Q&A: At the “parking lot” With Just Kids
VISITING “WAY BACK WHEN” — can be daunting. For singer-songwriter and producer Rachel Still, the pandemic brought a return to her childhood home in the suburbs of London. Stopping at an old parking lot during her stay, she wrote Just Kids’ aptly named new release, “parking lot.”
Just Kids, a duo composed of Still and drummer/producer Maxie Cheer, have received praise from BBC Music Introducing on their latest rock meditation on aging and renewal. Through back-and-forth imagery, from childhood to adulthood, “parking lot” captures 10 years of change and growing up: “See what’s changed, I hear you ask / Now I’m holding a photograph of me, sitting in the back of the cab looking at my feet.”
Holding it all together is an electric guitar that alternately booms and soothes throughout the song. Cheer’s drumming erupts in the chorus, creating a broad, introspective atmosphere as if expanding the parking lot itself. The explosive chorus brings passionate sensations like angst and fear, while Still’s lyrics maintain a grounding feeling in the present perspective, balancing nostalgia with reality: “I know it’s never the same as way back when / Ten years came and went, my friend / I won’t let you down again.” The track is a balance of mournful and hopeful, an excellent image of growing up.
“I started going out during late summer evenings trying to learn [skateboarding],” Still shares on the inspiration behind the song. “The best place to do that was a parking lot outside of my old infant school. It was weird, it was like, ‘Here’s this place you were every day when you were a kid. Now somehow you’re in your mid-twenties and you’re only just getting the confidence to figure out who you are.’ I used to roll around that parking lot listening to Blink-182 like I always wanted to do when I was 16 but never did. Then I came home one day and wrote this.”
Read on below for our discussion on “parking lot” with Still.
LUNA: “Parking lot” is a self-produced track that was first demoed by you during the pandemic. What was the process like coming together with Maxie to finalize the song and now releasing it a few years after the pandemic first started?
STILL: It’s funny because we have had “parking lot” knocking around for a very long time. We first played it together the same day I showed it to Maxie in a rehearsal room in Brighton. That was the first time we’d been in a room playing music together since the start of the pandemic, and we were just reconnecting and bouncing ideas around. Then it just went onto this pile of songs we had. I don’t really know why, because it’s actually now one of my favorite songs we’ve produced together.
Sometimes it’s special when that happens, though — it’s like discovering an old photo album you forgot you had when you relisten and realize you’ve got a song worth working on. We ended up doing an acoustic version first, and I was playing it live acoustically then a few friends who heard it mentioned they liked it. So we tracked the drums and went from there. Our friend Cicely Balston at Air Studios mastered it and she absolutely brought it to life. I think it’s funny that the song is essentially about time passing you by and how it can run loops around you sometimes, and then we ended up doing the very same thing to the song itself.
LUNA: The song is more guitar-driven than your previous releases. It is reminiscent of the rock bands a lot of people connect to in their youth. Did writing about your teen years have an effect on the sound?
STILL: One hundred percent. I don’t often sit down with a sound in mind, but this song was an anomaly. I really wanted to represent the music I grew up with in my teens. It’s funny that the lyrics ended up so nostalgic towards that same time too — that’s probably no accident. Although, the full sentiment I feel in the song now was definitely from a subconscious place at the time I first wrote it. I was listening to all the music that got me through my teens, Blink-182 and Green Day especially. It’s hilarious because I presented Maxie with this awful MIDI drum loop trying to be Travis Barker and they’ve somehow kept some elements from that and turned it into this amazing, driving beat.
LUNA: The actual parking lot in the song is an interesting temporal space. It stays the same 10 years on, but you return to it with a new perspective about your previous interests and experiences as a teen. When it comes to music, do you have any albums or songs that similarly stay the same but bring you new memories when you return to them?
STILL: That’s an excellent question, and I think you’ve really summed up the imagery and meaning of the song very well by asking it. I think that is actually how I measure my favorite music over time. If I am able to come back to something and it has grown with me but somehow also stayed the same, then it’s going on the all-time favorites list. Some examples are “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, “Atlantic City” by Bruce Springsteen, “Jesus of Suburbia” by Green Day, “Dammit” by Blink-182, the whole of I,I by Bon Iver, “I Luv the Valley OH!” by Xiu Xiu, “Delete Forever” by Grimes, “People Have the Power” by Patti Smith, “Stay (Faraway, So Close)” by U2, and pretty much anything by Foo Fighters or Buddy Holly.
LUNA: The first line of the song is “I think I finally found my name written in the dirt of the parking lot where I got dropped off when I was young.” The idea of finding one’s name is layered here. Could you tell us more about the opening lyric?
STILL: Sure thing. I often really don’t like my opening lyrics. I think I put too much weight on them being good and it all gets very complex. But I actually wrote this straight away and never challenged it. It was the starting block for the track. I love metaphors … sometimes perhaps a bit too much. I think as a writer you can quickly lose the meaning when you layer something with too much meaning. It’s almost a paradox, because actually I think the more specific you go the more people can relate to it. For example, if you just generically write about being sad, weirdly less people see themselves in it than if you write about what made you, specifically, sad. By being very honest, real human emotion is more tangible to an outsider. I think this line is a simple reflection of self-worth and self-confidence smashed into the perspective of looking back to when you were a child, and all the nuanced and complex emotions [that reflection] can draw up.
LUNA: We become familiar with time passing by us and often need to accept it, otherwise we’d be constantly overwhelmed. One of the lyrics in the songs, however, depicts the blunt reality: “I never know what to say when you hear the news come in, your heroes dying.” When returning to once-familiar places, do you feel a sense of loss?
STILL: I totally agree that acceptance of time is so valuable and a healthy practice. It’s funny because I’d never expect that lyric to throw up such a question, but now that you’ve asked it I really see that side to it. I personally am a very nostalgic and sentimental person, so I often do feel a sense of loss when returning somewhere familiar. That being said, I’m really trying to challenge that narrative as I grow older, as you do experience loss more often the longer you live and the more people you love. This song actually started as a reaction to a news article, but it grew into so much more.
I came home from rolling around a parking lot on my skateboard one night listening to Blink-182 and was met with the news that Mark Hoppus was seriously unwell. It really stunned me. The idea that people who you thought were immortal, just because you first knew of them when you felt immortal too, are not. It was a finality I hadn’t yet confronted much, in myself or others.
LUNA: Can listeners expect to hear the song live at any upcoming shows?
STILL: Definitely! We’ve been playing it live this summer and will be announcing some autumn shows very soon. It’s one of our favorites to play live so it’ll be in the set for sure.
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