“It’s kind of a weird story,” says Juno Award–winning electro-pop star Lights, when asked about her so-called discovery. “I lived in Owen Sound at the time, and my Mom worked at Walmart. They were recruiting people to appear in their flyer — and I ended up being chosen.”
At the Walmart flyer photo shoot, Lights encountered makeup artist Paul Venoit (of Canada’s Next Top Model and Celebrity Look- Alike fame).
Taking his cue from the guitar she had brought along to the shoot, Venoit asked the then- teenaged Lights if she could sing.
“I sang a Mariah Carey song, I think,” says Lights, who, at the time, had already recorded dozens of demos at home on her own eight track. “He left the trailer right away and called Jian [Ghomeshi]. Turns out they were friends.”
A few weeks after this encounter, Lights and her father met up with Ghomeshi at an Owen Sound hotel room. (He had come to the area for a folk festival.)
The popular CBC radio host (and former Moxy Fruvous member) told Lights what every budding musician hopes to hear: “I want to help you get what you deserve.”
Today, Lights — whom Ghomeshi has managed for several years now — is sitting on a high- back chair in the lounge at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. She’s back in Toronto, the city she now calls home, to play a sold-out, end- of-tour gig.
It’s only 3 p.m., and already Lights’ fans (or “Lightsarmy” as they self-identify) are lining up outside the building. It’s well below freezing, and there’s another six hours to go — to wait — until Lights will relieve her opening act. Evidently, these realities aren’t deterrents.
Lights, born Valerie Poxleitner, has played more than 200 shows in the past year alone. Though touring was a challenge at first (“It takes years to get good at performing”), she says she’s finally, and fully, comfortable onstage. And it shows.
When Lights walks on to the stage later that evening, beaming, the audience is suddenly animated. Young tweens accompanied by Mom and Dad begin to scream, their other-worldly warbles competing with the fluctuating drone of Lights’ synthesizer.
Suddenly, as if directed by an invisible Wizard of Oz, dozens of teenagers rise from their seats and begin to run, sneakers thumping, to the front of the stage. Lights doesn’t ask; she commands the attention of her adoring fans. Switching seamlessly from guitar to keyboard to synthesizer and chasing every song or two with a pitch-perfect anecdote, Lights positions herself as a real contender.
Sure, she’s an idol of Justin Beiber proportions in the eyes of some of her young fans, but she’s also a musician’s musician.
She writes her own songs, she plays her own instruments (keys, guitar, and she’ll pick a mean banjo if she has to), and she’s clearly honed her craft as an onstage performer. When she’s not touring, Lights spends the majority of her time writing new material from her quiet, at-home studio in the north end of the city.
“It’s so peaceful there. I like to sit in front of the window and play out to Toronto,” she says. “I get to play to thousands and thousands and thousands of people — when no one’s watching.” As her set at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre comes to a close, a familiar figure appears onstage: Jian Ghomeshi.
He presents his protege with an unexpected gift: a plaque that informs the rising star that her most recent EP, The Listening, has just “gone gold” in Canada.
More sneakered fans thunder toward the stage, and Lights wipes away tears.
