Janelle Kroll: ‘I Feel Like I Really Found My Voice’
Musician Janelle Kroll took the stage at Lollapalooza on Saturday. (Photo: Nathan Podshadley/Instagram)
When Janelle Kroll’s song “Sunny Days” premiered on Bullett Magazine’s site back in February it quickly catapulted to the top 10 on Spotify’s U.S. Viral Chart. This weekend she took her career to the next level, performing on the BMI stage at Lollapalooza — something that has been a dream of the Chicago native’s for quite some time.
Growing up, Kroll looked up to Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and began writing music in college. “It takes a lot of soul searching and hard work to go from ‘Hey, I can sing’ and ‘I can write a song’ to actually making developed records that are powerful,” says Kroll. She earned her stripes while on tour with Big Data, singing lead vocals on their first tour in 2014, and followed up the release of “Sunny Days” with her first EP, “Rows.” This week, Kroll released her own version of Joni Mitchell’s “Down to You (My Confidant)” with producer TYLERxCORDY. “It’s been a lot of trial and error and I feel like I really found my voice,” she says.
On stage and off, Kroll radiates confidence and style. “It’s all about feeling good in your skin and also not feeling like you have to stay too closely to any one image, because identity is fluid,” she says. “We’re beautiful. You have to embrace your beauty first and foremost before the makeup. Accentuate what you’ve got and just wear what makes you feel good.”
In the next few months, be on the look out for a whole lot more music from Kroll, who has two dance records on the horizon. “The big take away from this year was I just had to go with everything and not look back.”
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