Halifax singer Jody Upshaw finds Euphoria through HBO exposure

The Lower Sackville singer has seen a surge of interest since her song ‘Straight Shooter’ was featured on the second season of HBO’s hit show, ‘Euphoria’

CITYnews halifax \ Steve Gow

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A Halifax singer’s hit tune from 2018 has been surging back into the spotlight.

18-year-old Jody Upshaw released Straight Shooter nearly four years ago but the pop song has been resurrected after being included in the hit HBO drama Euphoria.

Featured in a key scene during the first episode of the hit show’s second season earlier this month, Straight Shooter has been seeing a rebound of streams and listens on Upshaw’s social media accounts.

“I went to check my streams on Spotify and my views on the YouTube video and they’ve just gone up so much,” notes the Lower Sackville singer-songwriter. “So it’s amazing that it’s brought life to this song that I thought I did as much as I could with it, really.”

The surge of success should not be surprising.  A huge hit for HBO, Euphoria stars actor Zendaya as a teenager struggling as she and other high school students deal with issues involving drugs, sex, mental health and the world of social media.

Not only did the series earn Zendaya an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2020 but Euphoria has steadily been growing a legion of fans.

“This is an amazing show (and) it’s just a beautiful thing that everyone’s able to connect all over across the world,” says Upshaw, proud to be associated with the critically-acclaimed drama. “It’s beautiful that a lot of people are connecting on this one thing.”

And that connection seems to be growing.

In fact, since the January 9 premiere featuring Upshaw’s song, Euphoria has only continued to boom in popularity. As of January 19, the teen drama’s audience grew 41 percent from the previous week to earn more than 3.5 million viewers across HBO platforms.  In addition, since its original broadcast, Euphoria’s season premiere episode saw it’s popularity go up to nearly 11 million total viewers.

For Upshaw, that has reciprocated into even more streams of her music.

“Straight Shooter was placed on Euphoria’s official playlist,” adds Upshaw. “So it just brought a lot of traction to my Spotify account in general (so) I am hoping that it’s going to be good for future releases as well. Getting on any Spotify playlist where people add you to their playlist is really great.”

As for her latest batch of songs, Upshaw says she is preparing to release new music soon but does not want to forsake quality just to capitalize on the sudden surge of attention. Instead, she hopes people will latch onto her most recent release Evil (which came out in November) and discover that she has become a much more mature artist since she originally recorded Straight Shooter (which was produced by Halifax hip hop sensation Classified) as a 15-year-old songwriter.

“The songs I now have lined up for releases next are more mature and things I had never really done yet and I was kind of scared and nervous to put them out,” admits Upshaw, who adds being featured in Euphoria has helped grow her confidence to step into the next stage of her career.

“To be able to see a mature audience really tap into my older content makes me really excited for putting out my newer content and seeing how people are going to take that,” continues Upshaw. “So I think this is a really perfect placement for my song and honestly, I’m just so shocked that I didn’t even have to plant this.”

While the spotlight has certainly been kind to Upshaw, the rising star also notes that she has no intentions of letting it go to her head. In fact, when asked if she has her sights set on leaving Halifax to tackle international stardom, she simply dismisses the notion.

“Right now, I’m just figuring it all out, I’m exploring all options,” notes Upshaw. “I’ve met so many talented artists and I’ve worked with some of the best artists (so) it’s really important to me to make it work here and be a part of making Halifax and Nova Scotia and the East Coast a place where you can do this and you don’t have to go somewhere else.”