Switched on Pop - JP Saxe Didn’t Mean for His Grammy Hit ‘If the World Was Ending’ to Be So Literal

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

JP Saxe wrote the song “If the World was Ending” with acclaimed songwriter Julia Michaels in 2019 about a fictional cataclysm. The record was released in the before times in a way that seemed to p...resage lockdown. In the early months of the actual pandemic the song resonated so widely that it catapulted up the charts. It’s now been nominated for a Grammy for song of the year — an award JP Saxe could share with his grandfather János Starker who was awarded a Grammy in 1997 for a recording of Bach’s cello suites. We wanted to speak with JP not just because of the song's success, but also because he has a way of thinking about the practical implications and even morality of songwriting in this track as well as his song "Line By Line" with Maren Morris. Songs Discussed JP Saxe with Julia Michaels - If The World Was Ending JP Saxe - 25 In Barcelona, A Little Bit Yours, The Few Things, Same Room Lennon Stella - Golf on TV (with JP Saxe) JP Saxe, Maren Morris - Line By Line Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:32 It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Today, I have a story from a songwriter. Hey, my name is J.P. Sachs. J.P. wrote the song If the World Was Ending with Julia Michaels. It's a record that was released in the before times in a way that kind of seemed to presage lockdown. And it resonated so widely that it catapulted up the charts and has now been nominated for a song of the year Grammy. But if the world was ending, you'd come over right.
Starting point is 00:01:12 I wanted you'd stay the night. Would you love me for the hell of it? All our fears would be irrelevant. If the world was ending... I wanted to speak with J.P., not just because of the song's success, but because he has this way of thinking about the practical implications
Starting point is 00:01:31 and even morality of songwriting. He shared his insights with me by telling the story of if the world was ending. The song is about imagining a world where your otherwise good reasons for not talking to the people you don't talk to are no longer relevant. We wrote it in July of 2019. We were writing about a hypothetical apocalypse in almost kind of craving there being some sort of world event that would get in the way of your otherwise logical emotional reasons for you.
Starting point is 00:02:11 keeping people out of your life. I was distracted and in traffic. I didn't feel it when the earthquake happened. I was in traffic when the July 4th earthquake in Los Angeles happened. So I didn't feel it. That moment reminded me of a lyric I had written in my journal from a year and a half ago, which was, if the world was ending, you'd come over, right? and I had written that lyric as an attempt to finish a different song.
Starting point is 00:02:46 Often my next song starts as a failed attempt at finishing the previous one. So I remember that lyric after experiencing or not experiencing this earthquake in traffic and was trying to write that song at home and stopped myself mid creative process. Around this same time, J.P. gets a notification. on Instagram from his favorite songwriter, Julia Michaels. She's one of the most in-demand session songwriters and has an amazing artist's career herself. And for J.P., who's just at the beginning of his career, this is a big moment. I'm going to let J.P. take the story from here.
Starting point is 00:03:24 So she posted a song of mine called 25 in Barcelona. It was halfway around the world in Barcelona singing songs to you for strangers and trying now to think about you This wasn't supposed to be about you It was quite a serendipitous moment Because when she posted it And I got a notification on my phone saying
Starting point is 00:04:01 Julie Michaels has tagged you in a story I was listening to her EP With some friends on a road trip Talking about how I thought She was the most influential songwriter of our generation And then I get this notification. It was very odd. So I messaged her back being very enthusiastic.
Starting point is 00:04:17 And we got talking and she suggested we write. I actually have the voice note from that night labeled Save for Julia because I had this session coming up with Julia Michaels who I'd never met and never worked with, but really wanted to bring my A game because she's my favorite songwriter. So I saved the IDN. I wanted to impress her. and if the world was ending was the day that we met the first time and wrote the first time. We sat at the piano, and I told her that idea that if the world was ending,
Starting point is 00:04:48 you'd come over right idea. We started talking about where we were for the earthquakes. She was at a Sean Mendez concert. Whoa, wait, there's literally an earthquake right now. You can see that moving. Earthquake happens. Everyone's freaking out in Julia being the cool cucumber she is, is like, why is everyone tripping?
Starting point is 00:05:05 This is normal. All is going to be fine, which is why in her verse she goes, it didn't scare me when the earthquake happened. I tried to imagine your reaction. It didn't scare me when the earthquake happened, but it really got me thinking. So we started talking about those stories. We started thinking about that idea of,
Starting point is 00:05:23 as I said, imagining that catastrophe, replacing your reasons not to talk to somebody. We were sitting at the piano and writing, sitting beside each other on the piano bench for an hour and a half. But if the world was in and you come over right, you come over and you stay the night, Would you love me for the hell? I haven't fallen and I hold you tight.
Starting point is 00:05:53 And we'd be a reason why. We'd even have to say goodbye. If the world was ended, you come up for it. Came together mystically fast. Like I sang that, if the world was ending, you'd come over right. And she just went straight into, you'd come over and you'd stay the night. Would you love me for the hell of it? As you were aware, she is a mystical songwriting angel.
Starting point is 00:06:27 and she didn't intend to be a part of if the world was ending. I was singing the song, but I kept messing up the back half of the second verse, How to Think About It, Ripping My Heart Out? I couldn't get that Keynes right, and she was getting frustrated with me, so she was like, fine, let me show you. And she comes into the booth.
Starting point is 00:06:52 She sings it, and I'm like, If you think I'm going back in there, you're mad. Like, you are singing the song. It's two people who are together in their imaginations, in their longing, nostalgic, loneliness very much with themselves in a part, but also in their heads, thinking about nothing else but one another.
Starting point is 00:07:22 Like, two people very separate. And knowing that that separateness, is important, but needing that otherworldly event to circumvent all of that rationality. Julie and I are both in the wordy camp of songwriters. We try and fit as many words into the cadence as we possibly can because we have a lot to say. We knew we had this really wordy verse
Starting point is 00:07:59 and we had this really wordy chorus. And we knew we wanted it to have some sort of ascending lift of some kind. So the pre-cours is the last thing we wrote. And that melody very much just follows the chords. I'm just kind of walking up like B-flat minor, A-flat over C, B-flat over F, F-shot-major, I just played that on the piano and just kind of sang along with it.
Starting point is 00:08:28 I know you know, we know you weren't down. Just walking up pentatonicly. And Julie goes, oh, that's it. Let's make it that. Just sort of set up that moment of space, that moment of suspended emotion landing on that question. If the world was then and you come over right, you come over, you come over, you come over, you come over, you come over right.
Starting point is 00:09:05 So the post-course of that song is an ad-lib by Julia. She sang second chorus to the end twice, and then left. So one of those times when she got to the end of the second chorus, we hadn't written the, you'd come over, you'd come over, you'd come over, you'd come over, you'd come over, you'd come over right. We did not write that in the session. She's saying that as an ad-lib, and then after she left, I asked. I asked Ben if he could put that on the first chorus as well, and then I stacked to it, and it became our post-course.
Starting point is 00:09:45 To me, songs hit harder when they live in the questions, because songs have always been a mode of sorting through my emotions. But if I waited to figure them out before I wrote them, they'd be really boring, preachy songs. The songs exist in the questions I'm asking myself. if they exist in the process of me trying to figure things out, not having them figured out. I got a lot of really lovely messages about the song pre-2020,
Starting point is 00:10:20 because I think people forget that it felt like the world was ending a little bit then, too. We were speaking to a feeling in 2019 that was pondering that hypothetical catastrophe, pondering that world where you can call the people who are emotionally tumultuous for you. And it seems justified because, you know, you want to check on the people you love and you don't care about all the petty bullshit that gets in the way if there's some larger-than-life thing. I think it was relatable to a lot of people when that was a hypothetical.
Starting point is 00:10:50 I think it was relatable to even more people when that became real literal. We started getting a lot of messages on Twitter accusing us of insider information. Julie and I had some sort of insider scoop. So that was a first sign that the song was going to exist in a little bit of a different light.
Starting point is 00:11:09 And, you know, all of us trapped at home thinking about who we want to be trapped at home with. You know, there wouldn't be a reason why. We would even have to say goodbye if the world was ending. You know, I heard a lot of stories throughout the life of this song about people reaching out to maybe an estranged family member that they hadn't talked to. And that certainly means more to me than people reaching out to exes who hurt them.
Starting point is 00:11:41 but they want to reach out to the people who hurt them to make them feel better. I've really tried to be adamant about how this song is not in support of the texting of exes. I am opposed to the texting of exes. I take a little responsibility for all exes texted in quarantine. That isn't the message of the song, nor do I think songs are ever suggestions. If anything, we should not be following the footsteps of the way songs love because songs were written by songwriters and songwriters are historically not. not the most healthy in their relationships.
Starting point is 00:12:13 But ironically, the two songwriters really hit it off that day. So we fell very madly in love. I am speaking to you from the home in which we share. There's more intertwined elements of my life in this song than I even know how to talk about all at once. Because I was kind of in a fuck it, I'm going to do whatever I wanted you to make myself happy mood that day. because I was coming back from Toronto
Starting point is 00:12:45 after finding out that my mom had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And then the next day I flew to New York had a meeting with my label about the songs that were going to come out and the next day flew to Los Angeles, next day wrote with Julia. So when I walked in that session,
Starting point is 00:13:04 I was sort of in a, I don't give a luck attitude that comes from getting that sort of life-changing news. And then to write that song, And then to fall in love with Julia, to have that song changed my life, you know, to have Julia by my side in the last months of my mom's life, you know, my mom getting to see me having the beginnings of success in my career. You know, the last time she ever saw me perform was on Fallon with Julia. And I think, you know, if there's anything a parent wants for their kid, it's to know that they're going to be loved. in that they're going to be okay doing something that they love.
Starting point is 00:13:46 So my mom got to see the beginnings of both of those things at the end of her life, which was all tied into this song, which was written three days after we found out about her cancer. So it's all very oddly symbiotic to this day. I mean, my grandfather was nominated for a Grammy in 97, and he won for Best Solo Performance of the Bach Suites, for solo cello. I remember my mom getting that phone call that he won.
Starting point is 00:14:15 I remember her screaming vividly, and I remember crawling around being confused as a toddler, finding out about the Grammy nomination. I'm honored to welcome you to this year's unveiling of the nominees for the 63rd Grammy Awards. Next up, Song of the Year. The nominees are Black Parade, The Box, Cardigan, Circles.
Starting point is 00:14:36 Don't start now. Everything I wanted, I can't breathe, if the world was ending. The first thing in my mind was hearing her screaming on the phone and then calling my dad and then looking at Julian being like, how on earth did this happen? And it's pretty special.
Starting point is 00:14:54 My first big song, my first Grammy nomination, I get to share it with somebody I love. It's something I don't know how to talk about fully or describe yet, just how intertwined my personal life, my musical life, my love life, all kind of wrapped around that moment in that song. As a scholar of music, ending on a minor chord means uncertainty. It means questions. It means lack of resolution, all of which are very much present in this song.
Starting point is 00:15:27 We don't know if the coming over happened or not. So it felt right ending on that B-flat minor and just singing, just all stacks are gone. Two people, no verb, right up front, singing that final question. over P. Flat Minor 7, and that felt like the right feeling to end on. When we come back, J.P. breaks down the beauty and limitations of songwriting, talks about his new single with Marin Morris, and explains why his songs never seem to end. Euphoria of Calvin Klein,
Starting point is 00:16:09 the new collection Elixir. Three new elixir is perfume intense. Solar, Magnetic, Ball. Pulsa in the banner, do the quiz, and discover your fragrance euphoria. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday.
Starting point is 00:16:35 We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border? security, period. I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border.
Starting point is 00:17:08 They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video field. beats. You've written a song about both the power and also perhaps the limitations of a song. A little bit. Love to be a full love song. If I try to sum it up, I don't know I get wrong.
Starting point is 00:17:45 Your song line by line with Marin Morris. Can you tell me about how this song came together? I do at a lot. Yeah. And the reason I do out a lot is because I love talking to people. And great songwriting sessions to me are just great conversations that turn into a song at the end. And I get attached to those songs and conversations and then want to stay a part of them. So it's happened on a number of occasions where I've written something that was either just meant for me or just meant for someone else and then mutually decided like, how could one of us just take this song? Like this has to be ours now. The duet with Marin wasn't, we didn't go in trying to write a duet. I didn't go in with Lenin trying to write a duet. I didn't go in with
Starting point is 00:18:37 Julia trying to write a duet. and going with Macy trying to write a duet. It's all kind of sort of happened because we both felt personally invested in the conversation and thought, you know, why not sing it together? It'll probably keep happening. So with Maren, she's married to another songwriter, Ryan, and obviously me and Julia. So we were talking about sort of what it's like to be representing a love from both sides when both of you were a writer and the joys of that, the complications of that,
Starting point is 00:19:07 how that can occasionally come with its emotional landmines. Yeah, I mean, you say in the bridge of the song that it's complicated having all your shit on display. It is complicated. It's also even more complicated when it's previous shit, shit that doesn't exactly apply to the current moment anymore. Because as I said earlier, you know, songs exist on a timeline and they don't cease to be true even if they aren't true in the moment. You know, songs that I wrote three years ago don't expire. in their sincerity just because they're not feelings they don't have anymore. But, you know, it's hard to hear somebody you love sing about shit that happened before you.
Starting point is 00:19:46 So we were talking about that. And I think every line in that song is just something we said in that conversation. You said in the verse that there are things that I sing that I never have the confidence to say. There are things that I sing that I never have the confidence to say. There are things I believe that I only have. only figure out when I sit down and play. Which feels both vulnerable. Also, I would think, like, songwriters,
Starting point is 00:20:15 hanging out with songwriters, dating songwriters, I think maybe as listener you might feel like, well, you almost have like some expert therapy level way of communicating. But does that line still feel true? Do you still need songs to communicate emotions that might feel otherwise too dangerous to say out loud? Yeah, there are some lyrics on my album that I would, didn't even feel comfortable saying to my therapist. There are some lyrics on the album that are so divulgent that they make people uncomfortable.
Starting point is 00:20:46 But, you know, I was watching an interview with Phoebe Waller Bridge, the writer and star of, what's that show called? Fleabag. It's called Fleabag. Fleabag. And she said that she knows the scene's good when it scares her. And I was like, damn, that's real. And it inspired a particular song on my album, which started out of the book. poem and just as lyrically frightening. But I think that's what makes it, that's what gives
Starting point is 00:21:12 its value. Every profession has its hazards. And I think one of the hazards of being an artist and songwriter is that we have to be a little bit more transparent than we're comfortable with, because that's what allows a listener to feel like they can access a part of themselves that they're a little scared of. And if I can write a song that gets you a little closer to the parts of yourself that you're afraid to look at, then I think that song is doing its job. But perhaps that's also why we shouldn't take action based on these songs. Like, perhaps the truth that we're looking at might be too close to being something you actually want to say.
Starting point is 00:21:44 Like, don't call the X from 10 years ago after listening to JP and Julia's song. That's a bad idea. Don't do that. It's a useful place to reminisce where it might be fruitful in your relationships. Yeah, I think there are tools of introspection, not suggestions at how to approach your relationships. Well, in line by line, you both allude to the strength and power of songs and also subvert yourself. The chorus
Starting point is 00:22:09 deals directly with this. On one hand, you say, you know, you apologize for things that don't sound so good because, well, it just rhymed. And so you're kind of saying, well, it wasn't true. I found that the song just happened to work. Sometimes if it don't sound right, apologize. I just said it because it rhymes.
Starting point is 00:22:28 Sometimes there are insensitive truths that can show up in a song where the meaning or the the excitement of a lyric can take precedent over the part of us that considers how they are going to affect the people they may reference.
Starting point is 00:22:48 Now, I've spent a lot of time considering what is and isn't crossing the line on details about lives that are not our own. And what I've landed on is that as long as we're talking about our feelings about a person and not the person themselves, then we are within range, than we're playing by the rules.
Starting point is 00:23:09 But that to me is the line. Do you feel you ever crossed that line in the past and felt you were too expository? I don't think I've really ever shared anything about past relationships that reference specifically who those people are. I think it's always just been about my feelings about those people.
Starting point is 00:23:22 And my feelings about those people are my own. But details about those people are theirs. And I do think there is a moral structure with which we have to consider what we say to potentially millions of people. Right. I once had a songwriter in my studio, whose name I won't mention, who was freaking out because they were about to release a song and they forgot to let the other person know and that relationship hadn't gone well. And I could see that moral quandary taking place before our
Starting point is 00:23:52 interview trying to like text furiously call this person who doesn't want to hear from this other person. There is a responsibility. I mean, you know, you listens to a good amount of my catalog and you don't know who those songs are about. Clueless, but there are probably seven, people who might be a little more clued in or whoever, you know, whoever these songs are about. You know, the people who know me and her at the same time, yes. And, you know, anything that I write about Julia because she's a little bit more of a public figure. Like, it's all, it's all okayed by her. I don't say anything about her that she doesn't, that she doesn't sign off on. The landing that you all stick is that you got four chords, three minutes, you'll never fit in it.
Starting point is 00:24:29 So I'll just take you line by line and I'll write about you for the rest of my life, which is both taking a jab at your own artistry and sort of, of saying, I can't accomplish that much in a song. And so I'm going to have to keep writing songs about you. So it's both beautiful and it's also saying songs have limits. And I'm curious if those limitations, four chords, three minutes, do those constraints ever frustrate you in wanting to make larger, more nuanced, artistic statements? Yes. A couple thoughts on that. One, that lyric is a little bit of a lie because the song is more than four chords and more than three minutes, which I've always found kind of funny. Yeah, you have some diminished chords in there. You got you're playing your jazz
Starting point is 00:25:04 chops. I heard it. And also I think that lyric for the non-songwriter is just as much about recognizing that love as big and beautiful as I would hope everyone's life comes across is more than we're ever going to be able to understand in any given moment. So songs are the way I understand my feelings at any given moment, but whether it's songs or any other method of being present in our emotions. I think that's just a recognition of if it's as beautiful and big as I think it's supposed to be, it's never going to feel like fully encapsulated in a single moment. But regarding, do I feel limited by the structure of songs to express myself? Yes and no. I've often said in sessions that if I could pick one superpower, it would be deciding any word could rhyme with any other word.
Starting point is 00:25:53 Yeah. I also wish I spoke another language just so I could, you know, have the freedom to see, you know, what kind of rhyme schemes and meanings I could find in different. different, a whole different world of rhyming opportunity. But I also don't care too much about things rhyming. So I allow myself to break those rules because I'd rather it feel genuine than it sound pretty. I admire this statement that you said in another interview that you feel as though songwriters are guilty of romanticizing dysfunctional love and you make it a personal mission statement to romanticize functional love. Can you speak to what made you realize the sort of dysfunctioned
Starting point is 00:26:35 in the songwriting community and what made you want to approach especially love songs from a different perspective? Yeah, so quick disclaimer, I do it all the time. I absolutely romanticize dysfunctional love. So I'm trying to balance out myself just as much as I'm trying to balance out the general piles of how many love songs I think are in the you hurt me but I like it variety of songs. I just think there's a lot of that. Dysfunction is something we try and analyze. Because when something's a little dysfunctional, we talk to all our friends about it,
Starting point is 00:27:06 we try and figure it out, we stay up at nights doing about how, you know, how this might be sorted out, or why this is going the way it is, or what my boyfriend's mother, when he was eight years old, said to him that gave him these intimacy issues that are now causing him to be afraid of being vulnerable with me.
Starting point is 00:27:25 And because I understand that about his past, I need to be a little bit more loving and affectionate, and he'll show me that when he's all that business, which is super real. All that to say, I think we spend more time trying to figure it out when it's dysfunctional than we do when it works. And I think songs come from the process,
Starting point is 00:27:45 for most people, of trying to figure it out. You know, you walk into the room and you're like, I can't stop thinking about this. It's the tension that we're always trying to work through, and that's where the songs come in. When something is beautiful, when something is easy, we don't stew on it as much. We don't sit with our journals like writing for hours trying to sort through it. We just exist in it.
Starting point is 00:28:07 But that lack of analysis makes the songs harder to find because people always say it's easy to write breakup songs. You know, when I'm single, I write more. When I'm heartbroken, I write more. It's because you're trying to figure it out. And when you're trying to figure it out, you got more to say. And I'm guilty of that as anyone else. I think that's perfectly normal. But I think being a songwriter has allowed me to realize that for both my art and myself and my life,
Starting point is 00:28:35 there's a lot of benefit for taking time to analyze the things that don't hurt as much and making sure that I lean into it. I dig into the nuance of the feelings I want just as much as the feelings I don't. It's very clear that you think very intensely about the sort of ethics of your song and how you want it to be experienced. How do you want me to listen? How do you want people to listen to your work? My hope is that my songs make you think about yourself
Starting point is 00:29:05 in your own life and not really about me. I kind of like would kind of prefer I be out of the way, not because out of an insecurity or a shyness, but because I think art's at its best when it has you thinking about yourself. It has you thinking about the people you love. It has you thinking about your own life. I'm of the belief that the more personal I can be in these songs,
Starting point is 00:29:28 counterintuitively, I think the more out of the way I am. Because if I'm being generic, I think it runs the risk of a listener. Well, for me, when a song feels very generic in its language, I think about what they're trying to say. If something feels like it's said in such a personally unique way, I just hear it like someone's telling me a story. Like a friend of mine is telling them something that happened to me, and then I'm thinking about how I relate to that.
Starting point is 00:29:49 The same way my favorite movies are often stories that I have nothing in common with, and yet am moved to tears. There's no reason songs shouldn't play by the same rules. You know, the more personal, the more universal is the cliche that sums up what I'm trying to say here. So I guess that's the way I want people to listen. I want people to listen, and I would hope that it has them in their own feelings and their own introspection less than it has them trying to dig into mind. I also am guessing that you aren't the kind of person that loves a film where someone walks off
Starting point is 00:30:23 into the sunset. I mean, I have watched The Bachelor from time to time, so I'm not fully caught up in my own pretentiousness. A lot of your songs, and without any sort of nice little conclusion, you don't like to wrap things in a bow. Like, if you listen to a little bit yours. You're not my name. The few things.
Starting point is 00:30:52 Come closer. Come closer. Same room. Golf on TV Some people want to golf on TV And neither of those things make sense to me All of them seem to end with this uncertainty Like we're almost in an art film
Starting point is 00:31:30 And you're getting like, oh, I like it, I want more. Like, don't let this end. I think there's two reasons for that. I think there's an emotional reason that I just don't think songs are about conclusiveness. And then I think there's a musical reason, which is that because I was brought up with jazz, hitting like, you know, a big tonic at the end of the song would have got me some side eyes from jazz musicians. And I think there's still a little jazz musician in the back of my head judging me for not using enough chords at all times.
Starting point is 00:32:04 So I need to let that voice win occasionally by not choosing the most obvious option. That's fair. Yeah. Still, like when I go 1-5 minor 6-4 in a song, that voice yells at me, being like, you boring, basic songwriter. And I'm like, dude, no one cares. No one cares about how weird or like off-the-cuff your time signature or chord structure is. People care if you're telling the truth in the emotions of these chords match the emotion of the song.
Starting point is 00:32:33 Because the last thing I want to do is try and impress you with the chord change that distracts you from the integrity of what I'm saying. And that's like my golden rule with these songs is everything musically is about supporting the emotion of a lyric. And if it doesn't do that, then it's getting in the way. You did an interview with IHeart and you talked about how there's a lot of songs about the beginning and the painful end of a relationship, but you like to talk about that awkward middle, all of that stuff, the minutia of a relationship. Tell me more. What compels you to want to write about these middles? Well, if you don't mind me asking, are you you in a relationship at the moment? I'm married. Okay. Would you say that there is beauty and tension
Starting point is 00:33:16 in the minutia of being in it without it having to be starting or somehow leading to you breaking up? Isn't that the best part? It's totally the best part. And I think it's under-explored. The push and pull of being in the details of loving somebody are, to me, the most exciting part to get to in the middle of a song. Songs to me are all about relationship, either relationship with myself, a relationship with somebody else. And there is so much more meat on the bone to me to explore what's happening when we've decided to be in it already, not necessarily always what's happening when we've just started being in it or we're deciding to leave it.
Starting point is 00:33:56 Maybe beyond just your jazz inclinations, that plays into the sort of consistent trend that your songs don't quite end. You don't hit the landing and be like, oh, but da-da-da-boom, and we're out. No, songs are not answers. And I really feel strongly that also songs are not suggestions. And I try and say that a lot to like, you know, we look for songs for solace. We look to them for connection. We look to them to feel, you know, like we are not alone in our human experience.
Starting point is 00:34:26 But I don't think we should look to them to tell us how to act. I'm in the middle of a relationship that I love that I feel so supported in and so like mutually involved and entangled in. something that we're both so excited about. But that doesn't mean we don't fight. That doesn't mean there isn't all kinds of push and pull and tension that there is for me to explore as a writer in a single moment on a Wednesday night talking about something somewhat challenging or talking about something beautiful. Those can all be songs. The only thing I really know how to write about is wherever I'm at any given moment, you know, the same things I'd write in my journal. So right now I'm in the middle of something. I hope to continue being in the middle of it for a very long time.
Starting point is 00:35:12 So that's sort of my only option. Tell me about what's next. What can people expect? Yeah, so I'm putting on an album first half of this year. I've got a couple of singles coming out on that before that happens, but really soon. And we talked about a little bit over the last hour, the songs that scare me being the ones that I knew had to come out. And I'm curious to hear from you, because I think you will know immediately upon listening to the album, the lyrics that I'm talking about being a little bit scary. J.B., it's really fun to talk with you. I really do appreciate the sort of earnestness with which you think about your craft. Thank you. Switched-on-pop is produced by Nate Sloan, Bridget Armstrong, and meet Charlie Harding. We're engineered
Starting point is 00:35:56 by Brandon McFarland, except this week by Bill Lance. Our illustrations are done by Iris Gottlieb, social media by Abby Barr, and our executive producers are Nashak, Karwa, and Hana Rosen. We're produced by Vulture and The Voxy. media podcast network. I want to say a real big special thanks this week to Megan Lubin, who hopped in to provide some additional production, as well as Jessica Powell from Audio Shake AI for helping us out with today's music. You can, of course, find our show anywhere you get podcasts, Switchedonpop.com, and you can find us on social media at Switchedon Pop on Twitter and Instagram where we love to get your comments and thoughts. We'll be back again next week
Starting point is 00:36:27 with something really special in the Grammys category, and until then, thanks for listening.

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