As a longtime songwriter, artist and musical theater enthusiast, JC Chasez knows the power of a good story that strikes an emotional chord.
That's why he was floored when his friend and Golden Globe-winning musician Jimmy Harry showed him a stage adaptation of Mary Shelly. Frankenstein by his late mother, playwright Barbara Field. “What I found really attractive and very inspiring about the track is her ability to make it more direct and more accessible in terms of emotion,” says the *NSYNC star. Bulletin board. “It wasn't just about a big monster and the kind of growling that I first got the impression of in the movies and when I read Frankenstein. I guess I was just new and didn't really have the time to settle in and really dig into the material. Recently, I was able to spend some time with the material and really get a good read and understand how emotional it was.”
From there, Chasez and Harry took the story's themes of love, responsibility, loss and the human condition and channeled them into a major creative project: a 16-track musical theater album titled Playing with Firewhich adds to Fields' stage adaptation originally being written as a play rather than a musical. “At first I was a little worried. It's like starting to mess with some family,” Chasez says with a laugh, musically building on Harry's mother's work.
Chasez broke those nerves soon enough, as Playing with Fire is, in many ways, the pinnacle of the superstar's creative talents. In addition to writing the project, Chasez also lends his vocals to a number of tracks Playing with Firealongside singers Cardamon Rozzi and Lily Elise. The album marks his first major musical project since his 2004 solo album, Schizophrenic. “Playing with Fire it touches almost everything I like,” he happily admits. “I love a good sci-fi movie so you get that aspect and I love how music can make you so emotional in a different way. Obviously, I love pop music, so I love the fact that you can sing and dance together in musical theater. It was just a great opportunity to bring all these things that I really enjoyed together in one space.”
Plus, he was pleasantly surprised at how a centuries-old story touches on themes that still exist today, contributing to how unifying the human experience is — even if Frankenstein's monster isn't human, per se. “Shelly communicated these points hundreds of years ago that we still struggle with today. I was just going, “How did you know?” How did he write something so appropriate for now and then? So how did Barbara Fields make it so accessible to me? I felt like I had a direct line to the emotions that Shelly was trying to convey because of the way Barbara framed it.”
He continued, “When we started writing, we thought it was about humanity and technology and the dangers and the morality of 'Just because you can create something, can't you?' We're still dealing with all of that for questions about dealing with different technologies and artificial intelligence and all that. We were talking about the idea, but we became interested in the way Barbara framed it, as a conversation between the creator and his creation, which we framed as a conversation between a father and son to get to the bottom of their issues, the denials them, their neglect and the consequences of these things”.
Finally, Playing with Fire it's a story of growth and real connection, and in line with that, Chasez has ambitions for the project to reach as many people as possible. “This is the start of a journey to build something that hopefully ends up being a stage where people can sing live every night and communicate with the audience,” he says. “That's why this technology conversation is so timely now. I love the fact that real people will be singing these songs. I want it to connect with humanity.”
Playing with Fire out via Center Stage Records on October 25th.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/jc-chasez-interview-frankenstein-inspired-concept-album-playing-with-fire-1235769445/