Jingle Ball performer Jax is sharing her gifts of singing, songwriting — and sweaters
There will be some pretty cool icebreakers at this holiday concert.
Long Island native Jax will be playing Santa at iHeartRadio Z100’s Jingle Ball — by doling out sweaters she crafted to her fellow performers.
It’s the “American Idol” alum’s first time performing at Madison Square Garden — and meeting some of the notable names in the Dec. 9 musical lineup.
“In efforts to try and make friends, I am really creepy and I made a bunch of ugly sweaters with people’s names on them,” the 26-year-old TikTok sensation, whose real name is Jackie Miskanic, told The Post.
“Demi Lovato’s … it says, ‘It’s beginning to look Lovato like Christmas.’”
There are others on her nice list.
“I really want to meet Lizzo. She’s on the same label as me, which is cool,” she gushed. “Same with Jack Harlow. I really love him. Kid Laroi, ‘Laroi-Dolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’”
After the show, the pop star — who has over 12 million followers on TikTok — will likely be at one of her favorite watering holes in the city, Bar Nine in Hell’s Kitchen.
And she will “probably” belt out a karaoke-style version of her hit “Victoria’s Secret.” The anthem promoting body positivity, which she wrote for the girl she babysits for, reached No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 list in October.
Her path to performing at The Garden — the top of her bucket list — has not been a smooth one. At 18, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and beat it — twice.
“Multiple doctors told me it was a cold,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘I feel this bump here,’ and they’re like, ‘Ah, swollen lymph nodes.’”
Thanks to her mom’s persistence, she went for an ultrasound and discovered she had 18 tumors, 12 of which were cancerous.
Right after receiving the devastating diagnosis, she had to perform at her first sold-out show — at Webster Hall in the East Village. “And I was like, ‘What’s up New York? … Things are great,’” laughed Jax, who has been cancer-free since 2017.
After undergoing two surgeries, which included having her thyroid removed, she wasn’t certain her voice would return or be the same.
“I was relearning how to sing and use the muscles in my face and neck,” she said. “When I went to go brush my teeth, I would hit my face with the toothbrush because … when they sliced that twice,” she said, pointing to a scar on her neck, “all the nerves up here kind of shifted.”
During her treatment, she relocated from East Brunswick, N.J., where she moved when she was 11, to Los Angeles, and began writing music.
Through the COVID quarantine, she penned songs from other people’s perspectives and posted them on TikTok.
In November 2020, her ballad “Stacy’s Mom from Stacy’s Mom’s Perspective,” an homage to Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom,” went viral overnight.
Jax credits her parents — both Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn natives who will be in the audience at MSG — for their unwavering support. “I’m so happy watching them, cause they’ve seen me go through so much,” she said.
Her father, John, a retired fireman at Engine Co. 276 in Midwood, Brooklyn, was injured on Sept. 11 and had to leave the job shortly after, which she called a “blessing in disguise.”
“He basically took on the dadager role,” she said of her father’s involvement in her music. “Driving me to every vocal lesson, every audition, every band practice, lugging amps and equipment around for me and showing up to my open mic nights at random bars, showing his ID so I could get in.”
Jax also created sweaters for her parents to wear at Jingle Ball. For her mom, Jill, a retired middle school teacher at IS 234, in Homecrest, Brooklyn, she made two.
“One says, ‘Look, Mom, I’m playing The Garden,’ with her face on it,” she said.
The other is playfully written in her thick Brooklyn accent, and says, “That’s my dawtuh.”
