If you’ve ever had a broken heart, this song’s for you. But don’t expect a cheesy, sad girl autumn type of thing. Los Angeles-based Highschool Jacob releases Different, a song inspired by “how both perspectives at the end of a relationship are unique while still being universal.” After a two-year hiatus, the polymath is back to music-making with a new EP and full-band tour dates on the horizon.
Love and, more especially, the end of it is an often too overused subject in music. As Highschool Jacob tells to us, “There’s nothing more common than a breakup song.” However, his new single has something unique that sets it apart from hundreds of others: its POV. “The song continually switches perspectives between two people in a disintegrating relationship who clearly love each other but cannot decide whether or not their partner is everything they want or someone who is average at best,” the musician explains further.
Surely, the lyrics sound as confusing as the feelings one has when seeing their romantic relationship come to an end. It starts with a punchy “If I wasn’t wasting your time why you complaining / In the morning you’ll stay later and I’ll feel fine,” and it continues with other heartbreaking words in the chorus like “The promises you kept and broke that's free / Ah, but hold me close a little one more time.” When Highschool Jacob is asked about it, he says: “I wanted to combine this erratic insecure dread that accompanies the end of a relationship with a smooth danceable beat to illustrate how most people have these difficult moments.”
Since the age of four, when he started to play the piano, Highschool Jacob has been obsessed with making music. He later discovered the guitar, which he also learned to play. So for him, there was no other way around it. Music has been a part of his life as far as he can remember. It’s logical, then, that he attended college to study music and composition, which led him to work in the world of film scoring. Over the years, he’s perfected his craft, especially on the production side of it, which makes his music so well-rounded and complete.
Different is the second single he’s released in 2023, but there’s more of him in the coming months. So stay tuned because exciting things are coming!