10 lyrics that prove Julia Jacklin is the best contemporary indie songwriter
No one gets women in their 20s quite like Julia Jacklin does. Since putting out her debut record, Don’t Let the Kids Win, in 2016, the Australian songwriter has become one of the most familiar voices in indie folk, delivering soundscapes marked by soft snares and strums. But the aching vulnerability and authenticity of her lyrics set her apart from the rest and endear her to so many.
Jacklin now has three full-length albums to her name, each of them expanding the scope of her songwriting. She’s charted love and loss, grief and growth, sex and spirituality, covering nearly every facet of the human experience with unwavering sensitivity and big sisterly comfort. Her writing is poetic but never inaccessible, like diary entries that have been afforded just a few extra drafts.
The Aussie songwriter demonstrates her prowess in every composition she creates, and lyrical beauty can easily be found by merely shuffling her artist profile, making it a difficult task to pick out her best lyrics. Still, we’ve picked out ten of her most considered sonic contemplations to prove that she’s the ultimate contemporary indie lyricist.
From lyrical laments about mother/daughter relationships to ruminations on sex in the modern dating scene, find our list of ten lyrics that prove Julia Jacklin is the best contemporary indie songwriter below.
The 10 brilliant Julia Jacklin lyrics:
‘Be Careful With Yourself’
“Please stop smoking, want your life to last a long time
If you don’t stop smoking, I’ll have to start, shorten mine”.
One of Jacklin’s most tender offerings, ‘Be Careful With Yourself,’ is a love song that finds the songwriter begging her partner to take care of themselves. Though the piece is dominated by practicalities such as savings accounts and doctors’ appointments, it’s a truly authentic portrait of love and care, one which finds lyrical beauty from its opening moments.
Playful but purposeful, Jacklin asks her lover to stop smoking, her explanation being that she wants the two of them to live long lives together. If they can’t, she resolves to simply join them to shorten her own life. It’s the kind of thing you might casually say to a loved one, half joking, half not, in a shrugged attempt to get them to quit, but a request underscored by real care for them and a bid for them to understand your side.
‘Body’
“I remembered early days, when you took my camera,
Turned to me, 23, naked on your bed, looking straight at you,
Do you still have that photograph? Would you use it to hurt me?
Well, I guess it’s just my life, and it’s just my body”.
Forming the opening to her sophomore record Crushing, ‘Body’ is a track that instantly stuns. It sees Jacklin venture into a more narratively focused territory. We follow her as she leaves behind a lover who made her into someone she didn’t like, heading to the city to get her body back. The song also notes the power her partner possesses over her body even after her departure, the potential they still have to hurt her.
In the second verse, Jacklin details the intimacies of her former relationship, the naked photos her partner once had of her and potentially still has. “Do you still have that photograph? Would you use it to hurt me?” she asks, nerves and doubt characterising her questions. “Well, I guess it’s just my life, and it’s just my body,” she shrugs. It’s a sarcastic diminishment of the importance of her partner’s answers to those questions or an attempted reclamation.
‘Don’t Let The Kids Win’
“And I’ve got a feeling that this won’t ever change,
We’re gonna keep on getting older, it’s gonna keep on feeling strange”.
An earlier entry into Jacklin’s catalogue, ‘Don’t Let The Kids Win’ was the lead single and titular track for the songwriter’s 2016 debut. The piece immediately demonstrated her prowess, particularly her cathartic and contemplative tendencies. She discusses ageing and changing, delivering advice on how to treat your family and friends while they’re still around.
She summarises these feelings in one refrain throughout the song. “I’ve got a feeling that this won’t ever change,” she sings, “We’re gonna keep on getting older, it’s gonna keep on feeling strange.” There’s a sort of unwilling acceptance in her words, an acknowledgement that things might never feel right, but they’re going to happen anyway.
‘Head Alone’
“So I’ll say it til he understands,
You can love somebody without using your hands”.
‘Head Alone’ finds Jacklin contemplating experiences of dating once more, either making a case for love without physicality or discussing the effects of abuse, depending on interpretation. Throughout the song, she reclaims her body, declares her wishes not to be touched all the time, and shares her own non-conditional, non-physical love. As it comes to an end, she encapsulates her feelings on the topic into one phrase.
“So I’ll say it til he understands,” she declares unflinchingly, “You can love somebody without using your hands”. The line could be interpreted as a commentary on abuse or simply a statement about love that isn’t dependent on sex and physical touch. Her words are definitive and final, and she’s willing to repeat them as many times as it takes for men to understand.
‘Ignore Tenderness’
“Beneath the sheets, you’re just a cave, a plastic bucket or a grave,
Who said, ‘You’re not what you get, you are what you gave away’?”
Few songs have captured trepidation towards modern sex quite like ‘Ignore Tenderness’. The track finds Jacklin struggling with the expectations of the act against her Catholic upbringing, the entire piece playing out the conflict between the two. She’s trapped between shrugged-off descriptions of rough sex and warnings to stay away from sex entirely, the clash between the two never quite allowing her to land somewhere in the middle to embrace tenderness.
One of the stand-out lyrics comes in the chorus, as Jacklin encompasses the unloving and uncaring version of sex espoused by both of these ideologies. Beneath the sheets, she suggests, women become merely more than a cave, a plastic bucket, or a grave before being shunned for supposedly giving something away. “Ignore the tenderness you crave,” she sings later in the song ironically. Really, she’s encouraging the opposite.
‘Less of a Stranger’
“Sometimes I wonder, do I intimidate her?
Do my questions and my pain take like skin to a razor?”
‘Less of a Stranger’ is a minimal track, instrumentally, accompanying Jacklin’s voice with a singular acoustic guitar. This only brings her words further to the forefront as she contemplates the inevitable disconnect between mother and daughter. She longs to know her mother in the wild, as a friend might, and for her mother to know her in the same way, but she knows this can never be their reality.
The song is littered with beautiful and devastating ruminations on the topic, finding Jacklin comparing her looks to her father and her personality to her mother, wondering if she does the same. But perhaps the most striking lyric comes in the final moments, as Jacklin wonders if she intimidates her with her questions and pain.
‘Love, Try Not To Let Go’
“The echo of that party, the night I lost my voice,
The silence that surrounds it no longer feels like a choice,
I need you to believe me when I say I find it hard
To keep myself from floating away, I will try not to let go”.
Jacklin doesn’t long for a lost love or a lost relative on ‘Love, Try Not To Let Go’. Rather, she longs to return to a place. The echo of her hometown haunts her, the things she never said to those she left behind, the insurmountable distance between them. She remembers a party, a night she lost her voice, which she compares to the silence that now defines her relationship with her hometown.
“The silence that surrounds it no longer feels like a choice,” she sings, “I need you to believe me when I say I find it hard to keep myself from floating away.” It’s a feeling anyone who has moved away from home will be familiar with, an inevitable floating away from that place and the people in it, no matter how hard you try to keep contact.
‘Lydia Wears A Cross’
“I’d be a believer, if it was all just song and dance,
I’d be a believer, if I thought we had a chance”.
Jacklin tackles religion once more on ‘Lydia Wears A Cross’, the opening track to her third full-length offering, Pre-Pleasure. The track follows its titular character through prayer and parade floats, as Jacklin herself considers religion and spirituality. In the chorus, she declares, “I’d be a believer if it was all just song and dance, I’d be a believer if I thought we had a chance.”
The words demonstrate Jacklin’s gradual movement away from religion in her adult life but her longing to believe as she once did. Perhaps if religion was distilled down to choral hymns and community, or if the world wasn’t in such a wreck, she could believe once more.
‘Too In Love To Die’
“I’m too in love to die, if this plane were to go down
Surely the love I feel for him, would soften the ground”.
On ‘Too In Love To Die’, we find Jacklin in the throes of devotion and adoration. Her feelings are so strong, in fact, that she believes they will save her from death. Throughout the song, she defies the powers that be, the cars that roam the highway, and a falling flight, all thanks to the sheer strength of her love. “It’s love like this that keeps us alive,” she sings.
This motif spawns from the very beginning of the piece, as Jacklin declares herself too in love to die, affirming, “If this plane were to go down, surely the love I feel for him would soften the ground.” Despite the terrifying image she presents, the soft strength of her love is there to save her, and the song continues to swing between these heights for the rest of its runtime.
‘When The Family Flies In’
“You know it’s bad when the family flies in, working bees back to the hive
You know it’s bad when the family flies in, just to stand by your side”.
‘When The Family Flies In’ sees Jacklin tackle an entirely new topic. Rather than lamenting the loss of love, she laments the loss of life entirely. The emotionally decimating song tracks the first stages of grief, from a muffled phone call in a Corolla to a flight home to be with the family. It emphasises the simultaneous sadness and strength in the latter, particularly in the chorus.
“You know it’s bad when the family flies in, working bees back to the hive,” she sings, reflecting on the hard work that grief takes to overcome. “You know it’s bad when the family flies in,” Jacklin echoes, “Just to stand by your side.” Her words replicate that feeling that’s impossible to shake at a funeral, a universal sadness but a gratitude for the presence and support of those surrounding you.
