Live Happy! Featuring: Jax
Madison Hughes creates Live Happy Mini Documentaries for Natural Life to inspire people to find their passions and figure out how to do what they love in their work or daily life. We love sharing stories of people who bring joy and happiness into the world through their work. Founder and CEO of Natural Life, Patti Hughes, says “My biggest hope is that my daughters - along with girls & women everywhere- will discover their talents & passions so they can enjoy life doing what they love.”
This mini documentary is about Jax @jaxwritessongs...We are so inspired by her story and how she’s learned to live happy being herself and doing what she loves. Jax told us there was never another option besides singing and songwriting for her. “I’m not very good at anything other than music and it’s the way I communicate with people.” However, her success hasn’t come quickly or easily. She’s worked hard her whole life and just recently found her big break.
Jax went from a theater kid to being in a series of bands throughout high school to finishing third on season 14 of American Idol when she was 18. However, just a year later Jax revealed that she’d been battling thyroid cancer. Doctors removed her thyroid, but the cancer came back on her lymph nodes—close to her vocal cords.
Eventually she went into remission and was declared cancer-free, but all the bed rest and surgeries inhibited her ability to sing. So she focused more on writing, particularly for other artists. “All of a sudden I realized how cool it was to write from other people’s perspectives,” she says.
When the pandemic hit and studios shut down, Jax, like so many others, turned to TikTok.“If you scroll pretty deep into my earlier posts on TikTok, I’m taking myself super seriously,” she says. “I was posting clips of my music videos, just very produced content. I didn’t know how to use the in-camera part of the app.”Jax didn’t gain traction on the platform until she combined writing from a different perspective.“I found myself always trying to be like someone else. When things were flopping on TikTok nonstop, I was like, I’m just going to be myself and do something funny.”
“In TikTok, Gen Z can tell when you’re trying too hard,” Jax says. “Everybody gravitates to organic, unproduced content. I was able to stop being too cool for school and relate to people.” Jax’s success on TikTok has opened the door to her ultimate dream: being signed to Atlantic Records earlier this year.“I was mostly posting parodies and goofy songs. I didn’t really expect industry folks to even bother,” she says. “It was a dream come true for me. I’m still in shock, to be honest.”
Our Mantra: We believe it’s the little things that mean the most, that kindness really does matter, you should always be yourself, do what you love and try to make the world a better place.
We love to inspire people to Give & Live Happy
