Jeremy Redmore laughs when describing the photoshoot for his new children's song, music video and picture book, Sing Like A Unicorn. "It's the first time I've been captured in a promo setting where I'm not looking earnest and solemn and broody," he said. "Now you've got me smiling and wearing bright colours, and who knows where that'll lead to."
Photo: Jeremy Redmore
Redmore is perhaps best known for his time as the guy from Midnight Youth, curating rock hits and leaning coolly against walls; a contrast to his new hat as the whimsical J.A. Redmore, children's' picture book author. His debut best-seller 'Sing Like A Unicorn' is a magical story about a child finding his voice with the help of a fluffy pink unicorn, inspired by Jeremy's time as a mentor for up-and-coming artists, where he himself embodied the part of unicorn by guiding young musicians in their self-discovery. As of today the book is complete with a song and animated video to accompany it, aiming to inspire the newest generation of singers.
"I hope it's one of those videos and songs that kids around Aotearoa, and maybe even the world, can say 'Mum! Dad! Can we put on the unicorn song?', and dance and sing along to the little sing along moments," he said. "The whole point is to try and get everyone singing, so I hope they have a little boogie and a sing and a clap. That would be the ideal dream."
As the book is about singing, Jeremy thought he'd be "a bit of a hypocrite if I released a whole book about singing and didn't release a song with it as well." It's a sophisticated melody with charming and inspired lyrics, and Jeremy doesn't underestimate his audience. "Sometimes it frustrates me that songs for kids are just really babied down. I'm like, they can still appreciate slightly more complicated music, so hopefully mine is one that the kids and the adults can enjoy as well."
The video is a stop-motion wonderland moulded into life by Adam Rowland, who handcrafted plasticine models of Jason Crowley's original illustrations. The animation process, partially inspired by the stop-motion television series Kiri and Lou, took hundreds of hours in itself.
"We've got the artwork from the book, which Jason's deconstructed into individual characters, backgrounds and parts - like the rainbow, the house, and the trees - and sent them through to Adam. He used a combination of stop motion and [Adobe] After Effects to animate the backgrounds and parts of the book that come to life. So it's a really interesting combination of different formats of art. It took a huge amount of work and I'm so so grateful that Adam put so much passion and energy into it. It was amazing to see it come to life."
Regardless of the time consuming process, Jeremy said the collaboration was the best part of the entire project, since the very beginning of sending his original poem to Jason to illustrate.
"Seeing page after page come through, and his interpretation of the lyrics and words and these characters he's created… It'd just give me chills every time he sent something through. Then it's like cool, were going to turn it into a physical reality, and we're collaborating with a printer to do that, which is quite complicated. I've never done it before and we were doing it all ourselves. Then you get these physical copies of the book, and it's such a thrill to get them turning up on your doorstep.
"And then you do a song, and we worked with this amazing young producer - he's about 20 years old and incredible, his name's Harry Charles - and we just sat in his garage together and brought this song to life. And then the music video again, combining three of us into one, it's just one of the best projects I've been involved in in terms of all the people involved having such great passions and energies. We've just brought something really joyful into the world."
The first rollout of 'Sing Like A Unicorn' sold out within two weeks of publication, and its next edition coincides with the release of the accompanying song. "One thing we're also really proud of is that this music video comes out at the same time as the next edition of the book. We never thought we'd get published two editions, never mind finish selling one edition. This is a beautiful paperback edition which is affordable for families to get into their home and we're really excited about having all elements of the project come to life in one day."