Jade LeMac on how ‘My Life With the Walter Boys’ syncs reshaped her career and the new music defining her next chapter
Jade LeMac writes songs that keep finding second lives. The Vancouver-based, Vietnamese-Canadian pop singer-songwriter has spent the last few years watching her most personal material travel far past the rooms it was written in, most recently through Netflix’s My Life With the Walter Boys, which has folded her catalog into its soundtrack across two seasons. For an artist who started uploading confessional songs as a teenager, the reach still feels a little surreal. It has also quietly reshaped how she thinks about who her music is for.
The relationship between LeMac and the Walter Boys universe cannot be reduced to a single placement. Season 3 alone features four songs from her 2025 EP It’s Always at Night, including “Running Home,” “Intertwined,” “Sleeping With the Lights On,” and “Sweet Dreams.” That kind of sustained sync is rare, and the impact has been measurable rather than symbolic.
When a Sync Becomes a Turning Point
The numbers tell the story. The show’s use of “Running Home” drove a fivefold increase in streams and pushed the track to new performance peaks across multiple international markets in 2026. A song that lived quietly on an EP became a genuine global entry point, the kind of moment that can redraw an emerging artist’s entire trajectory.
But LeMac traces the real shift back further, to “Constellations,” a song she wrote at just 16 that appeared in the show’s first season. The track had already been embraced by the queer community that first found her, but its placement carried it somewhere broader. Watching listeners outside that initial audience attach their own meanings to the song taught her something she now holds close, that her music could belong to anyone who needed it. “Music really is for everyone,” as she puts it, and she means it as both a discovery and a permission slip.
That universality has never required her to soften who she is. LeMac has been openly proud of her queer identity and her Vietnamese roots, weaving both into her writing without turning either into a marketing angle. “If I’m writing about my relationships or crushes or anything like that, that automatically has to do with a girl, and that’s gay,” she has said, plainly. The honesty is the point, and it is exactly what built her a fiercely loyal following in the first place.
The Next Chapter, Mask Off
LeMac’s momentum did not appear overnight. “Constellations” earned Gold certification in the US and Platinum in Canada, and her openness has been matched by industry recognition, including a spot on GLAAD’s 20 Under 20 and a nomination for Outstanding Breakthrough Music Artist. She has crossed 4 million monthly Spotify listeners, toured alongside Maren Morris, and turned up at festivals from Lollapalooza and Osheaga to Governors Ball, even sharing a stage moment with Olivia Rodrigo along the way.
Now her next chapter is already taking shape. The still-unreleased “Prettier With Your Mask Off” is available to pre-save and has become a fixture of her live shows, a song she has grown quickly and visibly attached to. As her music carries her to bigger stages, including a Madison Square Garden appearance, her approach to the mounting pressure is refreshingly light. She leans on a “YOLO” mindset and a sense of humor, refusing to let expectations compromise the freedom and authenticity that got her here.
It is a fitting posture for an artist whose whole appeal rests on meaning what she says. LeMac has spent years learning that a song written in the dark can end up lighting the way for a stranger. Whatever the next chapter holds, she seems determined to keep writing like the only rule is the truth.
