Twenty-three-year-old Jordyn Sugar marches to the beat of her own drum…literally. At just three years old, she taught herself to play percussion, and within a few years she also learned the piano and the guitar, all by ear. “I would sit for like four hours in the basement till I hit a certain run or note that I wanted to hit. I did not stop,” Jordyn remembers. It wasn’t until she was ten years old that she took a formal drum lesson at The West Island Music Academy. The school’s director, Joel Ovadia, noticed a spark in the young musician: “I remember her playing a RUSH tune at the recital, and that was impressive for such a young kid.” Mastering the art of singing was next on Jordyn’s to-do list, and once again she practiced non-stop. It paid off in 2021 when she was noticed by one of her idols. “Justin Bieber took my TikTok video and reposted it to his Instagram story. It’s insane how one small gesture that probably took him, like ten milliseconds to do, literally changed my life,” Jordyn says. With one repost by none other than Bieber, Jordyn soon heard from record producer Vito Luprano, who famously worked with Celine Dion early on in her career. Building momentum online The pair recorded multiple songs, an experience Jordyn says she’s grateful for. The singer shared with CTV News many great stories about her brushes with fame, but the most memorable interaction was with Gloria Gaynor. “She offered me chicken wings. So I said, if I don’t take one, it’s a missed opportunity. I’m going to kick myself for the rest of my life. So I took a chicken wing, and I was eating chicken wings of Gloria Gaynor,” she said. Jordyn says it’s been an eventful past few years, and she has new music in the works, but for now she’s excited to see how her latest single, “Oops,” is striking a chord with listeners. “250,000 streams in only three months. I’m independent doing this all on my own and just marketing, you know, on every platform, on every social media.” Jordyn says she’s found a way to continue that momentum online and has received millions of views on some of her TikTok videos. The multifaceted performer says she’s using her platform for good: “It’s important to just be yourself at the end of the day, dress the way you want to dress, be who you want to be,” she says. She believes in authenticity so strongly that she’s even trademarked her brand of music as empowered pop™, and hopes to inspire others to be proud of who they are.
