IMPLODERS: Tobias Jesso Jr, The Indie Punchline Turned Industry Songwriter

Imploders #2

Welcome to my Substack! I’m Joshua Copperman, also known as Hannah Jocelyn, also known as Fell From The Tree, also known as “a member of the Substackerati that’s not Glenn Greenwald or Matthew Yglesias.” I’m calling this The Only Times I’ve Ever Known as a reference to Billy Joel’s “Summer Highland Falls” - the full line is “they say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known.” And I’m trying to make the best of these times. Follow for interviews and other antics.

There are a lot of books, articles,  and YouTube videos about one-hit wonders. With this series, I want to look at albums that were marketed and poised to be hits but for whatever reason disappeared from view. Essentially, no-hit wonders. This time, we’re looking at Tobias Jesso Jr.’s GOON.

The first thing I think of when I think of Tobias Jesso Jr. (other than shit, I gotta finish that Imploders piece) is the image up top, his lanky 6’7’’ frame hunkered over the piano, clearly uncomfortable with performing for BBC Radio 1’s cameras. Live performances weren’t much easier: he would make awkward banter, admitting to a Mercury Lounge audience, “I never imagined myself much of a performer.” Even a couple of hundred people looking at him seemed overwhelming. It’s no wonder he hasn’t released an album in years.

Writing about a Music Twitter punchline, proposed by fellow writer Jack Riedy. But I love writing this Substack and have a couple of exciting interviews lined up in the future, so here we are.

BACKGROUND:

The world did not end in 2012, but it might as well have for Tobias Jesso Jr. After a breakup, a bike riding accident, and his mother’s cancer diagnosis, he gave up pursuing songwriting in LA and moved back to Vancouver. After writing a song and casually uploading it to YouTube, he sent an email to former Girls member Chet “JR” White (who passed away in October of this year) — once White was interested, Jesso quickly wrote more songs, learning how to play piano along the way. He suddenly found himself signed to Girls’ label True Panther Records, more known for weirdos like King Krule than 70s pastiches.

With a small army of mid-2010s indie stalwarts like Ariel Rechtshaid (Vampire Weekend), Patrick Carney (Black Keys), and Danielle Haim (HAIM), along with mixing engineer Chris Coady, he got to work on his debut album. Almost immediately, he earned acclaim for his simple, heartfelt lyrics, as well as that ridiculously tall frame. Vulture called him “pop’s indie boyfriend,” which probably doesn’t help if you’re uncomfortable with everyone looking at you on stage. A 70s-style ad proclaimed “He’s your new best friend,” these songs are romantic and occasionally intimate, but they never feel genuinely personal. It’s clearly an attempt to recreate classic soft-rock as much as Jesso insisted it was a ‘contemporary record’.

 (He was also linked to Danielle Haim and Taylor Swift, but this is not a mid-2010s gossip Substack. If someone started that I’d subscribe, though.) 

Jesso stumbled onto his success on luck as good as his 2012 luck wasn’t — Chris Deville of Stereogum claimed at the time that 2015 was the year of the 70s singer-songwriter. citing Natalie Prass’ lavish self-titled record and even Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear as examples (the Whitney record from that year hadn't even come out!). Maybe you’re following this Substack expecting some insightful argument as to why that year was the year of the male singer-songwriter, but barring a surface-level connection to early-2010s New Sincerity, I have no clue.

WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?

You can only hear an upright piano playing block chords so often. My family members and friends certainly know that’s the case, I am in no position to criticize anyone else’s piano playing. 

The producers credited on this record seem to recognize Jesso’s limitation, so they do everything in their power to dress things up. When the songs are strong enough (“How Could You Babe”, not-not-a-Harry-Nilsson-cover “Without You”, “Blackbird” homage “The Wait”), there isn’t much more than a basic trio and some occasional well-placed reverb throws. Sometimes, they get a bit more ambitious - Ariel Rechstaid chooses to close “Hollywood”  with a series of droning horns, while “Crocodile Tears” plays with spring reverbs, clean guitar leads, and hollower drum sounds. 

OH YOU BET I’M GOING ON A BILLY JOEL TANGENT IN THIS SECTION

I don’t mind simplicity, especially in pop songwriting. All the hype is in service of someone Jesso doesn’t even seem intent on matching. One Guardian review compares an early demo to lo-fi hero Daniel Johnston and acknowledges how different the proper album is. (If I was trying to make it as a Max Martin, I don’t know how I would feel about a Daniel Johnston comparison.)

“Can We Still Be Friends” completely loses me when it opens with “don’t you haaaaate it when you mess up with a friend/From around the bend/Thinkin' this could be the end.” (“Babe” opened with the similar  “So long,  my only friend,” and it worked that time because the title already indicates it’s a breakup song. Using the term “only friend” also causes me to wonder just how destructive this breakup was for everyone involved, which is a mark of great pop songwriting.) That, “Bad Words”, and “Leaving LA” are the only misfires on the album because everything else is too neatly written and simple to be a misfire.

It’s interesting that TOTIEK namesake Billy Joel doesn’t come up if we’re talking about 70s singer-songwriters, particularly Cold Spring Harbor or Stranger ballad “Just The Way You Are,” a song that, much to Joel’s chagrin, brought him much success and several Grammy awards. But that’s the thing; Goon is from an alternate universe where Joel was hell-bent on recreating “Just The Way You Are.” There’s absolutely none of that tension here, there’s not even the Harry Nilsson eccentricities or Randy Newman snark aside from “Crocodile Tears.” It’s hard to tell what makes something a Tobias Jesso Jr. song other than those block chords and those simple lyrics.

That might be all he had at that stage; keep in mind he literally just started writing on the piano when he was signed to True Panther, and “Just a Dream” was the first song. The album garnered acclaim but quietly became forgotten as 2010s music criticism drifted its focus away from dudes like Jesso.

AH YES, THE TWO GENDERS, ADELE AND XXXTENTACION

In the run up to the record, Adele tweeted “How Could You Babe” to millions of followers, and even invited Jesso to co-write for 25’s sessions. Shortly after Goon’s release, Jesso suddenly decided to stop his musical career and work behind the scenes, all but enforcing the “memory hole.”

“When We Were Young” is especially Goon-like, but the decades-spanning narrative fits the high stakes of a follow-up to 21. Adele could probably sing “Can We Still Be Friends” and give it gravitas, but “When We Were Young” is a hell of a torch ballad on its own, the kind of song Goon reached for but never hit.

John Legend and Brittany Howard’s “Darkness and Light” - unexpectedly, there’s a slight edginess that eluded most of Goon (largely due to the presence of Howard, and the Sound & Color/No Shape team of Blake Mills and Shawn Everett.)

Almost all his songs are consistently intimate in a way Goon tried for but couldn’t succeed; even the bigger songs sound like he’s sitting down with the artist at the piano and letting big choruses happen organically. He wrote with previous Imploder Emile Haynie, omnipresent keyboardist Thomas Bartlett, and Florence Welch for Florence + The Machine’s High as Hope, including the single “Hunger.” That song, one of my favorite singles from her, began as a poem she wrote that she didn’t intend to set to music — with the right material, Jesso can make something so personal soar.

The strangest credit is unquestionably the late rapper XXXTentacion, who sings over a three-chord piano loop that’s credited to Jesso. (It’s hard to find how or why he got involved there). Most recently, Jesso wrote “Slow Hands” and “Nice To Meet Ya” with Niall Horan, and was one of three male writers on Ellie Goulding’s “Woman.”

When he produced Lilac Everything for songwriter Emma Louise in 2018, the result was surprisingly complex: Layered percussion! Whirring synths! Non-upright pianos! The central gimmick of the record outwardly defies Goon’s insistence on simplicity: On Lilac Everything, Jesso digitally lowered Louise’s voice to create the alter ego “Joseph,” and the result reminds me of previous TOTIEK interviewees Another Sky as well as some other recent favorites of mine like Gordi and Torres. The ballads on Louise’s record only resemble Goon if you know where to look; the more upbeat tracks like “Mexico” genuinely explode in ways Goon never could.

WHY WASN’T IT BIGGER?

Goon was acclaimed, but it didn’t cross over because it so badly wanted to be an indie record. But it’s not! It’s an adult contemporary record through and through, and with a few changes could have easily held its own in that lane.

I wonder what another album from him would sound like, especially a self-produced one with the team from Emma Louise’s album behind the boards. We could honestly use another Tobias Jesso Jr. album, which is not something I thought I would say when I started writing this. 

There was just too much put on him too early, this expectation first that he was a new Daniel Johnston, then that he was a modern day Harry Nilsson. It’s easy to mock a Next Big Thing that disappeared, but seeing the work he did for Louise is inspiring. He’s finally become the person he always wanted to be, and it’s just a shame that he’s most famous for recreating some other time and some other person. I certainly won’t defend anyone for mocking Goon, certainly not the and the hype it received, but maybe I’ll go to bat for Jesso himself. He finally lived up to his potential once everyone stopped looking.

Thanks for reading! There’s more where that came from, so stick around :)