Few acts in the current Canadian landscape command the radio dial quite like Elijah Woods x Jamie Fine. They are the Ottawa-born pop disruptors who turned a television win into a sustained assault on the charts. At 519, we have tracked their ascent from the first distorted kick drum to their current status as industry mainstays. Now, they find themselves back in the crosshairs of the JUNO Awards. After a 2019 run that saw them walk away empty-handed despite two nods, the duo is returning to the fray for the 2020 ceremony in Saskatoon on March 15.
The stakes are higher this time. They are staring down nominations for Group of the Year and Pop Album of the Year. It is a validation of their staying power in a market that often treats pop duos like disposable commodities. We caught up with the pair shortly after the nominations went live to dissect the pressure of the pedestal and the messy, vodka-soaked reality of their newest tracks.
When the news broke, the reaction in the Woods-Fine camp was less about ego and more about the sheer logistics of being recognized in the "big" rooms. Elijah remains the pragmatic half of the operation, viewing the awards season as a barometer for the sheer labour they poured into the previous 12 months.
"Yeah, absolutely," Elijah says. "It’s always a fun time of year for Jamie and I to see how things unfold from the work that we put into the last year. And this year we were lucky enough to be nominated for those two categories, which is pretty wild. We were at the press conference for the Junos. When we got invited, we were like, 'All right. I think maybe there will be a Juno nomination, but definitely not two, and definitely not in those big categories.' So it’s always one of those things that stop time specifically for us."
There is a specific kind of vertigo that comes with being nominated alongside the industry’s heavyweights. But Jamie Fine has a way of grounding the madness. She views the awards circuit not as a gladiatorial arena, but as a communal victory lap for the people who do the unglamorous work behind the scenes.
"I don’t think so," Jamie says when asked about the crushing weight of expectation. "We definitely feel that pressure in the air when we’re at these kinds of events. We try not to take ourselves too seriously, in a healthy way. And sometimes just taking everything that we do in stride, and being proud of what we accomplish in the moment. For us, these nominations are a really, really huge deal for us, and for our team, and for our family, and our friends, and everybody who’s on the journey with us and following what we’re doing. So, in the actual moment of winning or not winning, I think that’s actually pretty out of mind for Elijah and I. We’re just excited to be part of the event and be a part of it."
This lack of competitive bile is rare in a genre defined by streaming numbers and chart positions. Jamie is quick to point out that their peers are often their inspirations. It is a refreshing, if somewhat soft, take on the industry's sharpest edges.
"And, of course, a big part of it for us is being nominated among the other groups that were and the other albums too," Jamie adds. "We’re really big fans of all those people. And so it’s definitely not a competitive mind-set. So I think that alone alleviates a little bit of the pressure for us."
To understand their current mindset, you have to look back at the 2019 JUNOs in London. It was a chaotic, blink-and-you-miss-it appearance that highlights the grueling reality of a rising Canadian act. While the red carpet photos suggest glamour, the actual itinerary was a lesson in endurance.
"We did," Elijah says of the London experience. "We were there super briefly. We were actually on tour during that time period, for the entire month of March. So, unfortunately, we basically flew in to Toronto, drove to London. We were there for an hour and a half. We did the red carpet and lost our categories, and then, unfortunately, had to leave because we had a show. I believe it was in Montreal the next day. So we had to catch the last flight out of Toronto. So we were only there for about an hour, but we had tons of fun, saw a lot of people we knew, a lot of great performances. It was definitely a lot of fun, and we’re looking forward to spending a little more time this year in Saskatoon."
The 2020 itinerary looks slightly more civilized, including a stint at the JUNO Songwriters Circle. For a duo that lives and dies by the "top-line," this is the main event. It is a chance to peel back the polished production and show the skeletal remains of their diary-entry lyrics.
"I think that we’re really excited for the roster," Jamie says. "We saw the roster, and it’s a really good mix of people, and artists, and writers. So it’s really cool for the audience and the people going to watch, but it’s also really cool for us as songwriters to see how other people do it and learn from everybody. So everybody on that roster is somebody we’re excited to see. We’re looking to really break down how transparent Elijah and I really are with our writing and just show how genuine it is in terms of it being our diary. Our music is our diary."
There is an inherent vulnerability in this. Pop music is often accused of being manufactured in a lab by committee, but Woods and Fine insist on a more primitive, singular approach.
"And I think everybody has a different way of writing music," Jamie continues. "If Elijah and I can bring anything to the table in terms of teaching people about songwriting, if that’s something that we can even offer."
The chemistry between the two is the engine of their success. It started as a rigid division of labour—Elijah on the beats, Jamie on the words—but has since devolved into a much more interesting, messy collaboration. They have moved past the "one-dimensional" phase of their career.
"We started writing separately, at the start of all this," Elijah says. "So I was primarily doing production, and Jamie was doing a lot of songwriting and then was performing as well. And we came together, and we started writing music together, and it was Jamie mostly handling lyrics and singing, obviously, and myself handling all the back-end of stuff. Our jobs became intertwined as we realized that we were creating really unique content and exciting stuff for us. So she's taking more of the role on as a producer, and I'm taking more of the role on as a songwriter."
This evolution is critical. In the modern pop theatre, the producer who can write and the singer who can track are the ones who survive the churn.
"What's nice about our relationship is that it's not one-dimensional anymore for each of us," Elijah adds. "We're exponentially helping each other grow musically, and that comes with songwriting. But we think that that's the root of all music. It's the most important thing. And if you can tell a story in a unique way, most of the time people want to listen."
We were chasing a hit to be honest. We were chasing another 'Ain't Easy'. How do we get another pop radio smash. And that's a really dangerous spot to be in as an artist, at least in our opinion. So what we wanted to do was go back to our roots and how we wrote music and just write music that we didn't overthink and we just had fun with. And I think that was the first time in a really long time that Elijah and I actually had fun writing music again and it was really satisfying.
But let’s not pretend it was always gold. Every artist has a skeleton in the closet, usually a four-on-the-floor EDM track that sounded like a good idea in 2014. Jamie is particularly horrified by their early output.
"Oh God, you'll never hear it, first of all," Jamie says, laughing at the memory of their first collaboration. "Thank God, you'll thank us. Honestly, I think it was the feeling of just connecting with each other for the first time and on my end of things anyway, it was finally being satisfied with somebody that I was working with, taking a top one and having the emotion matched by incredible production. It was the first time I had experienced that or at least to that quality."
Despite the sonic embarrassment, that first session provided the proof of concept they needed. It was the moment they realized the sum was greater than the parts.
"And for me it was this feeling of just complete satisfaction musically, which I had never really experienced before," Jamie says. "And I think that's what I take away from it. It's like a very EDM song, it's hilarious. I sound like a baby in it, which is hilarious too. It'll never see the light of day but I think it was more about the experience than it was the actual product."
Elijah is slightly more sentimental about the disaster, viewing it as the necessary spark for their professional marriage.
"I think what it created is a sense of excitement that there was something bigger and that we can both do something different and larger than what we were doing independently," Elijah says. "So that first song was definitely a catalyst in our relationship. But it's a song that'll never see the light of day, unfortunately."
Jamie is quick to correct him: "No, fortunately. Very fortunately, not unfortunately."
"Yeah, very fortunately," Elijah concedes.
The challenge now is maintaining that spark without becoming a caricature of themselves. The "Ain't Easy" shadow is long, and the temptation to replicate a hit is the quickest way to artistic stagnation. Elijah is acutely aware of the "bootleg" trap.
"Yeah, really great question," Elijah says regarding the difficulty of staying fresh. "I think that’s what's cool about songwriting, and looking at songwriting and production through separate lenses. You can take a song that was written, 50 years ago lyrically and melodically and wrap it in a new bow production-wise and it could be relevant in 2020. So what's cool about a lot of the songs that we write is that they're stories that we've told or written over the last couple of years or stories and we just put a relevant spin on them by changing a few lyrics or a few things in the production."
This is the core of the Woods-Fine philosophy: keep the bones classic, but make the skin modern. But cohesion is the enemy of the restless creator.
"But I find for us specifically trying to keep things cohesive is actually more of a difficult journey just because being creative as an artist you never really want to do the same thing twice," Elijah explains. "I feel like if we put out a song that sounded exactly like 'Ain't Easy', I wouldn't love to perform that song because she's going to be a bootleg version of something that I already did. I want to create something new and fresh. And it's really challenging for artists to grow and develop and have a fan base whose attached to a certain sound, but it allows us to grow and like things that work. But I think the important thing is to grow and keep moving forward."
That forward motion resulted in a trio of recent tracks that serve as a middle finger to the "hit-chasing" mentality. Jamie admits that they spent too much time trying to catch lightning in a bottle for the second time.
"With all of them we just wanted to show a side to us that got back to our roots in terms of how we used to write music and not think about any boundaries or I guess the box that we put ourselves in or felt like other people would put us in," Jamie says of their latest output. "We were chasing a hit to be honest. We were chasing another 'Ain't Easy'. How do we get another pop radio smash. And that's a really dangerous spot to be in as an artist, at least in our opinion. So what we wanted to do was go back to our roots and how we wrote music and just write music that we didn't overthink and we just had fun with. And I think that was the first time in a really long time that Elijah and I actually had fun writing music again and it was really satisfying."
"I'm Yours" was the first fruit of this liberation, born from a frantic, week-long lockout in a Los Angeles hotel room.
"So 'I'm Yours' is just one of those funky songs," Jamie says. "We felt an emotion and literally put it down. It was our last day in LA. We've been in LA for a week and a half writing, locked ourselves in the hotel room and wrote an album worth of music. And it was the last night we had a flight out the next morning and said, let's sing one more out and it ended up being 'I'm Yours'."
Then there is "Taste," a track that feels like the sonic equivalent of a California heatwave. It is a masterclass in using space and "bubbly" loops to create an atmosphere that is sensual without being crass.
"Taste is, I think I started that we were at the same hotel," Elijah says. "Those two songs were written during that LA trip and we were staying at the SLS Hotel. There was a nice pool and Jamie would go swimming in the morning. So I started production or a vibe. I had this super bubbly like loop that I found and really liked the way it sounded. It sounded like California and it was sunny and vibrant and very like fluid. I just programmed some weird drums around it."
The goal was intimacy, not a club anthem. It is a subtle distinction that many pop acts fail to make.
"We wanted something that felt central and intimate but not too overtly sexual," Elijah adds. "So that's how lyrically that song came to be. And it was just one of those things where we wanted to create an emotion. We wanted to create a vibe rather than be, 'Oh, it's that weird, it's so impactful and that's so special and going to change the world.' It was more about, I want to be intimate with this song when we're listening to it."
If "Taste" is the sun, "White Rice" is the hangover. It is an aggressive, vodka-fueled pivot that saw the duo locking themselves away in Toronto to exorcise some creative demons.
"Yeah, 'White Rice' involved a lot of vodka," Jamie says. "We went to Toronto and locked ourselves in that. We're really big fans of writing music and hotel rooms clearly, apparently. We lock ourselves in this Toronto hotel and we got a lot of vodka. We hadn't written for a while and it was building up inside of Elijah and I like crazy and we just needed to get something out. It's a little bit more of an aggressive song for sure, but pretty transparent. And so we got as blunt as we could be, we got drunk and Elijah had that production and I hopped on the mic, and a lot of it started out as, correct me if I'm wrong Elijah, freestyle, not really anything but just pieced it together on the mic as we went, which we never do usually with writing a song and then recording it."
The result was a structural anomaly—a track that ignores the standard verse-chorus-verse blueprint in favour of a raw "listening experience."
"But this one we both pieced together live off the floor which was really unique for us, but really cool," Jamie notes. "And we found the product to be something really unique and different for us and obviously our listeners. So we took a chance on it for sure."
Elijah echoes this sentiment, leaning into the idea of the "deep beat cut" as a single.
"Yeah, we definitely wanted to create a strange structure of a song and just have something that it doesn't necessarily open verse, chorus, verse, chorus," Elijah says. "And there's this overt hook. We just wanted to create something that felt like a listening experience. It's a deep beat cut on an album but for us we just wanted to release it as a single so to see how things translated."
Finally, there is "Want You Back," a track inspired by the sheer adrenaline of a stadium tour and the unexpected magic of a confetti cannon.
"Yeah, we're really excited about that one," Jamie says. "So we, we've been on tour with these songs across Canada and it's like a room full of kids who are just like excited to be there and change the world. And we, we were lucky enough to close out some of the shows, most of the shows that we were doing and they didn't initially tell us, but the closer and on your second song, your last song that you perform on the last chorus, they blow confetti into the crowd. And it took us by complete surprise. I was singing it and like I'm sure I was like flat or sharp or something, as soon as the confetti song we almost had a heart attack and it was the most incredible feeling in the world cause we were like, whoa, like we've never been like none of our shows have ever had like CO2 or confetti."
Elijah still sounds dazed by the scale of it. "Yeah and that was a big stadium too it's crazy."
"6,000 kids, it was crazy," Jamie continues. "And on the way home, I think in Winnipeg, Elijah was on the plane and I went to his house the next day and he showed me this instrumental and he's like, I just wanted to make something that felt like confetti and we wrote it from there. It's just one of those songs called 'Want You Back.' It's not necessarily a happy top line, but it's one of those songs that just makes you feel good and makes you think you're going to be okay at least for another day. And that's some of the vibe we wanted to go with the track. So far the feedback that we've gotten from it, people are pumped."
As for the 2020 release strategy, the duo is navigating the fragmented landscape of the streaming era. The traditional album cycle is dead; long live the "summer single."
"Great question," Elijah says. "I think in like the 2020 market, it's so interesting to see how people consume music. And if you don't put a song out as a single, it doesn't often get digested. So I think combining everything to sit within a project over the next few months could be an idea that we'll roll with. But for the summer songs they're just going to live on as summer singles. So it's really something that we wanted to put out to keep things moving, to keep the conversation going and show people a different side of us. But moving forward, we're definitely looking at combining things into a new project, whether that includes 'Want You Back' or it's something separate."
Ultimately, 2020 is about reclamation. After the whirlwind of their initial breakout, Jamie and Elijah are focused on stripping away the artifice and finding the joy in the labour again.
"Last year 2019 ended on a very interesting note for Eli and I," Jamie concludes. "As I touched on before, we put ourselves in this bubble of chasing a hit and chasing, something that we felt we were portrayed as rather than admittedly staying true to ourselves. And I think that's what we're going to work on for 2020. We're excited for the single and to see the reaction of that. It will tell what happens next for us, we're really committing to staying true to who we are and staying true to our art in 2020 and that's something that the fans and the label have shown a lot of support with, which was beautiful for us. It's really important for Elijah and I and our team. So I think that's our main focus for 2020, taking it day by day, week by week and just doing what we love and falling in love with what we do again.
