Q&A: JAWNY Knows His Luck
YOU MIGHT KNOW HIM FOR HIS CATCHY SUMMERY VIRAL HIT, or his rock headbangers, if not for his gritty collaboration with Beck. Twenty-six-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer Jacob Lee-Nicholas Sullenger’s falsetto vocals echoed through speakers everywhere with his hit “Honeypie” released in 2019 achieving generous virality. Now, after a wild run of tours, collaboration and releases ranging multiple different sounds, he releases another sweet and lovey pop song.
“strawberry chainsaw” reflects the butterfly-and-nausea-inducing stages of a love, where one day feels like flowers and the next one feels like knives. In the song, however, he sees the fun in falling in love, with all its complicated and layered feelings.
“Strawberry chainsaw you treat / One day you’re harsh and then you’re sweet / That’s okay, that’s fine with me”
It feels like crushing in the summertime and having fun with all the big emotions that come along with romantic endeavors. With a simple, repetitive guitar strum pattern and a happy, upbeat melody reminiscent of early-2000s cheesy-but-enderaing coming-of-age teen movie soundtracks, the song is guaranteed to get stuck in your head, or at least put you in a cheerful mood.
The happy-emotions-filled single release comes after a string of lucky strikes for JAWNY. Telling stories of hectic tours, online virality, and fulfilling connections, the singer appreciates every step that has led him to this moment in his career. He knows his luck, and he shows it by maintaining high spirits in as many situations as he can, even while struggling with exhausting routines or not-so-great days.
Whether it is the up-and-down’s of love or the ones of tour, he maintains the positivity that sold his hit song to the masses in the first place.
Read below to learn more about his musical journey, his experiences touring, and the new single “strawberry chainsaw”.
LUNA: Let’s go straight into the basics. How did you start out in music?
SULLENGER: My dad was always playing the guitar around the house, my mom always had music on, and I always wanted to pick up the guitar and play it. And that's like my earliest memory. I started doing music, like producing on my computer, when I was around 13. At first, I just wanted to be a producer and around like 19, or 20, I was like, “I think I'm gonna try to write the songs on the guitar and mix it in with my seven, eight years of production knowledge as a and see what I can do”, and then everything kind of snowballed from there. And the rest was history. I was kind of like a Twitter guy, I just had a little following on Twitter for some reason, for being funny. I wasn't even a music guy, and I just uploaded it on SoundCloud and put it on my Twitter and it kind of just all snowballed from there and then I became less of an internet funny guy and I was looked at more as a musician over the years, and now I feel like no one even remembers that I was ever a Twitter funny guy. They just think I'm a musician. And that's dope. I've tricked the whole world.
LUNA: How did you transition from just wanting to be a producer to being the one singing and writing the lyrics?
SULLENGER: I don't know when there was a monumental moment or anything like a real parting of the seas. I was like, “Wait a minute, I've been writing songs on the guitar my whole life I play the all these instruments, I play bass and the drums and the guitar and the keyboard and piano, I know how to produce.” I knew how to produce enough to make a song and structure it out, and I knew how to engineer because I had engineered my friends. And I was like, “why have I not thought to just like, put it all together?” At first, it was just purely for fun. I never thought anyone would ever want to follow me or be a part of anything that I made for myself. Then I put out one song and it got on a Spotify playlist, and I got on SoundCloud, it was blown up, and I put out another song. It was like the same result. And then it's, it's human nature to get kind of a high from it, so I kind of kept chasing that feeling. It was like a runner's high. Like, people like what I'm doing, I'm gonna keep doing it. And then I have never done anything else since then for the last five years now.
LUNA: Do you still get that runner’s high?
SULLENGER: Yeah, all the time. I never don't have it every time I put a song out, or every time I make a new song. It's never gone away. Even other people's music gives me a runner's high sometimes; like, recently when I heard Joji’s “Glimpse of Us” for the first time like a month and a half ago, I got like that runner's high. It excites me that someone made this beautiful art, and it's not like a super shiny, polished pop song, but it's like number one right now in the world. Like, I don't even know this dude, or have any connection to it, but I get a runner's high from how beautiful this art is, and seeing all these people love it. It gives me goosebumps.
LUNA: Have you always had that love for music growing up?
SULLENGER: I would say so for sure. Since I was a kid, I remember being in the back of my mom's car with a little Walkman and imagining myself performing these songs. That's like my earliest memory ever as a kid. That kind of stuff never went away either. That still exists up there and my big, dumb brain. Crazy stuff. The brain wants what it wants. And now here I am all these years later, and I get to do it for real. That's awesome.
LUNA: What type of music did you listen to growing up?
SULLENGER: My mom would be bumping Barbra Streisand in the car. Then I have like “Feel Good Inc.” by Gorillaz blasting in my ears. Also, Eminem. Mariah Carey, Weezer, Green Day. I was obsessed with Green Day when I was a kid. That's a good little list to start because I can keep doing that all day.
LUNA: You recently released a song with Beck, who you’ve quoted as one of your inspirations. How was that process for you?
SULLENGER: Beck is a big inspiration of mine. Almost like a hero of mine in a way of someone that can continuously go against the grain, but make the art that he wants to make, and it still, paid the bills, just always making weird, crazy experimental stuff that wasn't ever like the time. I like to just make art that I like and care about and not necessarily what reflects what's like, popular in the world at the moment. I just admire their lengthy career that they've had all the way up until this point, it is still continuing spanning over like 30 years. And then have a full circle moment where I get actually to make a song with him, and then the song coming out and me getting out to go on tour with him and stuff. It was all like really crazy, full circle. Life moments for me. He's a cool guy, and I appreciate all the love and support he's given me and my music and he’s given me the cosign because he's one of the greats. To someone like me and to a lot of people, I am so stoked to be able to call him an acquaintance of mine and a friend.
LUNA: How did you feel during that experience?
SULLENGER: I mean, it's a tour, so it felt like a whirlwind, obviously. You're traveling, and you're packing, you're going on stage, and you’re sound-checking, and you're getting on, and you're loading off, and you're loading back. It's not like you get to hang out. It’s not like a movie, but I felt like in certain moments, like awesome, obviously, you know, like if I'm on stage, doing a show and I'm like, wow, like I'm opening for Beck right now, I was just stoked to be there. I didn't really care about anything else other than getting to be there.
LUNA: How are you preparing to go on tour with Oliver Tree?
SULLENGER: Honestly, transparently, not doing anything because I haven't really had a day off. I just got back from a tour a couple of weeks ago, but me and my team have just been working hard and pulling all the strings and getting things set up for some of these releases. I'm just preparing, like mentally for another little run, but it's gonna be a good time because I'm going on tour with my buddy Oliver. He's a beast, and his fans are great. And he's great. So we're gonna have a hell of a time.
LUNA: Let’s talk about the new song “strawberry chainsaw”. How did it come to be?
SULLENGER: It was a song that I wrote actually in the room that I'm sitting in right now. In North Hollywood, I have a studio here and we were sitting around just writing a song, on guitar, and the next day, when I came in, I was listening to everything back. We kind of just started piecing together this song that I started writing all the lyrics to. I sat on it for a night and I couldn't get the idea out of my head. I couldn't scratch the itch so I came in again, the next day, kind of rearranged everything out and wrote the whole song and recorded it all then. The subject matter is kind of just talking about love. It can be friggin awesome, but it can also be crazy at the same time. It's this wild, crazy beautiful thing and “strawberry chainsaw” is the idea that one day, being in love can be harsh, but then one day it can also be sweet. Just two polar opposite things like a chainsaw and strawberry. It's a cool song and I really like it. I definitely pulled from some of my influences that we talked about earlier. I think people are really gonna enjoy it.
LUNA: What do you think is the most different and unexpected song you could put out today?
SULLENGER: For me, I think it'd be pretty fucking crazy and unexpected if I put out a country album. I feel like that would be the most unexpected thing. I don't think anyone would expect that. I don't think I ever will do that, because I have no intention whatsoever. No offense to the country folks, but I think that'd be pretty damn unexpected.
LUNA: What direction do you hope to push your sound moving forward?
SULLENGER: I don't even know if there really is a set compass needle direction, because I feel like every song I write it's like different than the other one is almost a different genre than the other one. But I would hope just altogether that I'm trending upwards. I hope it connects with people the same way, so let's go up, keep going forward. I can't really pick a genre, like every song is different. “Honeypie” is different from “Trigger of Love” and “Trigger of Love” is different from “Anything You Want”. I'm taken aback, like every song could almost be by different artists because they're all literally that different from each other. I don't really know what direction I'm going in sonically, because it's kind of all over the place — but it's going upwards. I know that.
LUNA: Absolutely, and “Honeypie” had a really viral moment like two years ago now. Looking back, how would you say your career has changed since then?
SULLENGER: It started going off in 2019 and then a year later it had an even bigger moment, and then in 2021, in the summertime, it had an even bigger moment, no one even really actually knows this. I didn't post about it that much in 2021, last year, but it beat every record that has ever beat in 2019, or 2020, like three years later. And then it went gold because of that. It's this wonderful, beautiful, happy little gift that keeps on giving. I can't even say a happy accident, because I knew when I made that song that it was freaking awesome, and I wanted to give it to the world. I hoped that the world would think it was awesome, too; and it did. It's changed my life in so many ways, but it continuously keeps changing my life because every time I think it's done, it gives us another gift. I don't regret it for a moment. It's only allowed me to continue to make art that I like to make in a comfortable space, and I always know that I'm gonna have food on the table and that my lights are gonna be on and that's really all I can ask for. it's allowed me to meet so many people that I've connected with. That's just a gift I'll never be able to repay anybody for.
LUNA: How do you approach writing hooks? They're usually so catchy and fun like with “Honeypie” and also with “strawberry chainsaw”.
SULLENGER: I don't even have a long-winded answer. I really just chase what gets me excited. I don't approach it any differently. I try not to overthink it. I just write something about my head that makes me feel good, and I don't overthink it. I don't overthink the lyrics, I don't try to sound smarter than I am, I don't try to make it sound pretentious. I'll continue to do that for the rest of my life. Because it is the music I love ,and I'm gonna keep making it.
LUNA: Finally, if you had to describe your sound in general, in three words, what would they be?
SULLENGER: Love, boy, pop.
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