BEING CLASSICALLY trained has never exactly been a badge of honor in the world of popular music (unless you’re in an early ’70s prog rock band). The reality that music is ultimately a learned skill—or science, rather—challenges our mythologized perception of the artist as a solitary, tortured soul, imbued at birth by some higher power with this fake shit we call talent.
Jordan Bagnall, the singer and songwriter behind Portland pop project My Body, is classically trained and proud of it: “I started playing piano when I was seven, and then the viola in school until college, and I have this short list of things I’ve picked up along the way,” she says. “For me, it’s like I learned another language that I never really stopped using.”
Bagnall’s compositions prove that possessing a classical “vocabulary” is virtually always an asset, even when you’re working in a different idiom. My Body makes indelible, heavily synthesized music that seems primed for commercial success. But the project’s deceptively catchy pop songs are spritzed with hidden complexities stemming from Bagnall’s vast knowledge of her craft; her dense but never overpowering vocal overdubs are anchored by erratic drum loops and rapid keyboard arpeggios, alluding to a self-conscious virtuosity simmering beneath the radio-ready glaze.