Jacob Sullenger -better known professionally as JAWNY- has become a megastar within the indie pop community accumulating over one billion streams. JAWNY was born in the Bay Arena and raised in Philadelphia, but it was at the age of six when JAWNY fell in love with music when he first picked up a guitar after watching his dad jam to the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few. At thirteen, JAWNY began making beats with his brother, landing collaborations with rappers on SoundCloud. In his early twenties, he began writing his own songs and created a furor online with his debut EP -while under the moniker of Johnny Utah. Following up on his success, he released a handful of arousing singles. In 2020, JAWNY struck pen to paper and signed with Interscope Records and shortly after, he released his esteemed mixtape, For Abby (2020) and EP, The Story of Hugo (2021).
JAWNY is surely on a collision course for a successful music career, turning heads around every single corner with every project and tour he embarks on. JAWNY has readied his latest project, his long-awaited debut full-length studio album, It's Never Fair, Always True, out on March 3, 2023, via Interscope Records. It's Never Fair, Always True will feature thirteen exciting tunes full of ambitious arrangements and blistering rock junctures. JAWNY's debut album is a capricious and restless thrill that pursues all the twists and turns life and love offer up. It's Never Fair, Always True will feature the so far released singles "strawberry chainsaw," "wide eyed," "adios," "true," "fall in love," and "take it back" -which additionally features the musician Beck who contributed both vocals and guitar to the track- and is rounded out with seven never before heard tracks.
On It's Never Fair, Always True, JAWNY has grown tremendously as a musician since the start. With maturity as a human has come maturity in his songwriting. Additionally, things he's interested in over time change too. "I feel like For Abby to The Story of Hugo, I have always felt like there's always been some sort of change. Whether I intended for it or not, I just think I'm growing every day as a human; getting older, so my tastes change and things I'm interested in writing change," He shares. "Music is always changing too. There's always new songs -like 17,000 songs go out a day or a week, or something like that. So I'm always hearing new melodies, new chord progressions, new genres, some form of new songwriting." Another massive shift for JAWNY was signing to Interscope in 2020. Now having a couple of massively successful projects with the record label, the label has put a lot of trust into JAWNY, granting him to be as ambitious and more unpredictable than ever with his talents, which has resulted in making the record of his dreams. "I have had my back against the wall for the last couple of years. I was always making music in the means of what I had. Now I have this opportunity with a big label like Interscope -the number one record label in the world- that was giving me funding and said go make the record you always wanted to make," JAWNY reminisces. "So, the thing I always brought up to my collaborators, I wanted to make the dream record that I wish I could have made at seventeen or eighteen, that I didn't have the ability to, the funds, the time, the connections. How could I, at eighteen, have got a whole string orchestra on a song? It would have been virtually impossible, I was just a fry cook essentially."
Pushing his songwriting further than he has on prior releases, he also wanted to change his sound a bit on It's Never Fair, Always True to bring some of his roots into the mix. "I also wanted to mix in the roots I've had as a teenager that I feel I never fully put into my music all the way until this point," he expresses. It's Never Fair, Always True is half the "silly" tracks JAWNY puts out, but on the second half of It's Never Fair, Always True showcases an undeniably serious and profound side of JAWNY that doesn't always get shown to his fans and listeners. "At the same time, on the second half of the record showing a little bit more of the serious side of my songwriting and how I can write some more beautiful, serious, meaningful, emotional songs. But also having them both exist in the same project in a cohesive way. Where you start super happy, super tongue in cheek, super indie, super fun, and then somehow, by the last song, you've somehow gotten to the saddest place you ever possibly get to as a human. And it all makes sense. There's a throughline narrative," he reveals.
When it comes to JAWNY's eyeball-grabbing song titles -and he has a few- he never really knows how he's going to write a song, and sometimes it results in a some intriguing song names by doing so. "I never really know how I'm going to write a song. ["strawberry chainsaw"] just came from writing that in my notes. I had no other context of the song. I didn't know it was going to be a love song; I didn't know what I was going to write. I just thought those two words sound cool together. Sometimes that can end up being the track name," JAWNY illustrates. "By saying all that, in some weird way, I've consistently just had weird, interesting [Laughs] song title names, and maybe that will keep going, and maybe it won't. Maybe at some point, they'll be normal, and maybe more people will listen to them. For now, they've been a little kooky and wild. Not on purpose, but I'm not mad at it. I think they're cool," he admits.
The most important thing JAWNY hopes for with his debut album is that the songs can strike a chord with everyone and offer something up for every mood you're in or whatever type of situation you may be struggling with. "So with this album specifically, I feel like it goes down a couple different paths...I hope that I have a song for whatever mood someone is in that day or for whatever someone is going through," he confesses. "If someone is happy, having a good time and really want to stay on that wavelength, I hope I have something that can resonate with that. Or if I have somebody who might be going through something romantically or a heartbreak or like mourning a death, or a loss of anything really -a loss of a job even. I hope there's something in there that's conveyed enough emotion that someone can listen to it and relate to it and can get something out of it." After a busy 2022 of touring, which included supporting tour slots with the wildly popular acts Beck and Oliver Tree, JAWNY will once again hit the road in March when he kicks off his, It's Never Fair, Always True headlining tour with rising indie-pop artist Wallice supporting. The tour kicks off on March 3, 2023, in San Diego. The much-anticipated tour will include stops in Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, and more. You can find a full list of dates below - you can find info and purchase tickets here and you can presave It's Never Fair, Always True here.
Friday, March 3 - San Diego, CA
Saturday, March 4 - Los Angeles, CA
Tuesday, March 7 - San Francisco, CA
Thursday, March 9 - Seattle, WA Friday, March 10 - Vancouver, BC
Saturday, March 11 - Portland, OR
Monday, March 13 - Salt Lake City, UT
Tuesday, March 14 - Denver, CO
Thursday, March 16 - Minneapolis, MN
Friday, March 17 - Chicago, IL
Saturday, March 18 - Detroit, MI
Monday, March 20 - Cleveland, OH
Tuesday, March 21 - Toronto, ON Wednesday, March 22 - Montreal, QC
Friday, March 24 - Boston, MA
Saturday, March 25 - Philadelphia, PA Wednesday, March 29 - Brooklyn, NY
Friday, March 31 - New York, NY
Saturday, April 1- Washington D.C.
Monday, April 3 - Camboro, NC
Tuesday, April 4 - Atlanta, GA
Thursday, April 6 - Houston, TX
Friday, April 7 - Dallas, TX
Saturday, April 8 - Austin, TX
Monday, April 10 - Santa Fe, NM
Wednesday, April 12 - Phoenix, AZ