{"id":230321,"date":"2025-05-01T19:27:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=230321"},"modified":"2025-05-01T19:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T18:27:13","slug":"sometimes-i-feel-like-im-on-fire-in-a-room-and-sometimes-i-feel-like-im-completely-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/sometimes-i-feel-like-im-on-fire-in-a-room-and-sometimes-i-feel-like-im-completely-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Sometimes I feel like I\u2019m on fire in a room and sometimes I feel like I\u2019m completely dead.’"},"content":{"rendered":"

MBW\u2019s World\u2019s Greatest Songwriters series celebrates the composers behind the globe\u2019s biggest hits. This one’s a rip-snorter of a conversation with Tobias Jesso Jr in which he not only talks about writing with Adele, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and others, but also muses on how a changing industry might not be a great fit for him anymore, and how he’ll ‘hang up his hat’ if AI starts writing songs I like’ – which he rather suspects it will. World\u2019s Greatest Songwriters is supported by AMRA<\/a> \u2013 the global digital music collection society which strives to maximize value for songwriters and publishers in the digital age.<\/p>\n

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It was the biggest decision of Tobias Jesso Jr\u2019s<\/strong> life.<\/p>\n

In 2015, his solo career was taking off after years of false starts. His debut album, the offbeat cult classic Goon<\/em>, was generating lots of buzz, Adele<\/strong> was his biggest fan and he had a lucrative world tour, including dates in Australia and Japan, all lined up.<\/p>\n

He was finally in the place he\u2019d been working for years to get to. But he still made the call to walk away, cancelling the tour and, effectively, his artist career, despite his manager\u2019s best efforts to talk him round.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018If you don\u2019t go on tour, we\u2019ll have to pay the promoters and you\u2019ll probably be paying the label back $20-30 grand<\/strong> for the cancellation\u2019,\u201d Jesso Jr says today. \u201cIt was a very convincing argument but I was like, \u2018I know this motherfucker is a businessman and he\u2019s right \u2013 but he\u2019s not right for me\u2019. And so I said, \u2018I\u2019m just going to trust my gut: I can\u2019t go\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tobias Jesso Jr,<\/strong> you see, is not like other songwriters.<\/p>\n

The Universal-published writer has the A-list credentials to match anyone else in the game right now \u2013 he was the Grammys\u2019 inaugural Songwriter Of The Year in 2023 and has worked with a who\u2019s who of contemporary pop talent, including Adele, Pink, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus <\/strong>and Lewis Capaldi<\/strong> \u2013 but he\u2019s a true maverick, a free spirit who distrusts the inherent compromise at the heart of much modern hitmaking.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why he\u2019s not afraid to make some very big calls indeed when it comes to his own career.<\/p>\n

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He’s always been this way. Jesso Jr grew up in Vancouver and was always convinced he would become a top songwriter \u2013 when he first heard Tracy Chapman\u2019s Give Me One Reason<\/em> it so perfectly summed up his feelings, he was convinced he had written it himself \u2013 but did precious little to make it happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to sing, I didn\u2019t need to play any instruments, I just had this delusional belief that it was going to happen for me,\u201d he shrugs.<\/p>\n

He also hated performing, while every time a band or project he was involved with looked like it was taking off, his gut would tell him this wasn\u2019t the way it was supposed to work out and he would walk away.<\/p>\n

Deciding he wasn\u2019t \u201ccool enough\u201d for Vancouver\u2019s indie scene, he tried his luck in LA, literally knocking on studio doors, but no one in California seemed to have got the memo so he returned home and, eventually, learned piano, if only to stop his parents charging him rent on his basement room.<\/p>\n

That proved transformative and he returned to LA where, at the exact point he was supposed to have been touring Down Under, Adele \u201clike an angel from heaven, came in to sweep me up\u201d. They wrote When We Were Young<\/em> in their first session together and, suddenly, Jesso Jr was the hottest balladeer in town.<\/p>\n

He refused to fit that mould, however, and went out of his way to write songs that were different to what people expected of him. He was so successful that, a few years later, his management were positioning him to be the \u201cthe next whatever, to try to write all the pop songs on the radio\u201d.<\/p>\n

Again, his gut rebelled and he decided instead to just work on \u201cstuff I like\u201d. That \u201cstuff\u201d \u2013 including Harry Styles\u2019 Harry\u2019s House<\/em> album, Adele\u2019s 30<\/em> and songs by FKA Twigs, Diplo and King Princess \u2013 won him the Grammy and led him to his most recent projects with Dua Lipa (Houdini<\/em>, which he co-wrote and which features his trademark laugh, is up for a 2025 Ivor Novello), Camila Cabello and Haim.<\/p>\n

Some of his future projects sound a bit like wind-ups \u2013 a Goon<\/em> sequel, books and multiple film projects, including a documentary called An Emotional Field Guide To Mushrooms<\/em>, made with his former gardener \u2013 although he promises they\u2019re for real.<\/p>\n

It’s similarly difficult to know quite how seriously to take his expressed dissatisfaction with the modern, data-led hitmaking factory that, he feels, seems determined to undermine his slowburn, relationship-based approach to songwriting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere 2018 was me at 100%, I\u2019m probably at 60%,\u201d he sighs. \u201cHow do you get me back to 100%? You\u2019ve got to find me better things to do, that fulfil me in the ways that I\u2019m finding fulfilment in these new areas of my life\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

So, while the music industry works on solutions to keep one of its very best creative talents in its ranks, it\u2019s time for Tobias Jesso Jr to settle down in his LA studio to talk MBW<\/em> through his thoughts on TikTok, producers and, of course, Adele\u2026<\/p>\n

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ADELE WAS A HELL OF A WAY TO START YOUR SONGWRITING CAREER\u2026<\/h6>\n

I know! I\u2019d worked with [singer-songwriter] Angela McCluskey but Adele was the first time that I was like, \u2018I\u2019m a songwriter in this room and I don\u2019t know who you are\u2019.<\/p>\n

It was the luckiest break of all time, but the opportunity did not go overlooked. I was taking it very seriously, I was preparing for weeks before I met her. The funny story is, I almost completely blew it, and I didn\u2019t even know it. I\u2019d never done a session before, so I didn\u2019t know what the protocol was.<\/p>\n

She came in, she was smoking at the time, and she was like, \u2018Shall we go out to the garden and have a smoke?\u2019 We stayed out there for hours just chainsmoking and talking about life and eventually she said, \u2018Do you want to write a song?\u2019<\/p>\n

And I was like, \u2018Oh my God, are you following my lead? I\u2019m following your lead!\u2019 But, at the risk of ruining the session, we bonded as friends and that became the lynchpin of my career; trying to relate with the artist.<\/p>\n

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