How singer Jamie Fine became 'unforgivably' herself after fame got to her

Jamie Fine's life looked great in 2018. Her musical duo, Elijah Woods x Jamie Fine, won the Canadian singing competition The Launch and their single from the show, Ain't Easy, constantly played on Canadian radio.

Yet the Ottawa-born musician wasn't enjoying her success. She had reservations about going on The Launch, but her manager at the time told her that the show would be a fast-track to stardom — which was true. 

"The very real things that I was worried about happening after, virtually all of them ended up happening," she tells Q's Tom Power.

After the show, Fine and Woods were locked into a recording deal with people they didn't know well. Fine had voiced her concern early on about this because she didn't know if they would align on their music in the future — and they didn't. 

Eventually, she walked away from the music industry. She left behind her manager and Woods, who wanted to pursue a different creative path. 

"I lost my way during the years that I worked with that team," she says. "I started performing. But that's not who I am. I've never had to perform in my life because I'm unforgivably me."

Fine did five years of "intense" psychoanalysis to find herself again. She also worked through the grief that came with no longer working with Woods and her manager, both of whom she had deeply cared about.

Now, Fine has returned to the limelight with if this is it…, her sophomore solo EP. But this time, she says she's bringing her full self to the project, particularly with her label. 

"They don't try to change me," she says. "They know that I don't care about money.… I want to achieve something with my music."

Even Fine's approach to social media stems from her desire for connection, rather than using it as a marketing tool. The video for If Anything's Left, a single off her new EP, went viral on TikTok and has garnered more than 17 millions streams on Spotify. 

Many musicians would keep churning out content, trying to make more viral hits, but Fine wanted to connect with her fans offline. The song had done particularly well in South Africa, so she told her band the plan. 

"I had said, 'We're getting our ass to South Africa,'" she says. "We're not doing this thing where we blow up in a country and we say, 'Thank you so much.'"

Fine played a concert in Johannesburg at the Beef Stock Rock Fest where 4,500 people showed up, singing along to If Anything's Left, as well as many of her other songs.

"We got on stage and I've never had that feeling in my life," she says. "It's everything that I've been chasing."

After seeing the success of going with her gut, Fine won't be straying from herself again — and cautions others against it.

"The lesson is that it's not worth it," Fine says. "You will wake up — whether it's a day from now or 17 years from now — and you will learn the lesson on your own at some point."

The full interview with Jamie Fine is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Jamie Fine produced by Vanessa Nigro.