Jerry's Pick: "Before"

“Before”-NIKI

Here’s a not so happily-after-ever ballad born from a dorm-room college crush and all the emotions related to an unrequited deep love and depressing loss. NIKI takes you there by digging deep into her own recent all-too-real personal past by piecing together her pain through poetry.

Some have drawn parallels between this track and Olivia Rodrigo’s breakthrough break-up confessional “Drivers License” from last year, but… “Before” is a zillion-times better. Sure, NIKI comes across vulnerable and melancholy, but also raw and direct with a composition more complete and complex.

It’s an all-too-familiar fractured fairytale. After those post-break-up blues settle into the quietest part of your heart, your hippocampus jumps into overdrive, pulling-up memories in a non-linear fashion, quickly jumping from highs to lows back to highs sprinkled with flashes of how-comes and what-ifs. While listening closely to NIKI’s lyrics, that’s how “Before” appears to have been written.

NIKI – who began writing the song while in her late-teens -- explained, "'Before' is the irresolute ending to my very first love story. I wrote it as a means to create the kind of closure I never had.

While researching NIKI (born Nicole Zefanya), I discovered she’s been a fan of Taylor Swift. Learning this, I’m almost certain a good chunk of her inspiration came from “All Too Well” which details Swift’s own doomed relationship.

From start to finish, “Before” is a four-minute audio-book set to music detailing her other-side-of-the-world long-distance (Indonesia/US East Coast) ill-fated relationship.

“I just flew across the globe/Twenty-two hours just to see you…"

And in NIKI’s case, her heart is like a ticking time bomb. Before they part for the last time, her thoughts obsessively calculate ways to remedy the rescinding romance by surrendering self-esteem while considering becoming that person your future-ex wanted you to be.

“Yeah, we've got forty-eight hours left/Before I fly back to my death…"

But, the affair’s autopsy revealed the romance to have been DOA from the start.

“Did anything ever really count/Or was I just a two-year practice round?/You were all I'd ever known/And now I'm feeling stupid, you're forbidden…"

With time, NIKI knew exactly what to do when handed a load of lemons. She stated, “This project is without a doubt my most favorite thing I have ever made as an artist. It’s where younger me and current me meet and hang and have a fucking blast together."

“Before” will be part of NIKI’s album Nicole which arrives August 12, 2022.

Jerry's Pick: "Year of the Young"

“Year of the Young”-Smith & Thell

I first learned of this Swedish duo through “Forgive Me Friend,” a jangly, harmony-filled pop song that dented the charts almost two-years ago. This year, Maria Jane Smith and Victor Thell looked inward to pull-out a very personal, yet universal eulogy.

“I'm gonna say what you said, I'm gonna do what you did. I won't remember you died, I will remember you lived…"

According to a post on the band’s Facebook page, “Last year, we and those close to us lost several young friends and loved ones due to tragic circumstances. Our private lives were hit by one sadness after another.” The most tragic loss, I learned, was of Maria’s sister, Janna.

Last February in an interview with Swedish journalist Alexandra Lundbladh -- Maria lamented about 2019 being an incredibly tough year. “I have not grasped it yet, but music is a safe place and a place to process. I'm very grateful we have the band. She was in the audience at all gigs in Helsingborg, and this summer at the festival it was one of the last days that she managed to do something like that at all. It will be wonderful to play in Helsingborg again… but one person will be missing."

It’s always been known music can be amazingly therapeutic. The latest Smith & Thell single is an exemplary example of a song having the potential of providing calm and reassurance to those who are grieving the passing of someone within their heart’s orbit. Turning to songwriting, the band transformed their sorrow into a celebration of life.

“You said, ‘Don't you stand by my grave, No, don't you stand there and cry. I'm the trees, I'm the birds, I'm the soft stars that shine at night…’”

For the lyrics, the young couple found inspiration in a poem penned in 1932 by Ohio-native Mary Elizabeth Frye, a then 27-year old florist. “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep” has since become a global go-to for bereavements as its words are powerful yet placid.

Most notable to me was how Maria and Victor beautifully matched melancholy with mirthful when they laid their sober soliloquy over a sanguine score.

Because of the duo’s impeccable harmonies and carefully-layered instrumentation, I feel “Year of the Young” is poised to become Smith & Thell’s best-seller to date, and most likely because of the date.

2020 has indeed been a tumultuous year with its share of sorrow. Although unintentional -- considering over one-million human lives have been taken worldwide by COVID-19 -- this song will most likely take-on an additional, more encompassing meaning and will hopefully help a lot of families through similar hardships.

“This year we lost more than we can count, the ashes we laid in the ground. Oh, this was the year of the young. This year we look up towards the sun, and wonder where everyone's gone. Oh, this was the year of the young…”