Chloe Baker may be too young to get into Life in Color, but her voice will be heard all through the Meadowlands show on Fourth of July weekend Watch video
Most days, Chloe Baker can be found at High Tech High School in North Bergen. She plays soccer for a club team -- she also plays piano and guitar.
Unlike most 16-year-olds, however, she's already had her music heard internationally. Baker, a singer-songwriter who records as Bitter's Kiss, is featured on "Rise Up," the official 2016 anthem for the Life in Color concert, a celebration of EDM (electronic dance music) known for blasting brightly colored paint into the audience. She not only lends her gossamer voice to the hopeful track -- she wrote it, too.
On July 3, the EDM show, which tours globally, comes to Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford. Though Baker's vocals will resound through the venue when the anthem -- which functions as a kind of theme song for the show -- is played at the concert, she's too young to attend, since it's an 18-and-older show. Such are the breaks of a young performer in a world of club music.
The Hudson County teen didn't start out as an EDM artist, though she did have the benefit of growing up with a music studio in her home, thanks to her father's interest in recording.
"I just wrote and sang all the time," says Baker, a self-described indie pop artist who turned 16 this week. She released her first, self-titled album a little more than a year ago and followed that up with "Love Won't Make You Cry," an EP, this April.
When Amsterdam DJs Boiler and Redondo heard her positive-thinking song "Lovin' Life" online, they asked her if they could remix the track. The resulting song, "Lost and Found," was a hit in Europe last year, reaching No. 10 on the Beatport Top 100 chart.
Another producer, Los Angeles-based David Solano, heard the track and asked Baker to work with him for Life in Color. The resulting lyrics, sung and written by the Weehawken native, reference the festival's colorful calling card ("We will light up the kingdom and together paint the sky/Come on, rise up, kingdom, it's our time to take it higher, higher.") The "Rise Up" producer has been DJing the event -- his brother, Sebastian, is a co-founder -- for years.
"I really liked her voice," he says. "She just had like a really nice, smooth tone."
Baker describes her music as "melancholic," not usually filled with the electronic flourishes and swells found in EDM.
The blue song "The Rope" ("Do your angels keep you waiting, how much longer can you cope?/There's a quicker way to heaven, if you can find yourself a rope") and the pragmatic yet doleful "No One Will" ("No one will ever kiss me and no one will ever miss me/And no one will worry when I'm not around") are among her most popular tracks. For the latter song, she filmed a dreamy music video in Ireland.
Baker says the name Bitter's Kiss was meant to evoke contrast, "and finding the bad within the good and vice versa, which I talked about a lot in my first album," she says. "I was listening to a lot of Regina Spektor."
Her lawyer father, Michael Baker, stoked her interest in music by playing Carole King and the Beatles. She's also a big fan of Chance the Rapper.
"We started really recording her when she was 14," says Michael Baker, her father. "She's actually a pretty prolific writer. In terms of her music career, I think she's on the cusp of something bigger."
Even if her personal bent is not EDM-heavy, Baker says Life in Color is a good place to be heard.
"It's not just about the music, it's about the enjoyable experience," she says of the concert. EDM fans wear all-white outfits so they can leave splashed with pops of color. "I know a lot of people who do enjoy EDM but will sit and listen to Adele or Lorde in their free time," she says.
Ultimately less important than the genre is the theme, Baker says.
"All of my music's very much meant to portray a message," she says. "The most important thing to me is the concept."
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup. Find NJ.com Entertainment on Facebook.