FEATURING
s h i n e by Tobias Jesso Jr., released by R&R in 2025. Listen
TRANSCRIPT
Most of the album is like this: quiet and delicate, just a piano man at his piano, recorded so closely that you can hear the air in the room, the creaks of the chair, the rise and fall of the piano's pedals. It's an intimate affair. Yet as much as I love this, I actually want to talk about the one song on this record that's not this way, that's loud and energetic and a brisk two minutes, so I better talk fast.
This song hooks me from its very first notes. And it never lets up – with each passing measure I feel myself falling deeper into its spell. And it couldn't be simpler: it's still just a piano man at his piano. But the production this time is almost claustrophobic, as if the musician's been shut up in a too small room, where every burst of volume reverberates and ricochets off the walls, like they're trying to break free. The whole song has this propulsive energy, as it builds and builds up to its inevitable eruption: a yawping chorus, set over new and thunderous chords – and then, it all dissipates, as quickly as it appeared.
And then, like any good pop song, we now do the whole thing over again: one more time through the verse and the chorus and then a final post-chorus and then we're done. It's like a distillation of pop songwriting, and part of what I love about it is that potency, how it manages to squeeze so much into such a small space, just like the production makes the song sound.
But it also does this other thing that never gets old: it's describing a feeling that the music itself creates in the listener. Because when I hear this song, I'm hypnotized, and I know exactly what the singer means.
