Independent artist Katie Noir has release a fresh new side of herself on her newest single, I Prefer Jason, after taking listeners on an ambitious tour of her deeply personal world on her debut album What Is Unseen Still Exists. The song, the first in her upcoming release What Is Unseen Still Exists – The Aftermath EP, provides a bit more sunshine to her artistry, but adheres to her essence of honesty as a songwriter. The theme song is a comedic fictional celebrity marriage, bringing together wit, satire and witty storytelling to champion authenticity over the veneer of perfection. Under the jokes lies a profound statement on the appearance of authentic personality and warmth in unlikely places.
Katie Noir is continuing to influence every facet of her creative work, as an independent writer, producer and storyteller. Her music is a hybrid of alternative, hip-hop, electronic, R&B, spoken word and cinematic storytelling—it’s personal, it’s imaginative. The Aftermath EP is an album that delves into the aftermath of private moments becoming public, traversing humor, grief, friendship, loyalty, and introspection.
In this conversation, Katie shares the inspiration for I Prefer Jason, the creative freedom propelling her work, and why storytelling continues to be her soul at the core of all her creations.
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Congratulations on the release of “I Prefer Jason.” As the first single from What Is Unseen Still Exists – The Aftermath EP, why did you feel this was the right song to introduce the next chapter of your story?
Thank you! The first album opened with ‘Bitches’ Road,’ which immediately introduced the more intense, defensive and emotionally serious side of Katie Noir. With The Aftermath EP, I wanted the first single to reveal something different before listeners entered the heavier parts of the story.
‘I Prefer Jason’ shows my humour, sarcasm and tendency to become distracted by the least expected person in the room. It is playful, deliberately ridiculous and much lighter on the surface than many of the songs surrounding it. I liked the idea of beginning this chapter with a smile, because The Aftermath EP eventually becomes very vulnerable and quite dark.
At the same time, the song still fits the larger Katie Noir world. Beneath the celebrity-wedding joke, it is really about being more interested in personality, warmth and authenticity than in polished perfection. So it felt like the right introduction, funny enough to surprise people, but still connected to the values and perspective behind the rest of my music.
Your debut album explored deeply personal themes, but “I Prefer Jason” takes a humorous and theatrical approach. What inspired you to use comedy as the entry point for this new project?
I actually came up with the idea while watching videos from the wedding. Everything looked so polished and glamorous, and then Jason appeared looking completely unimpressed by the whole spectacle. That contrast immediately made me laugh.
I think I am simply the kind of girl who is more impressed by the person who seems least interested in impressing anyone. Jason felt relaxed, funny and completely himself, while everything around him looked perfectly arranged. That gave me the entire personality of the song.
Comedy felt like the right entry point because it allowed me to show another side of Katie Noir. The first album carried a lot of emotional weight, so I wanted this new chapter to begin with something theatrical, playful and a little absurd. But even beneath the joke, the song still reflects something genuine about me, I am usually drawn more to authenticity, warmth and humour than to polished perfection.
The song is built around a fictional celebrity wedding where the narrator unexpectedly becomes more interested in Jason than the main event. How did this playful concept come together, and what made it such a fun story to tell?
Once I had the basic idea, the fun came from exaggerating it into a full fictional scene. Instead of writing only one joke about Jason being more interesting than the wedding, I imagined the whole event through the narrator’s distracted perspective. The flowers are perfect, the cameras are ready, Taylor and Travis are having this huge romantic moment and she keeps noticing Jason doing something completely ordinary.
From there, the song became a series of contrasts. Travis represents the polished main event, while Jason feels like the person who would spike the punch, carry the beer and wonder why the wedding could not have been an email. The more glamorous the setting became, the funnier it was that the narrator remained focused on the least glamorous person there.
I also enjoyed building little side jokes into the world, including the Deadpool and group-chat line, because it made the song feel more like a comedy scene than a conventional love song. The narrator knows her priorities are ridiculous, but she commits to them completely. That theatrical seriousness about something so absurd is what made the story especially fun to write.
You describe the song as affectionate satire rather than a personal attack. How do you strike the balance between humor, storytelling, and making sure the message stays light-hearted?
The balance comes from making the narrator part of the joke. I am not standing outside the scene judging everyone. I am the person completely losing focus at somebody else’s wedding and treating that ridiculous distraction as though it were a serious emotional revelation.
I also make sure the humour comes from exaggeration and contrast rather than cruelty. Taylor and Travis are never presented as bad or unlikeable. The wedding is beautiful, Travis is impressive and Jason is not being mocked either. The comedy comes from the fact that, despite all of that glamour, the narrator is still more fascinated by the person who appears least concerned with performing for the cameras.
That is usually my rule with satire, the joke should feel playful enough that the people involved could laugh with it. I prefer absurd observations, self-awareness and theatrical overreaction over trying to humiliate someone. The song is teasing the spectacle, but it is also teasing me for having such inconvenient priorities.
The Aftermath EP promises to move between vulnerability, grief, friendship, defiance, dark humor, and social observation. How does “I Prefer Jason” reflect the wider emotional range listeners can expect from the project?
‘I Prefer Jason’ shows that The Aftermath EP is not emotionally one-note. The project contains some of my most vulnerable and painful writing, but it also leaves room for absurdity, sarcasm and moments where life is simply funny.
That contrast is important to me because real emotional life rarely stays inside one genre. You can be grieving one day, defending someone you love the next, questioning yourself at three in the morning and then suddenly become completely distracted by Jason at a celebrity wedding. All of those reactions can belong to the same person.
The song represents the lighter and more theatrical side of the EP, but it still connects to the wider themes. It observes public spectacle, chooses authenticity over polished perfection and uses humour as a way of revealing something genuine about the narrator. Later songs explore friendship, betrayal, loyalty, grief and the cost of turning private pain into art much more directly.
So ‘I Prefer Jason’ is almost like the EP opening the door with a joke before showing everything else hidden behind it. It tells listeners that the next chapter can make them laugh, but it is not promising that they will stay comfortable.
Your music often feels like one connected universe rather than a collection of separate songs. How important is storytelling when you’re writing, and how does this single expand the world you first introduced on your debut album?
Storytelling is at the centre of everything I write. I rarely see a song as an isolated moment. Each one belongs somewhere inside a larger emotional sequence and the meaning often becomes clearer when listeners notice what happened before it and what follows afterward.
The debut album introduced my inner world through twenty-three songs. It followed friendship, fear, student life, emotional collapse, the sisterhood with Lisa, Sara and Lexi. Mia becoming my Lighthouse and finally the realization that music was the language connecting everything. It ended with ‘Until Soon,’ which was already a promise that the story had not finished.
The Aftermath EP begins with the consequences of making that private world public. The songs respond to distribution, visibility, changing relationships, loyalty, grief and the pressure of turning painful experiences into something other people can use.
‘I Prefer Jason’ expands that universe by showing that Katie Noir is not only the person writing from hospital corridors, sleepless nights or emotional crises. She is also the girl watching a glamorous celebrity wedding, becoming distracted by the least polished person there and building an entire song around that inconvenient observation. It adds comedy and public spectacle to the world without leaving its central values behind. Even inside the joke, I am still choosing personality over performance and authenticity over perfection. So the song opens a new room in the same universe rather than creating a completely separate one.
As an independent artist who writes, produces, and tells your own stories, how much creative freedom has that given you when developing a project as ambitious as The Aftermath EP?
Creative freedom is probably the main reason a project like The Aftermath EP could exist in this form at all. Because I write, produce and shape the larger story myself, I do not have to reduce an idea until it fits somebody else’s expectations of what a debut artist should release.
After completing a twenty-three-track album, the conventional advice would probably have been to slow down, choose only a few songs and make everything easier to market. Instead, I followed what was actually happening. The first album had entered the world, new experiences were already changing its meaning and fifteen more songs began forming almost immediately. I could respond while those emotions were still alive.
That independence also allows me to move between very different tones without asking permission. I can place a song as playful as ‘I Prefer Jason’ beside songs about grief, betrayal, friendship, bureaucracy or emotional exhaustion because the connection is the narrator and the story, not one fixed genre or mood.
Of course, complete freedom also means complete responsibility. There is no large team deciding when something is finished, how the songs should connect or whether an idea is too strange. I have to trust my own instincts, sometimes obsessively. But that is also what makes the project feel honest. The Aftermath EP was not designed by committee. It grew directly from what happened after the first album and independence allowed me to preserve all of its contradictions rather than smoothing them away.
Your sound blends alternative pop, hip-hop, electronic music, R&B, spoken word, and cinematic storytelling. How did those influences shape the personality and atmosphere of “I Prefer Jason”?
Those influences gave the song permission to behave almost like a miniature scene rather than a traditional pop song. The alternative-pop side keeps it catchy and accessible, but the hip-hop influence shapes the rhythm of the writing, especially the punchlines, the timing and the way each comparison builds on the last one.
The spoken-word and cinematic elements were especially important because the narrator is not simply singing about attraction. She is observing an event in real time, getting increasingly distracted and almost talking herself into a conclusion she did not expect. I wanted the listener to see the wedding, the cameras, the polished atmosphere and then feel the focus shift every time Jason appears.
The electronic and R&B elements help keep the production playful and stylish rather than turning it into pure comedy music. The song still needed to feel like part of the Katie Noir universe, not like a novelty track. So the humour sits inside a polished, theatrical atmosphere, while the phrasing remains sharp and conversational.
That mixture reflects how I naturally write. I like songs where the beat can carry confidence, the lyrics can deliver jokes and the overall production still feels cinematic enough to create a world around them. ‘I Prefer Jason’ needed all three, rhythm, personality and a scene the listener could immediately enter.
The title What Is Unseen Still Exists – The Aftermath EP suggests you’re exploring what happens after deeply personal thoughts become public through music. What have you discovered about yourself since releasing your debut album?
I discovered that releasing personal music does not make the feelings feel less private. In some ways, it makes them more vulnerable. While I was writing the debut album, the songs still lived inside a small world that I could control. Once they were public, strangers could enter those memories, interpret them and sometimes understand parts of me that I had never explained directly.
I also learned that visibility is not the same as being understood. More listeners, messages and opportunities can feel exciting, but they can also bring pressure, unsolicited advice and people who are more interested in what the project might become than in the person creating it. That forced me to think much more carefully about trust, privacy and which relationships remain genuine when something begins to grow. At the same time, I discovered that I am more ambitious and resilient than I had believed. I managed to build and release a twenty-three-track album independently, then continued writing because the story was genuinely still happening. I learned that I can move through fear, bureaucracy, disappointment and self-doubt without abandoning the work.
Perhaps the most difficult discovery was that I am very good at turning pain into something useful for other people, but not always as good at taking care of myself while doing it. The Aftermath EP explores that tension honestly. Katie Noir became more visible, more confident and more complete as an artist, while the private person behind her had to ask whether she was giving too much of herself away. So since releasing the album, I have discovered both strength and responsibility. I know more clearly why I create, but I also understand that protecting the person behind the music is just as important as protecting the songs.
For someone hearing “I Prefer Jason” before listening to the rest of The Aftermath EP, what do you hope they take away from the song, and what are you most excited for them to experience when the full project arrives?
I hope people take away that ‘I Prefer Jason’ is playful, but not disconnected from the rest of who I am as an artist. It shows my humour, my love of character-driven storytelling and my tendency to notice the person who seems least interested in performing for everyone else. I would love listeners to laugh, but also to recognize the small truth beneath the joke, authenticity often leaves a stronger impression than perfection.
What excites me most about the full project is that this song is only one side of the journey. The Aftermath EP moves through vulnerability, grief, friendship, loyalty, anger, self-reflection and the strange consequences of turning private experiences into public music. It continues the world I introduced with What Is Unseen Still Exists, but it also changes how parts of that first album are understood.
I love writing beyond the songs themselves, so I have also created companion essays and complete lyric collections that explore my background, the people behind the music and the connections between the tracks. For me, the songs, lyrics and essays are all parts of the same story. Listeners can enter through a funny single like ‘I Prefer Jason,’ then gradually discover the much larger emotional universe surrounding it. I am most excited for people to experience that full movement from humour into increasingly personal territory and to decide which part of the journey speaks to them most.
Thank you so much for such thoughtful questions and for giving me the space to explain the project properly. I really enjoyed this interview and I hope this is not the last time our paths meet.
