NEW Joan Jett album coming SOON

Joan confirmed in a February interview with The New Zealand Herald that The Blackhearts’ new album will be out this year! I’ve heard rumors of March, but they haven’t announced an official release date yet. Crossing all of my fingers and toes that it’s true, though (as soon as I’m done typing this). 🙂

She’s set to release her 12th studio album this year, her first since 2006, having been working up songs during recent tours. They’ve been recording in LA and New York, and Jett is enthusiastic about the songs, some of which they’ll perform at their Auckland show.

“This album probably has some of my own perspective of what I can see going on in society. There’s a song called Reality Mentality, which is a little self-explanatory, with the explosion of reality TV and how real is it, and people playing up for cameras, people wanting to be a star at any cost, so it’s just about taking note of that, not necessarily good or bad, just saying that’s who we are. And there’s one called TMI, shorthand for ‘too much information’, about how everybody goes online and shares everything about everyone.”

There’s also a more serious side to the album. Jett lost both her parents during the past two years, which triggered a couple of different songs – one called Hard To Grow Up (“about realising you have to take responsibility”) and another, Fragile (“you know how we can be so strong, yet things can still be right on the point of breaking”). And there’s also a more straight-up love song called Any Weather, which she wrote with Dave Grohl.