BACKSTORY: After founding the social activist company Speakable a decade ago, which landed her on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list shortly after, Jordan Hewson briefly released music as Tenderhooks before adopting the Jordan Joy moniker
FROM: Born in Dublin, now based in London
YOU MIGHT KNOW HER FROM: The DNA she shares with her actor sister Eve Hewson, musician brother and Inhaler frontperson Eli Hewson, and her father Paul Hewson—better known as Bono
NOW: She’s just released her first two singles under the new moniker, “Don’t Kill the Vibe” and “LED Moon,” with more new music on the way
The first thing I do when Jordan Hewson appears on my screen is yell out: “You’re blonde!” She laughs at my outburst and responds, “It’s a commitment.” I’ve spent a lot of time browsing her Instagram, enjoying her piano playing, book recommendations, hand-written lyrics, and song snippets—all recorded as a brunette. At the time of our conversation, Jordan had only released one song under the name Jordan Joy, the breathy, moody “Don’t Kill the Vibe” (she since released another, the midtempo groover “LED Moon”), but she’s been in the public’s consciousness for a while. Between 2023 and 2024, she put out a few songs under the Tenderhooks moniker. Before that, she was a tech entrepreneur. Speakable, the social activism company she founded in 2016, landed her on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in 2019. Underlying her hard-earned accomplishments is her pedigree as Bono’s eldest daughter—and the latest sibling in the family to step into the musician spotlight.
A combination of life changes propelled her in this direction. She was living in New York when she started Speakable, which was acquired a year into the pandemic. She did some consulting, but didn’t join the new parent company. Her long-term relationship came to an end, and she moved back to Dublin to be near family during lockdown where she started writing songs. Although classically trained on the piano before abandoning the instrument to study political science at Columbia University, songwriting was new territory. “My life did a 180 in about 18 months,” she says. “I had been intentional about the life path I was on. I worked really hard to get there. To let it all go at once, I had to say goodbye to my life in a very unceremonious way. But it was an amazing moment. It needed to happen. I needed to grow in that way. I don’t love to embrace change and the instability of that, but it freed me up to explore this part of me that maybe I was running from. That rupture helped me open up to music.
“I don't love to embrace change and the instability of that, but it freed me up to explore this part of me that maybe I was running from. That rupture helped me open up to music.”
“When you’re going through periods of changes,” she adds, “initially you feel completely out of control, and that’s the destabilizing part. Then you surrender and you’re riding a wave. But then you have to take back control and make the decision for yourself. I feel like I’ve been through all of those phases in the last couple of years. But I’m so grateful. I’m in a much happier place in my life and I’ve never had so much fun doing what I’m doing. It’s been amazing.”
Traveling back and forth to Los Angeles from London, where she’s since relocated to, she’s been exploring sonics and discovering her sound with Day Wave’s Jackson Phillips and Wolf Alice producer Catherine Marks. Jordan mentions David Bowie’s Hunky Dory as being the breakthrough moment for her with music (it’s not coincidental that there’s a Heroes poster tacked on the wall behind her as she tells me this), while also name-checking Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Blondie, and LCD Soundsystem. Additionally, while working with Phillips, she says that he played them movies to stay inspired: Run Lola Run, To Die For, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Blob were among the films running in the background during their sessions. “I really like the stimulation of lots of things around me,” says Jordan.
Among the hardest parts of launching her music career has been adjusting to today’s norms in which artists are ripping off their skin to show everyone their insides, pouring all their trauma into their songs, leaving themselves open and vulnerable to the world. Not only that, but also reliving those painful experiences with every professional or social interaction they have. “How do you maintain authenticity doing that professionally?” Jordan queries. “I have no idea how that works. I think that’s why I kept music secret for so long when I was developing it. I didn’t know how it would change my instincts to hear my music through other people’s ears. I wanted to protect it as much as I could until I knew I was ready. It takes a lot to put your work out there, to put your emotions out there. It’s not just in front of people that it’s challenging. Even to go there privately is hard. What’s felt amazing so far is sharing it has made me more inspired.”
The shift from releasing music as Tenderhooks to her own name reflects Jordan’s growth as an artist. Musically, moving from strictly electronically produced sounds to acoustic instruments gives her versatility from a stripped-back to a filled-out presentation. She calls Tenderhooks “intimacy with sharp edges, tenderness as armor, something you could wear.” But to be her truest self, she needed to remove that protection. By that same token, she had to sing in her most honest voice. “My favorite singers are the ones where you can hear their irritation,” she says. “We’re losing character in vocals because everyone’s trying to be perfect, and I think it’s a loss for music. It’s so important to be flawed. It’s what makes it real. In many ways, I’m grateful that I didn’t go through a strict training of my voice. Intimacy is my goal as a singer.”
As she gets more comfortable with songwriting, she’s realizing that “your songs are smarter than you” in the sense that they reveal truths about yourself that you may not have realized until the song showed them to you. During her MFA years, she read a lot of poetry and had some of her own published. She cites Frank O’Hara, Emily Dickinson, and Josh Bell as influences, and draws from poem titles for song inspiration. But she also tries to tap into a Kate Bush level of original imagery. “My goal is to get to some level of individuality that you can cohere people around,” she says. “You really have to confront yourself. If you’re writing something that reflects you, it’s like looking in a mirror, and that’s really uncomfortable for most people—especially if you’re a shy or private person. It’s a huge thing to do that shadow work in front of people, but that’s why we’re artists. That’s the real bravery of self-realization, going out there and saying what you don’t want to say, the thing that scares you.”
“We’re losing character in vocals because everyone’s trying to be perfect, and I think it’s a loss for music. It’s so important to be flawed. It’s what makes it real.”
Considering it took years before she ventured into music, I’m wondering what the Hewson family’s reaction was when yet another member emerged as a musician. “All shocked,” she says. “Music was always a very private thing for me. Even piano—I would get up in the morning before anyone was awake to play. It was really important to me that I could do it without people listening. I don’t think they ever thought I would want to get to a space where I wanted to share that side of myself. They definitely knew I was an artist and a creative, anyone who’s known me my whole life would understand that. But I think they saw it as a growth in me.”
When I spoke to her brother Eli last year at the time of Inhaler’s album, Open Wide, he told me he’d love to get a bit more advice from his father. You won’t find Jordan asking anyone in the family for advice, though. “Being an artist, the task is learning how to listen to yourself,” she says. “Art is a dangerous place for advice, because you start to doubt your instincts, and instincts are kind of all you have. I see it as something I have to take on completely as an individual.” FL
