The accolades piled up for Jade Turner in 2024, so much so, that she began to have doubts about her own self.
The Cree singer-songwriter received her 27th Manitoba Country Music Award nomination and 4th win, the Vince Fontaine Indigenous Song Award at the 2024 SOCAN Awards, the Kevin Walters Memorial Songwriting Award from Manitoba Music and was a semi-finalist in SiriusXM’s Top of the Country competition.
“I’m very thankful for everything that has happened this past year but I also have a very hard time being the person that’s getting the awards. I have very bad imposter syndrome when it comes to that but I’m very thankful,” says Turner on the latest episode of Face to Face.
Turner says her mind was blown when she received the call that she was a semi-finalist for SiriusXM’s competition.
“I was actually opening up for Tom Cochrane that same night that I got the call and I was like, what is this life? Seriously, I don’t know what happened in January when there was like a switch we’re everything was working out for me and I was like what the heck,” says Turner who is a member of Misipawistik Cree Nation in northern Manitoba.
Turner released three singles in 2024, including That Wind, a song that took home the song of the year award at the Manitoba Country Music Awards, a category she has now won in back to back years.
She’s been writing songs since she was a young girl and says it’s gratifying to have her songwriting recognized.
“I used to move quite a bit with my mom and I lived on many reserves in northern Manitoba. I think I moved 15 times, maybe more by the time I was in grade 9. So, for me, songwriting, music was always there for me. It was kind of the only thing I could lean on some of the times, too,” says Turner.
“I was always the new girl, so, I was always getting bullied and stuff too. I remember specifically one of the communities I was in, I went and sat literally in the bush, I ran there instead of going on the bus to school because I didn’t want to go to school there anymore and I did that for a whole week before the school phoned my mom and told on me. But I literally wrote songs all day.”
Turner is set to release her third studio album, Breathe on February 7. It’s being described as her most personal project to date and will also feature collaborations with Crystal Shawanda and Sebastian Gaskin.
It’s an album that’s been a long time coming says Turner who is hoping to extend her success into the new year.
