Hailey Wojcik

Hailey Wojcik | Jealous Sees (Broadside Productions)
Written by Kaylen Hoffman
Thursday, 30 March 2006
The simple piano chords and percussion instruments further demonstrate Wojcik’s uncanny ability to make listeners both laugh and contemplate what she has to say.

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Within a symphony of ukuleles, literary works, xylophones, paleontology, and modern art, Hailey Wojcik has secured herself a spot as the newest genius of the music scene. Her music tastes like a playful version of college, one where the students erupt into harmonious songs about orange peels and pointless jobs. The simple piano chords and percussion instruments further demonstrate Wojcik’s uncanny ability to make listeners both laugh and contemplate what she has to say.
Wojcik was born and raised in Lansing, Mich., on a steady stream of solid musicians, such as Joni Mitchell, the Talking Heads, Jimmy Buffet, Jackson Brown, and various blues artists. Mitchell and Elvis Costello are among two of her bigger influences, along with indie rock and riot-girl music. With Jealous Sees as her fourth album, she is gaining more and more notice as a singer-songwriter across Michigan (she attends Western Michigan University as a creative-writing/journalism major) and is building up more attention across the country.

“Nabokov’s Butterfly,” the first track on this album, explores the literary works of the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, and how Wojcik’s significant other adores his work. “Dinosaur Bone” proclaims that Wojcik is ready for someone to love her: “I’m trying to be something like geology/or maybe like a dinosaur bone/and I won’t be alone/because some day you’ll really dig me.” With blessingly simple and earnest lyrics, Wojcik sings with the voice of an angel. Proving that even angels can have dirty mouths sometimes, on “F#Ó@ You (I Quit),” Wojcik describes her anger with self-centered coworkers and the satisfaction she feels after she has quit her job.

Wojcik sounds similar to a female version of Conor Oberst—with a ukulele. Her lyrics are brilliantly delightful and true, with small pieces of life mashed in with the truisms that she has composed. The ukulele work on the album sounds like she would get along well with Donovon Frankenreiter, and the piano style is reminiscent of Billy Joel. Her lyrics sound like Ani DiFranco has been quietly sedated and is, for once, calm about what she has to say.

The future of music lies in Wojcik’s talented hands. If only every artist was as honest as she is.


- Playback stl Magazine

The disc opens with two brilliant sounding, often forgotten instruments, the ukulele and xylophone. Complimented here by beautiful lyrics and the soft-spoken voice of Hailey Wojcik. On "Jealous Sees", she arrives with a sense of humor, delivering clever accounts of bad jobs (F**k You (I Quit)) and memories of past loves (Bad Modern Art). But don't think you're getting a singing comedian, Hailey shows off a sensitive, more insightful side on most of the other tracks. She has a great sense of how to tell a story and how to make original, catchy music. Hopefully, two things that will solidify her place for a long time in this giant world of music.
R.I.Y.L.: The Murmurs, Joanna Newsom - IndependentsOnly.com

Reviewer: Jason Morelyle

In this golden age of flash-in-the-pan pre-packaged pop and glorified karaoke love-ins like American Idol and its many orgiastic spin-offs, authenticity and honesty can go very a long way for a serious musician these days. Yet, as most of us know – or at least suspect – music producers can fabricate talent and manufacture stardom, but they can’t fake authenticity. Let’s say it again: you can’t fake authenticity. Hailey Wojcik’s brilliance is in her authenticity, and Jealous Sees, her fourth album to date, is eclectic, poignant, and best of all, honest.


Overall, Jealous Sees is refreshingly wry and intelligent. Wojcik, a self-described ‘Indie Singer-Songwriter’ from Lansing, Michigan, now based out of Kalamazoo, approaches her work without the hollow self-importance and smug derision endemic to the majority of so-called ‘independent’ music flooding the scene today. Reminiscent of Liz Phair and Joni Mitchell – and even at times Nick Drake and early Joshua Rouse – Jealous Sees is testament to a certain indie zeitgeist infusing the music scene today that speaks to stripped down honesty and the need for renewed originality.


With a voice that is at some points hauntingly graceful and at others slightly raw and off-key, Wojcik’s vocals set the pace for the project as whole; and her choice to use little more than ukulele, guitar and keyboard gives her music an uncomplicated, genuine feel. Yet, the engine of Jealous Sees is the poetic intensity of the lyrics and Wojcik’s obvious strength as a story teller. Redolent with metaphor, each song spins out a narrative that is in turn woven into the theme of the album as a whole: Jealous Sees is a meditation on the relationship of surfaces to depth - surface emotions, surface relationships, surface thoughts, surface actions vs. the problem of how to deepen things in a world that wants depth and profundity, but – ironically – embraces a decaying world of surfaces. The extended metaphor of archaeology underwriting a track like ‘Dinosaur Bone’ or the expectations of art and aesthetic dead ends of the catchy (and kitschy) ‘Bad Modern Art’ solidly point to just this issue.


Hailey Wojcik has been playing guitar since she was twelve years old, and released her first album, Hairy Woodchuck (2000), when she was fourteen, followed by Chimpanzee Politics (2001) and Girl’s State (2004). Writing her own material, and co-producing her recordings, Wojcik is an exceptionally gifted independent musician, and Jealous Sees will attract many new fans and hopefully propel to her towards the wider recognition she deserves. - Music-Critic.ca Online Magazine

Ukulele is one of those underappreciated string instruments that rarely finds its way into serious music. On “Jealous Sees”, Hailey Wojcik not only plays the ukulele but does it well with a bit of guitar and keyboards thrown in the mix. Her earnest lyrics are light and feathery but have a serious emotional underlining. As a singer/songwriter she often points more towards indie pop than your standard pop affairs and Wojcik’s sarcastic tone is rarely dry as she casts herself as the seminal hero of womanly songsmithing. Crisp and vibrant, Hailey’s lyrics are what sets her a notch above the competition.

- J-Sin - Smother Magazine

Reviewer: Steven Gottlieb

The number one influence listed on her YouTube homepage is Ramona Quimby, so it's no surprise to find aspiring singer-songwriter Hailey Wojcik traipsing around the city in an "I'm a big kid now" dinosaur costume and playing a toy keyboard in this homemade video for "Dinosaur Bones." Kind of sounds like a collaboration between The Moldy Peaches and Juliana Hatfield at a neighborhood piano recital. That's a good thing. - VideoStatic.com

Hailey Wojcik - Jealous Sees
What’s a music fan supposed to do with Hailey Wojcik? It’s a valid question since listeners will want to spread the word of this delicate poppy, folky, singer-songwriter to as many friends as possible. But how can that be done when the name Wojcik doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue?
This disc should appeal to a wide range of listeners. Influences like Liz Phair can be found in “Jealous Sees” and “I Don’t Get It.”… and of Rilo Kiley on “Orange Peels.” Frente’s style has certainly influenced “Bad Modern Art.” Filled to the brim with edgy, sarcastic, and sweet tales of life and love, this Michigan singer/songwriter is sure to be on the tip of everybody’s tongue… even if her name doesn’t exactly roll off it.
(Jason Janik)
- Harder Beat Magazine

Indie-O-Saurus

In a green dino suit with a colorful keyboard slung over her shoulder, singer-songwrit er Hailey Wojcik cutens up the streets of Brooklyn (and the indie music scene).
- YouTube.com Music Editor, Michele Ktel

Hailey Wojcik is disturbingly hilarious. With lines like “Let’s get hit over the head, just not so hard that we’re dead, but so hard we forget all the things that we’ve said,” her break-up songs are the perfect medicine for any downtrodden lover. In her song “Anglerfish” she sweetly sings, “I hope it doesn’t work, I hope you make each other as miserable as you made me. I hope it blows up in your face” and then later wishes syphilis on her partner. She obviously has no qualms about speaking her mind, and that’s exactly what makes her so great — she says things that most people are afraid to say or admit they feel. Her honesty and violent-yet-comical imagery turns her songs into stories.

Wojcik was a creative writing major at school in Michigan which probably explains this unique poetic talent. She even lists JD Salinger as one of her greatest influences, and judging by her unabashedly candid lyrics, this comes at no surprise. In her recently released mini-documentary about making her latest album Diorama titled “Hailey Wojcik: Inside The Diorama” she cites science and anatomy as one of her greatest influences — after all she is the daughter of zookeepers.


Hailey recently was featured on the homepage of MTV.com competing for the mtvU Video Of The Week and is currently competing in the Lilith Local Talent Search to win a chance to perform at Lilith 2010. Check out her latest release right here on iTunes and her series of self-produced music videos here on her YouTube page!
- OurStage

The unlikely combination of ukulele and xylophone kick things off on the latest release from Michigan native Hailey Wojcik. "Don't tell me how much you admire the writing of/ The Russian author Vladimir Nabokov" she sings in "Nabokov's Butterfly," highlighting the unlikely rhyme with a voice as relaxed as a summer day—somewhere between Liz Phair and Nick Drake.
The instrumentation remains refreshingly unique throughout the entire album. "Dinosaur Bone" utilizes only a sparse piano to back-layered vocals which promise that "someday you'll really dig me." The title track combines a chordless guitar line with percussion that sounds like bamboo poles on a marble floor. "Just because I'm prettier and better in the sack, just because you think you're sure that you don't want her back, doesn't mean that I can't be a jealous maniac." Really great stuff; check it out for yourself.
- Performing Songwriter magazine

The history of dioramas is steeped in theatre, drama, and storytelling, so it is only fitting that the new album by Brooklyn-based musician, Hailey Wojcik, is called just that. The eleven tracks that comprise the self-released, “Diorama,” are each their own little three-dimensional story, filled with vivid imagery and a cast of characters full of angst and jealousy and chaos and misfortune and separation, yet through the talent of Ms. Wojcik’s gifts, are told with humor and irony and a playfulness that shines with clever, often literary, wordplay and unexpected pointedness.
Masterfully produced by Drawing Number One’s Dan Romer (Ingrid Michaelson, Jenny Owen Youngs, Bess Rogers), each song has a slightly different feel, whether country-tinged (“Samsa Morning,” “Model Aeroplane”), Atari-blipped electronica (“Raised in a Zoo”), dark drum-and-synth laden moodiness (“Pumpkinteeth”), catchy guitar-based pop (“Imaginary Friends with Benefits”), quirky indie pop (“Amnesia”) or more straight-forward pop (“Anglerfish”). Despite the variety of sounds and moods and stories, however, the single, unifying, and most satisfying aspect of the album is Ms. Wojcik voice. With skills obviously honed over many years, she clearly recognizes the importance of using her voice as its own instrument, and is capable of a full range of expressions depending on the story she is telling.
My initial introduction to Ms. Wojcik’s music was through her video to “Pumpkinteeth,” a song I completely loved from the outset. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was how much I would love the rest of the album even more than that song. After close to two dozen listens, “Diorama” continues to reveal itself and still surprises. The three stand-out tracks for me, personally, are the one-two-three punch of “Anglerfish,” “Amnesia,” and “Raised in a Zoo.” And just the fact that those are tracks 7, 8 and 9 shows how solid the album is throughout.

A subversive, literary songstress and gifted storyteller, Wojcik’s “Diorama” is like slapping a guitar around Regina Spektor’s neck and throwing her in a blender to bloody her up a little bit– all with a tongue placed firmly in cheek. The result? A calling-card of an album that announces a new star of the indie music scene.

TRACK-BY-TRACK BREAKDOWN:

1. Holden Caulfield – Coming right out of the gate displaying her expressive, sometimes gritty, punk-influenced vocals that yearn and plead, Ms. Wojcik introduces us not only to her skilled guitar work with the song’s insistent, bass-heavy chords, her literary references begin, as well. The song’s title is derived from the protagonist in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. “You made me feel like Holden Caulfield, and you acted like such a phony. Still, I wish you’d phone me. Phone me.”

2. Luck – Ms. Wojcik immediately slows it down with the mid-tempo and much more light-hearted pop gem, “Luck,” where she plays her 3-stringed strumstick while accompanied softly by a tuba, trumpet and accordian. Here, she’s a luck-seeking whisker collector, trying to strike it rich only to realize her efforts are in vain.

3. Samsa Morning – Her knack for rhymes and wordplay come right into the forefront on this second song whose title references a work of literature, Gregor Samsa being the character who transforms from a salesman to an insect in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The opening lines of the song say it all: “My idiotic, vapid, pathological crush on you is masochistic– massively unrealistic, too.” Its off-kilter lyrics about nightmares juxtapose the fun, ’50s doo-wop touch of “shoo bops” during the chorus. It’s an absolute pleasure to behold.

4. Pumpkinteeth – Pulsing drums and unsettling, distorted keyboards begin this song, which sounds like nothing else on the album. Like a grimier, dirtier Bat for Lashes, the vibe is undeniably addictive. The vocals start with one of the very best opening lines of any song in recent memory, “I don’t know how many mushrooms I’d have to eat to find you attractive. I don’t know, what does your Saturday look like? Let’s find out.” Brilliant. This is a song that can haunt even your most pleasant, sunny, summer days. It’s infinitely spooky and endlessly delicious.

5. Good Friday – Immediately following up an intense horror story of a song with the jubilant, poppy “Good Friday” takes an enormous amount of talent and confidence and Ms. Wojcik pulls it off beautifully. With a tone reminiscent of The Cure’s “Catch,” which on their “Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me” album also followed an intensely dark song (“Kiss”), “Good Friday” is fun and light with a wonderfully memorable pop hook.

6. Imaginary Friends with Benefits – Just the title alone reveals so much about Ms. Wojcik’s sensibilities. An upbeat, sing-a-long, clap-along type of electric guitar-based ditty with a foot deeply ensconcend in a 1950s vibe, the musical happiness is juxtaposed, lyrically, by a story of emotional vacancy.

7. Anglerfish – By far my favorite song o - tittleTunes.com

Hailey Wojcik writes the best break-up songs

Last week I told you about Hailey Wojcik's hilariously awesome track "Anglerfish," with lyrics like "I hope it doesn't work, I hope you make each other as miserable as you made me. I hope it blows up in your face." But Hailey isn't a one-trick pony — the New York-based singer/songwriter has just released Diorama, a melodic multi-instrumental pop album of ridiculously bright tunes about relationships with girls, boys, friends and family. Every song is relatable and creatively penned, and it doesn't hurt that it was produced by Dan Romer who has also worked with Jenny Owen Youngs and Ingrid Michaelson.
Hailey is currently planning a U.S. tour and making a video for every song on the album, each featuring a diorama she made for that song. You can watch the first one, for the song "Pumpkinteeth," on her website.

AfterEllen.com: How long have you been working on the songs that ended up on Diorama?

Hailey Wojcik: Some were written during the recording process, within the past year, but most were written over the last two years. I wrote about half of them before I moved out to New York, and have just been adding to that since then.

AE: Are most of your songs autobiographical?

HW: In general I am an autobiographical, if hyperbolic, songwriter. I would like to try writing some more "fictional" songs, but for now they are mostly inspired by real life. Usually though, I'm abstracting something that has happened, conflating it with other things I've heard or seen, and trying to synthesize it into something interesting that is hopefully relatable but not too transparent.

AE: "Anglerfish" is probably the only obvious song about another girl on the album — are others inspired by relationships with women?

HW:Yes, the songs about relationships are about ladies. Although many of my songs are not about relationships - at least not romantic ones. For instance "Holden Caulfield" is about friends; "Luck," "Pumpkinteeth," and "Raised in a Zoo" are sort of about me, and who I am in relation to the world and my experience.
AE: How do you identify? Have you felt any pressure to not be out for your career?

HW:I identify as queer. I have personally not really felt pressure to not be out, per se, but I definitely am close to some people who are not out for this reason. The way I see it, you only really have two choices in this situation: You can either be a gay musician or a closeted gay musician — you can't choose to be straight, and I prefer honesty. I think most listeners do, too.

I understand the argument about not wanting to be ghettoized or stereotyped as an artist — I certainly do not want this for myself — but I think that as long as the only artists who are willing to come out are those who do fit these stereotypes, those stereotypes will prevail. If you know who you are, people can't put you in a box, and I like to think I know who I am.

There is a John Waters quote I love about identifying with people who are "gaily incorrect in this movement . . . minorities who don't fit in with their own minority." I think I'm pretty much a weirdo in general, but I'm not going to let that make me feel like I can't be honest about things.

AE: What's your songwriting process like with all of the different instruments you use? How do you adapt them for the live show?

HW:I am a bit ADD with instrumentation I think. I write on guitar, ukulele, strumstick and piano, though guitar is my primary instrument for writing and performing. I get bored with just playing that for a whole show though, so my band likes to mix things up when we play live (people switching instruments, etc.). I just bang on a pot and sing when we do "Pumpkinteeth" live, for example, which is fun. I like to try and incorporate most of the instrumentation from the record (except, sadly, for the marimba, for logistical reasons) in the live show.

Check out Hailey's MySpace for up to date info on her performance dates and new videos. - Trish Bendix, AfterEllen.com