Exclusive Interview: John Lindahl Reflects on Rediscovering His Passion for Music, Leading to the Creation of ‘Cult Classiqué’

John Lindahl is a multifaceted artist and one of the most under-appreciated talents of his generation. His artistic journey, marked by versatility and resilience, unfolds as a captivating narrative, akin to the directors and auteurs who inspired his latest body of work.

From the spirited debut, Opening Night, to spreading festive cheer with his holiday album, John’s artistic journey stands as a testament to his unwavering dedication to self-expression and personal growth. The challenges he faced unexpectedly transformed into stepping stones, leading him to rediscover the initial inspiration that fueled his journey as an artist. This transformative process reached new heights in his latest masterpiece, Cult Classiqué. This cinematic escape blends catchy tunes and rich storytelling that not only showcase John’s musical prowess but also highlight the depth of his creativity and artistic range.

Pop Culturalist had the privilege of speaking with John again to discuss Cult Classiqué, exploring the challenges he encountered in his career that contributed to the remarkable album, and delving into the creative brilliance behind this multimedia experience for listeners and fans.

PC: It’s been a few years since we last spoke, and there’s been so much growth in your artistry. What has played the biggest role in that development?
John: I released my debut album, Opening Night, and then I went straight into creating my holiday album. It was during COVID. I had these expectations. I thought I was going to tour the world, and it was going to be incredible. It felt like that point in the movie where they are going to achieve everything. You put all this work in, and you feel like it’s the moment, and it’s not. I fell into this very deep depression. I was questioning if I wanted to continue doing music, not because I didn’t love it, but because I was so hurt. I felt like I did everything I could, and it didn’t work.

As you said, my artistry has grown. During that time in COVID, I dove back into everything artistically and creatively that I loved: singing, dancing, scoring, producing, playing music, film, acting, and even doing musical theater. I dove back into everything that got me into this in the first place.

What resulted was this cornucopia of what Cult Classiqué is. It was all of my favorite things all into one body of work, one experience, if you will, for a viewer or anyone who’s voracious in their intake of music or any art.

I wanted to create something that was going to get me excited again because I lost that excitement of singing and writing a song. I wanted to create something that I could step into a world and that I felt proud of because sometimes the world that we’re in, I just wanted to escape it.

PC: This industry has become a singles market, but what I really appreciate about you is that you’ve continued to release these larger projects that work so cohesively together. What inspired Cult Classiqué? Why has it been so important to you to have that individuality and not succumb to the pressures of this industry?
John: I kept looking around in terms of the scope of the industry and how people are releasing singles all the time, which I would never disparage. That’s a marketing plan. It makes a lot of sense. As someone who is a pretty autonomous creative and someone who produces all of my own work, I’m very hands-on. It takes a lot for me to even like songs that I do. Once I love a song, I love it forever. But it takes a long time for me to do that. I kept looking around and getting frustrated with myself like, “Why can’t I have the same output that these other artists have?” I was trying, but it didn’t feel like me. I kept feeling like I had this imposter syndrome throughout the time.

During COVID, I started researching directors and auteurs. I kept thinking about this Cult Classiqué idea. I kept thinking about Johnny. It’s this world that I had in my head. I was like, “It’s a film. It’s this big experience.” Everyone was like, “John, no one knows who you are. You can’t just do that and expect people to watch.”

As I kept researching about directors, they’d get obsessed and excited over one idea, one world for like five years until things happen, whether that’s Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Jordan Peele, whoever it is. They get very excited and stimulated by this world.

Each director has their skill set that they lean into. With Wes Anderson, it’s his architecture and poetry. With Gene Kelly, it’s his dancing and choreography. Tim Burton is known for his illustrations and how he makes that be what it is.

My skill set happens to be with music, singing, performance, dancing, and creating. I happen to have a pretty amazing pop background with producing, all of that stuff, and creating that style. Embracing that part of myself and that directorial side that I never allowed myself to embrace helped me create art in a different way and package it in a way that only I know how.

Hopefully, people enjoy it. I just want to give the listener or viewer the option of diving in as deep as they want to. These are pop-friendly songs. They go straight down the middle. They have a very big narrative-based context. But as a song by themselves, people can listen to them and be like, “I like the songs. They’re great.” Or they can be like, “I like the costumes in this film. That’s really cool.” Or “I love the whole story, I want to watch the film.” I’m also working on developing a video game for the world. I’m working on developing all these things. I want to give people the option of diving in as deeply as they want to.

PC: There are so many different facets to your talent, which you’re getting to put on full display with this album. You touched upon this already, but how early on did you know you wanted to bring that visual component, specifically a full-length feature? How have the different aspects of your artistry lent themselves to one another?
John: It goes back to falling in love with what made me fall in love with music all over again. I used to think it started with Michael Jackson, and that being the first thing that I ever saw. But really, it was Singin’ in the Rain when I was five. I remember looking at Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds and being like, “This is unbelievable.” Donald O’Connor’s character, in particular, is the funny guy. He’s dancing, acting, writing the music, playing piano, and singing. I remember thinking, “This guy should be the main character. He’s doing everything.” I was like, “Why aren’t we paying attention to him?” He’s the one that’s doing it all.

At a young age, seeing him and Gene Kelly, subconsciously, I feel like I’ve always been manifesting this in my mind. I thought I was manifesting this big pop star career because I thought that’s how you get there. But in actuality, I was actually manifesting Cult Classiqué because it has hints of Michael Jackson, Halloween, Singin’ in the Rain, Tim Burton, and all that stuff that I love.

That’s what I first fell in love with. I had manifested that over the course of my entire life. Everything has been preparing me for this moment. Every project that I’ve put out, I’ve gotten substantially better at different facets of my skill set, which is so cool. That’s all I care about; it’s about getting better.

PC: There’s this universal quality to your lyrics, but it’s also so personal to your own experiences. How have you been able to tie that line so seamlessly while adding that cinematic flair to it?
John: Lyrically, this album was really difficult. Up until this point, I was a very positive artist. That’s not to say that I’m not a positive person. I had a very believe-in-yourself type mentality. I still feel that way, but I had to face these very detrimental, negative, emotionally-tormenting thoughts that I was dealing with throughout. I had to put those on display, which isn’t easy for me to do because throughout my career, I’ve always been told that I need to be more confident and to have more swagger when I walk into a room. I need to command that attention. What I love about the character of Johnny is that he’s a version of me. He’s the version of me that’s not confident at all.

He’s very compelling and exciting because he can do all these really crazy things, but socially, his presence is very scared and insecure a lot of the time. You can see it very clearly. I wanted to create a character that people can relate to in that sense because we’re not always confident. A lot of the times, a lot of people don’t feel confident walking into a room. I have to think about what I have to say, and I have to think about all of these things all the time. Johnny was created to demystify that experience for people, and so they can be like, “I feel like Johnny too.”

That’s why lyrically, I hope it’s universally understood by people because everyone goes through those emotions. Johnny is definitely the pinnacle of those negative feelings when it’s like, “I’m at my lowest. This is how I feel.” I think facing those feelings head-on and basically disclosing that to the world was definitely hard to do and to do it in an eloquent way that didn’t feel contrived. But I’m very happy with the way it turned out.

PC: If you had to pick a song off of the album that best encompasses who you are as an artist in this moment, which would it be and why?
John: I would say “Don’t Be Scared.” It sounds like a lullaby or that you’re reassuring someone, but the song was written as reassurance to my younger self, essentially.

That song is acknowledging all the pain, insecurities, and frustrations that I felt so often in my career and in my life. But also telling that person that it’s okay. You’re going to be okay and still having that uplifting feeling that you’re going to pull yourself out of that moment.

That’s the most human-experience type of song that I’ve written because it gives a full arc of the pain, the struggle, the loss, and then the resolution to it all. Whereas a lot of times, you’re focusing on one part of those things, whether it’s that pain, resolution, or struggle. This is all of that in one song.

PC: You also had a very small crew for this feature film, but it feels so large in scale. What was it like collaborating with your team, specifically your co-director Josh [Payne], to build this cinematic universe?
John: It’s been really, really cool that I’ve heard a couple of people say that the production seems very large in scale. There are times where I’m literally holding the boom or the microphone for people to deliver their lines. But I’m so happy that I researched the camera that I wanted to use for a long time. It was the Sony FX 3. They just shot The Creator on it with John David Washington, who stars in the film. They shot the whole movie on the same camera that I have. I researched the way that I wanted to color it and use all of that stuff in the editing room, which I got to do. That was so cool.

Every person that’s working on the film, which you wouldn’t think would work but it is, we’re all writers-directors in our own right. Alexei [Klimov], our cinematographer, is a writer-director as well. Josh is a writer-director. He’s working on his own feature that he’s writing. My friend, Brad [Nguyen], who’s our first A.C., he’s actually Alexei’s friend, who does cinematography as well in the film is also a writer-director. So all of us are willing to wear a million different hats, which is what directors inherently do to get this job done.

We’re all working on each other’s films simultaneously. We just have a lot of hungry, young, talented people who are still trying to get our name out there. I also researched locations very thoroughly to make sure that we had the right feel for everything. The attention to detail is all there from the screenwriting to everything.

But I would say the biggest thing is the fact that we’re all writer-directors. We want the film to have the most integrity possible, so we’re willing to do whatever role we need to do on the day to make it possible.

PC: You dropped Part 1 back in November. When can fans expect to see Part 2? Is there anything that you can tease about it?
John: So Part 2, we’re shooting now. It’s a whole feature film that’s going to be released in six parts, but it’s all written as a feature. We’re just breaking up the script into pages and then releasing it that way. We’ve been shooting Part 2, Part 3, parts of Part 5 and 6. We’re hoping to wrap all shots for Part 2 by January 13th. I’m hoping to then release Part 2 in February, so I give myself a little time to edit it out a bit and then also be able to release Part 3 shortly after. With Part 1, we were like, “Can we even do this? Is this even possible?” Then we did it, and it happened. Now I know that I’ve done this and I can do it again. That’s the mentality there.

As far as teasing, there’s going to be a lot more dancing in this one for sure. There are going to be more characters introduced. Everyone loves a cool ’80s high school dance. It’s going to have that. We all latch onto that nostalgia. We love those kinds of sequences, and there’s going to be that in this one, which is going to be real cool.

PC: You’re definitely bringing those ’80s feels with this feature film. We’ve got the album now. We’ve got the film coming out. You released merch. You just teased about the video game. What else are you going to add to this universe?
John: As we continue releasing, I want to make sure that costumes come out, so people can dress up as Johnny or other characters for Halloween. I could see something like that being really cool. I want to novelize the film when it’s done and released and have it be something that people can read or in a comic book style. I would love that. I definitely would love to do a director’s commentary style release whenever the film is fully done. I don’t know if people are into that but I personally love doing that when I’m a fan of a film. I love hearing what they have to say about how they got there. Something that would be really cool is the culture around renting out a film before it’s fully released and creating that weekly Rocky Horror exclusivity where you can only see the film at this one theater. I would love to create that culture and encourage people to dress up and have that experience, similar to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and what that meant to a lot of people. Those are things that I’m looking forward to now and definitely touring it. I’ve entered this into a lot of film festivals as well. I would love to get to tour it. I envisioned this project as its own respective brand, so I feel like it could be as big as it wants to be.

To keep up with John, follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Music. Listen to Cult Classiqué here and watch Part 1 of the feature film.