Dear Gossips,

Jann Arden is a Canadian treasure. Her album Living Under June, that includes the hit singles “Good Mother”, “Could I Be Your Girl”, and “Insensitive”, came out 25 years ago this year. You know what’s amazing about Jann though? She’s about to turn 57 – and she has spent the last decade reimagining her career, so that she’s now not just one of our country’s best songwriters, she’s also an in-demand public speaker, an award show host, a part-time talk show host, with her own annual successful holiday special, she was just nominated for a Juno Award for Album of the Year alongside The Weeknd and Shawn Mendes, and today, officially, Jann is an actress. 

On this, the first day of spring, and during yet another spring season in Jann’s career, her new scripted television series, JANN, premieres tonight on CTV at 830pm. This is what’s remarkable – they used to say that women weren’t viable after a certain age, and here’s Jann Arden, showing that she’s now actually more viable than ever. 

In an interview with the Toronto Star last week, Jann told Tony Wong that: 

“You know, my grandmother always used to say that you have to spread yourself too thin, don’t put all the seeds in one spot, which was the antithesis to all those clichés. But I think she was right. It’s how I’ve approached my work my whole life.”

The show is, sort of, about those seeds, waiting for them to grow – and what happens when they do start growing. Fictional Jann is a songwriter who can only get booked at farmer’s markets where she’s paid in cheese. She lives in a huge beautiful house that she has to occasionally rent out for extra income. Things are happening again though, it’s those seeds. It’s how those seeds can surprise you. Kinda like springtime. JANN is a meditation on fame and show business and, in particular, how women have had to navigate the industry in order to remain relevant and interesting, both to the public but also to themselves. Already it’s being compared to Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback, only Jann makes it even more personal, because she’s in it, because it may or may not be based on her real life experiences, because her best work has always been raw and vulnerable. This show, JANN, is her best work – again. 

Here’s a trailer for JANN:

 

And you can watch the first episode here. She is WONDERFUL – both as Jann, and in JANN. Happy First day of spring!

Yours in gossip,

Lainey