J SOLOMON: A Funeral For A Rockstar

An interview with indie-rock artist j solomon on endings, rebirth, and change amidst his most ambitious project yet.

When j solomon dropped Kill the Rockstar this May, it wasn’t just another indie-rock record. Through the EP and accompanying short film, the era encompasses a funeral, a rebirth, and an unrelenting refusal to conform. At the helm, LA-based genre-bending artist Jesse Moldovsky – known to fans as j solomon – spent sleepless nights crafting a career-defining project, finding autobiographical authenticity within the fiction of the film. We sat down with Jesse to talk iconic (and not-so-iconic) rockstars, creative reinvention, and what we can expect next…

Shot by Peter Suski

DELILAH: Could you introduce yourself and the EP for people who aren't familiar with your music?

j solomon: Yeah, I'm Jesse. I make music under the name j solomon. I put out an EP called Kill the Rockstar on May 30th, 2025, and it's a six-song indie-rock record.

DELILAH: And what inspired the title?

j solomon: I wanted to end the character that I created for myself, but instead of just moving on to something new, I wanted to have a definitive ‘this is the end of this era’ moment.

DELILAH: We love the dramatics.

j solomon: It's super dramatic. It's ridiculous.

DELILAH: Okay, hard-hitting question: if you had to kill one rockstar, who would it be and why?

j solomon: Oh, okay. Let's choose someone bad. Who sucks? No… actually, have you heard of GG Allin?

DELILAH: No, but now I'm curious.

j solomon: I don't know if he's considered a rockstar. I couldn't tell you what any of his music sounds like, but his whole thing is disgusting performance art. He would do crazy stuff on stage. He'd self-mutilate and make a fool of himself. He ended up dying from an overdose or something, and at his funeral, his friends just partied with his corpse.

DELILAH: Oh yeah… valid answer…

j solomon: I feel like he'd be into it. Rest in peace.

DELILAH: When did the idea for the EP first come to you? Was it music first or did you lead with the visual concept?

j solomon: The songs existed first, without being a “project.” It took a couple months to figure out what tied them together. One night, I couldn’t sleep and then I had this revelation: it has to be Kill the Rockstar. I’d been toying with ending the era and the character, and suddenly it clicked – there's a whole visual world that goes with it, and these songs make sense in this order.

Shot by Peter Suski

DELILAH: A lot of the songs moved with you from New York to LA, and you’d been teasing them for a while. How did they evolve over time and between places?

j solomon: I’m constantly evolving, and the music that I make is doing the same. I think it's the process of growing up, becoming whatever I'm becoming. Half the songs were fully written, mixed, and mastered two years ago in New York, but they just didn’t feel right. They were good. They just weren't correct. So, it took a long time of reframing, redoing things, going back to the start, and just making it feel right.

DELILAH: The production is so polished on this EP. How particular are you about getting it perfect? I think of Fishbowl especially, with how technical it sounds.

j solomon: I really go back and forth. Part of me doesn’t care at all – if it were up to me, I’d never play to a click because it's not as fun. But if something doesn’t sound right, I'm going to make sure that it gets there. I actually prefer when things are the opposite of perfect a lot of the time. Vocals, I’m not particular about. If I hit the notes, I hit the notes. That's how it goes.

DELILAH: I feel like the best thing about rock; it can be messy and still work really well.

j solomon: It should be.

DELILAH: For sure.

j solomon: Totally.

DELILAH: How does this EP’s production differ from your older work, especially since this project is fully rock?

j solomon: Interesting. My first EP, Sleeping in the Garden, was a much more organic process, made in the same room with the same people. Kill The Rockstar was a little bit more mixed up where we had skeletons of songs that already existed, and we had to figure out how to make them good. Working with two different producers on the same song was a challenge as well. I’d bring a session from Erik [Kase Romero] to Garrett [Hall], and Garrett had to decipher Erik’s workflow. It ended up being really good in the end, but it was painstaking in that sense.

DELILAH: And why was making a rock project so important to you, when you’ve shifted genres within projects before?

j solomon: I wanted there to be a categorisation for my music. I think for diehard fans, my songs all make sense even across genres. But with Kill the Rockstar, one of my goals was for someone to turn on the radio and think: "Oh, this sounds like a j solomon song". I wanted there to be a bunch of stuff that was similar enough, so people could understand what j solomon is about – which now gives me the ability to switch it all up.

DELILAH: Lying Around especially feels like the quintessential j solomon indie-rock song. What were your major inspirations, drawing from the rock world, for the EP?

j solomon: The release of Fontaines D.C.’s Romance was a huge inspiration that coincided with the beginning of the process, especially with its visual world. I like Idles a lot – another band from that area of the world. Obviously, the archetypes of The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, MGMT, Catfish and the Bottlemen… Lying Around was inspired by FIFA soundtracks that my brothers and I grew up with. Especially FIFA 12, 13, and 14 were very indie-rock heavy and fun, like Two Door Cinema Club and Catfish and the Bottlemen.

Shot by Peter Suski

DELILAH: In the short film, you create your own idealistic rockstar – a frustrated, unsatisfied character longing for escape. How did you develop that character as a personal entity, and how does he evolve throughout the narrative?

j solomon: Yeah, I think that character is just a heightened, semi-fictionalised version of me. I feel like we’ve experienced all the same emotions. The progression throughout the film is very natural. It’s how most people, or at least I, would react as all these things are happening.

DELILAH: It's that natural cycle of a repeated escape and entrapment, to a hopeless end. And in the final moment, during SPARK, you destroy the symbolic ‘star’. What does killing the rockstar mean conceptually, beyond ending the era?

j solomon: I think change. Change as a constant. Change being necessary. Change for growth. Yeah, change as a positive.

DELILAH: And what does it mean sonically? What are you looking to leave behind?

j solomon: I don't know how much actually changes. I feel like I change every year in terms of the music I want to write and the artist I want to be. It really goes with the seasons. When it's spring and summer, I just want to be a loud rockstar. When it's fall and winter, I want to get the acoustic guitar back out and be a folk artist. I'm working on figuring out how to do that – my fans give me a lot of grace. I feel like at this point, it almost already makes sense.

DELILAH: Narratively, you’re destroying the star symbol, but the sound still has space to return in some form.

j solomon: It's also not that deep. Art is art. Art is awesome. If I make a project called Kill the Rockstar, and then the next song I put out is an indie-rock song, I don't think anyone is going to be like "you can't do that, man".

DELILAH: Totally, it’s art for art’s sake. You describe your songwriting as autobiographical, but with the creation of this character and narrative, the film expands them into fiction. How do you toe the line between fiction and reality in both mediums?

j solomon: I think autobiographical songwriting at its best is hyperbole. With a lot of songs, the thing that makes them cool is how they stretch the bounds of reality. Having the medium of a short film with the visuals gives you an opportunity to push that envelope even further – at least that's how we took it for the Kill The Rockstar process.

DELILAH: Speaking of the process, do you have a standout moment in the final cut?

j solomon: Damn Rat Bastards turned out really cool. That was – I was gonna say fun – but it was a nauseating experience. You only see a little bit in the final cut, but I'm running on that treadmill for hours straight with gel in my hair and a big spotlight shining into my scalp. I couldn't sit down that whole time either because the rope that was holding me up was just taped to the ceiling. So if I sat down, it would have all fallen. That was an exhausting, excruciating process, but the final product made it worth it.

Shot by Peter Suski

DELILAH: That’s commitment. How did the process feel as a whole, compared to filming a standalone music video, for example?

j solomon: Way more planning. With a music video, you just get enough clips pieced together to fit the song. With a film, it’s a longer form concept, with transitions between the songs. There are more moving parts. All credit to Pete Suski and Chloe Ma who worked on it.

DELILAH: It paid off, everything feels so intentional when you play it through as a cohesive six-song piece. From outfits to settings to symbols, how did you and the team translate those concepts into such a polished final product?

j solomon: So many notes. A lot of times, I would be up late at night writing these long treatments, and then I'd send those to Pete [Suski] for feedback. That process would just repeat a bunch of times to get to the final product.

DELILAH: Now that the film exists off the back of that process, does it change the way that you view these songs?

j solomon: I feel like for whatever reason, I still view them as separate, which is cool. I think that's a good question. I haven't even thought of that before. I think because I was at the helm of both creation processes, and they were both very separate processes. But I hope people group them together and reinterpret the songs after seeing the film.

DELILAH: Having the EP for a few weeks before the film really let us see that reinterpretation from an audience’s perspective. How did fans react at the New York and LA shows when you premiered both the movie and the live set?

j solomon: It was ambitious, and it could have gone very poorly. But for the most part, they were great. The New York venue especially because it was a church – people sat in pews for the opener and film, then stood for my set. It was a very natural progression – I honestly like that idea of doing that multimedia run of show concept. It worked.

DELILAH: The j solomon religious experience – it’s more than the music. Do you think the project, being so ambitious, has shifted how people see you as an artist?

j solomon: I hope so. I’m transparent that there’s no budget, no manager, no label. For a while I avoided saying that, but at this point I see it as a badge of honour. I don't have anything but me keeping this shit moving, but look at what I did. That was a huge motivator for me to do an ambitious project – the only way to find out if I could pull it off was to try.

DELILAH: How do you think being independent shows up in your music and the promo?

j solomon: I don't hope or plan to be an independent artist for the entirety of my career, but it makes sense for now. Authenticity is something I’ve been thinking about a lot – and how everything I've been doing, saying, and promoting is all accurate and true. I would hope to continue down that path as my career progresses.

DELILAH: At shows you mix folk and rock songs, but again, always staying true to yourself. How do you decide on a setlist with such a variety of songs?

j solomon: The shows skew more rock-heavy. It's just fun. It's cathartic. Eventually, I'd like to do more stripped shows, especially as I grow my catalogue. But, for right now, it's fun, and it makes sense that it leans loud and heavy.

Shot by Peter Suski

DELILAH: I know you’re hiding a lot of songs under your belt; and I’ve seen the secret Instagram and TikTok accounts… Now that the rockstar’s “dead,” what’s next for you?

j solomon: I've been thinking about this a lot. I feel like I'm right on the brink of discovering what this next thing is going to be. I try not to overthink or stress; I'm giving myself time to let it come naturally. Without giving too much away, I’m starting to know what I want the next iteration of j solomon to look and sound like. Outside of that, I’m always sneaky on the internet. I like the idea of not having everything super out in the open. People who really care, or are nosy enough, will be able to find what's going on.

DELILAH: I’m always nosy. Without giving too much away, have you been taking inspiration from any music recently? Or would you like to recommend some music for our readers?

j solomon:  I’ve been listening to a lot of A.A. Bondy – his first two albums are particularly great. Just good songwriting, not too many frills. And James McMurtry, he's an older guy. I think he's Canadian, making, I guess you'd call it country. It’s technically Americana, but he’s Canadian. His songs Canola Fields and Copper Canteen really good. I show it to friends and I'm a little bit embarrassed because I'll be like, "do they think I'm like a pop country guy?" Because I'm not, but I think it's really good.

DELILAH: Is there a genre or style, hypothetically, that you haven’t explored yet, but you’d like to?

j solomon: Interesting. I don't know if this is a direct answer. I'd love to do more writing for other artists; I'm always doing that a little bit. I'd love to do that more in spaces that j solomon would never go into, whatever that means. I also love the idea of writing for TV, like a soundtrack or a musical. That sounds really fun. I haven't tried that yet.

DELILAH: Thanks so much for your time Jesse, this was super cool. I just have one final question: do you have anything you want to promote before we wrap up?

j solomon: I guess just listen to Kill the Rockstar and watch the short film that I kind of forgot to promote, because it's really good. And hopefully see you soon, hopefully you’ll see more of me soon. That's all.

DELILAH: Hell yeah. Stay tuned on the five TikTok accounts and the two Instagrams.

j solomon: You have to find them though. You have to find them yourself.

DELILAH: No spoilers here.