to do,'" Jesso Jr. recalls. "It was a big, big morale booster and I was like, 'Great, maybe I'm not moving home after all.'"

In his conversation with Power, Jesso Jr. also broke the news that he'll be releasing "Goon 2," a follow-up to his one and only album, Goon, sometime next year. "I just felt more prepared to deal with the things that I wasn't prepared to deal with in the beginning," he says.

The full interview with Tobias Jesso Jr. is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. He talks more about striking out in L.A., stepping away from the spotlight and working with Adele. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Tobias Jesso Jr. produced by Cora Nijhawan.