"I love this moment. It's so nice," Dora Jar says, tilting her head back to soak in the Madrid sun shining on her face. It's a particularly warm winter Sunday in the Spanish capital and the singer, born Dora Jarkowski, is feeling the city's embrace — both physically and metaphorically. “It's like cinema lighting,” she adds, still amazed by the golden rays.
Twelve hours ago, Dora Jar opened for the first night of Gracie Abrams's The Secret of Us European tour, where fans ushered Jar on stage with loud chants and a galaxy of phone lights often reserved for headliners. In three hours, she'll head to the almost 14,000-capacity venue to do it all again for night two, but for now, her sole focus is an order of Turkish eggs, her milk oolong, and enjoying the sun as dogs pass us by on their morning strolls. “I love dogs so much. They're my life force," Jar quietly quips as she sips her tea.
To an onlooker, this might all feel like a dream. The type of idyllic scenario you only see in movies or read about in books. And while Jar acknowledges the specialty of her situation, there are always moments that will bring her back to reality. At last night's concert, Jar performed her new single “Lucky” for the first time since its official release, and, as luck would have it, her mic cut off in the middle of the song. “Shall we restart from verse two?” she asked the audience with a smile. “It's my favorite verse anyways.”
Inspired by an on-and-off relationship and its subsequent breakups, “Lucky," as Jar revealed on stage, took five years to complete, and she was not going to let a malfunction ruin the moment. “I actually couldn't hear myself [in my in-ears] at all throughout the concert, but I just pushed through,” she confesses with a smile. It's that sort of relentless positivity that's so alluring about Jar. She refuses to let a minor glitch determine her day and always finds something to be thankful for.
Before the tour started, Jar found herself in a similar predicament when a fan started an online petition demanding her removal and replacement as the Abrams's opener. While Abrams immediately slammed the petition, Jar took it in stride and brushed it off, making jokes across her social channels. She was not going to let an online petition set the tone for their month-long journey ahead, but even if it did, it could only be up from there. She might have ordered Turkish eggs today, but she seems to like her life sunny side up.
Between rehearsals and a few hours at the flea market, Teen Vogue caught up with Jar to talk about the tour's kickoff and expectations, life on the road, and her mystic connection with music and light.
Dora Jar: They fully sent it for me. I just felt so welcomed, and with all the technical difficulties that come with the first show, it couldn't have gone better, and it was mostly because of the energy of the crowd and Gracie's fans being so sweet.
DJ: I feel that too. One of my favorite things about live music is that uncertainty and getting to see a real moment from artists, and when a show is too perfect or too dialed [in], I sort of feel like, "Okay, well, this could have just been on the radio or whatever." It's when it's human that's what makes it exciting.
DJ: Oh my god, I really appreciate you bringing it up. It's a big part of my life, and it's also something I think about every day. I'm grateful for my health. Health issues have been sort of a theme in my family's life. My sister had really severe cerebral palsy, and so my awareness of body privilege is very strong.
My sister couldn't go to a lot of places because she was in a wheelchair. So, I'm always noticing what venues have wheelchair access and special spots for people with other abilities. I just feel grateful that my spine is aligned. I have 22 screws and two titanium rods in it and a scar that goes from the bottom of my neck to the top of my bottom. I used to be very flexible. I could do backbends. Now, I'm pretty much stuck in one place. I move as much as I can. But yeah, that happened when I was 17. I’m just grateful for mobility. [Laughs.]
DJ: Maybe. No comment. All I'll say is I'm obsessed with Mary Poppins.
DJ: No. I didn't name her. Jesse [Bielenberg, my guitarist] and his girlfriend found her on a tour we did last year. She's like a stuffy that you can microwave, and she becomes a heating pad. She smells like lavender, and Jesse always brings her on stage, which is really cute.
DJ: Exactly. And then people like looking at her, so she's welcome.
DJ: Oh, yeah. I've so many ideas for headline shows where I can really fully send it. I love surprises on stage. [During] my last tour, I opened by doing my makeup on stage in front of the audience with a spotlight on me, pretending the audience was a mirror. I wanted it to feel like they were backstage with me getting ready. And it was also sort of a cheat code because… it gets me five more minutes. [Laughs.] But the tour was called Behind the Curtain, so it was like a literal look behind the curtain.
DJ: Yes. [Laughs.] There were a few shows I had where I didn't have my shoes on until I was running on stage, and I had to pull them on as I was going to the stage. And, [I realized that] I felt way more in the moment during those shows. There's no time to think about what you're doing; you're just doing it.
DJ: Sort of, yeah. Last night we were ready 15 minutes before, and we thought we were going on at 7:40 p.m., but they were like, "Oh, no, you're not on until 7:50 p.m." So we had a lot of time, but that was a good thing because I didn't even have my pack and in-ears in…
DJ: Yes. I actually like doing it myself, but I'm not a makeup artist who knows everything about that, so it would be nice to have some help one day. But I enjoy it. It's very meditative. I was the person in high school who would wake up an hour before everyone else to do my perfect eyeliner. Eyeliner every single day in high school. And then I sort of challenged myself to not wear makeup.
DJ: I don't know. I kind of gradually started again. I was like, "I don't need to cut myself off from this thing that I enjoy." It's also a way to connect to my own features and feel confident and playful with how I'm expressing myself.
DJ: For this tour, we rehearsed in New York and then did a tech rehearsal in London and that was just jamming in my friend's living room. We just played the songs as much as we could. We're doing it very differently. I usually tour with drums and tracks, and I put on a rock show, and I scream, and I do the splits and all sorts of stuff. For this show, we were like, “Let's go acoustic.” Nothing is going to be playing except for what we are making on stage. So [everything is] completely live, which is rare for shows these days. We wanted to create what we do in the living room on stage.
DJ: Yeah, and intimate. That's how I initially fell in love with music — seeing Neil Young play acoustic for the Bridge School Concert, which is a benefit concert for the school my sister went to. Neil Young has a son with cerebral palsy, and my sister ended up going to the school he created for people like his kid.
DJ: Foo Fighters, too. Because they are heavy rock and they were totally acoustic. And I was four years old, and I was watching this, and it was raining. And the way Dave and Neil Young played guitar was so inspiring to me. And I remember thinking, "I need to have strong forearms like them." I remember seeing their tatted forearms being like, "Ah, I need that."
DJ: I think I just had it in my head from when I was first conscious of myself as a human that my role in life was to perform for my sister. I wanted to keep her entertained as much as I could and make her laugh, and I wanted to sing for her and tell her stories. And so that just has always felt like my life purpose, and getting to do this as a career is just an extension of that original soul calling.
It feels so special that people I don't know can connect with that and enjoy it. And I feel like my sister's around me all the time. I sort of have liked thinking about life as a performance for the angels. Even when you're alone in your room, there's a loving spirit watching you. Not in a creepy way, but it's like you're being witnessed. And I found that in my loneliest times. If I remember that I'm putting on a show and even if I'm crying, someone's feeling compassion for me, that makes life so much more bearable and worth it and also so meaningful and gives me strength.
DJ: Sorry!
DJ: They're all exciting in different ways. The Lollapalooza show was a first, I'd never really done a festival ever, so that was really exciting and also really scary. When you have a headline show, it's just amazing knowing that people are there for you. They bought tickets to see your show, so that's kind of unbeatable. But at the same time, opening for an artist whose music you love, like opening for Gracie, is so special. When the petition happened, I was like, "I don't care at all because I know that she has amazing fans and the majority of people are going to be receptive and supportive." So that didn't freak me out at all.
DJ: I literally laughed. I was on the floor in my bathroom because it was the only room with a heater and I was laughing on the floor like, "What's happening?" But the crazy paradox of it is that it really just backfired in my favor. It showed me all these people who I just didn't even know supported me, standing up for me in the face of people who didn't really know how concerts work, so it didn't feel like a personal attack. It was just people saying they didn't know who I was. What went viral about it was people showing support for me, so it was really an amazing thing.
But I will say it was a lot of attention all at once, and that's something I have not experienced so much of as a new up-and-coming artist. So I did get very nervous. I felt really exposed, and I had a few panic attacks. It was like, "Whoa." Because in my head, I had a good attitude about it, but my body was kind of like, "Whoa, overload."
DJ: Just time, yeah. And just refocusing on rehearsal and getting ready.
DJ: Yeah, it's definitely not the case usually. I met her at a Grammys after-party. I'd recently seen her perform and she was so beautiful and magnetic and mesmerizing. She was one of the first celebrities I'd ever met who immediately was so warm and human and made me feel really calm at one of those very nerve-wracking industry events. She DMed me many months later asking me to do this tour and it was so exciting.
DJ: I was definitely taken aback by it, but we've sort of been in touch as mutual supporters, and I love her album.
DJ: Oh, that's so cute. I mean, she's just been so supportive and saying that she's loved the music and that's just always such a crazy thing to hear, but especially from someone you look up to.
DJ: We went about picking songs for the set list that A) I love playing live and B) that would be exciting to have new arrangements for because, obviously, there are no drums. So “Ragdoll” is a very drum-heavy, upbeat song, and we do it totally acoustic. We just wanted to show a new side of songs that no one's ever heard before so it's a very unique, tailored experience.
“Champagne Supernova” is such a timeless song. I love it so much. I only discovered it late. I knew “Wonderwall” from when I was a kid, this one I didn't know until I was, like, 20 somehow. I was like, "F*ck, where was this song my whole life?" So, yeah, I just love it and I hope to reintroduce it to a younger crowd.
DJ: That's actually a quote from Michael Singer, who wrote a book called The Untethered Soul, which was the sole thing that got me through this heartbreak. And he's a very powerful writer.
DJ: A mix of everything. The way white light is a mix of all the colors. That's what passion and inspiration is. It's the ability to find inspiration or to use sadness and transform it into something else. Or it's sort of like grief might be the most powerful emotion… because grief is an action where you take this sinking feeling, and you bring it up, and you move through it, and you transform.
DJ: I think it's a way to let go. It is a constant reminder for so long until you can let go. Things feel like forever and then it changes. And you're like, “How did that happen?”
“Lucky" feels like a truly vulnerable song. It's very direct. Usually, I write the sort of abstract, imaginative lyrics, and I think “Ragdoll” is an example of a song that I'm also really proud of but is much more metaphorical. I don't really think in words. I think in images, and then I take those images and translate them into words. So in my mind, I'm not having, "Here's what's going on, I'm going to pick up my teacup and I'm going to take a sip." I don't have an inner monologue. I have a movie. So, the clearer the image, the better the writing. And the way I can access those clear images is usually when I'm meditating.
DJ: I'm excited to surprise myself because there's something that happens on stage where these instincts come out that cannot be planned, and the show will change. Every single show will be different. I'm excited to see what happens.
DJ: I'd like it to be where there's no stage, and I'm walking through the audience, and it's in a house, and everyone has either headphones or surround speakers. So everyone's hearing the same thing, but I'm walking through.
DJ: Finally. Okay, so I believe that light is the fourth dimension. They say time is the fourth dimension. I'd say it's light because light is in a place, in one place, accelerating faster than anything in the known universe through time. And if you think of one dimension as a point, two dimensions as a line on a flat surface, three dimensions, sphere, four dimensions, ball of light. And so we are light, and we're able to time travel with our intention. I believe talking to my past self allows me to also receive wisdom from my future self. Just let it sink in. It'll take time. Before every show, I sort of tell myself and remind myself and my bands that we are all connected by strings of golden light that we can't see but that it also connects us to the audience.
