Essential Album: Jensen McRae - Are You Happy Now?

Content Warning: This article mentions sexual violence, mental health, and discrimination.

Up-and-coming singer-songwriter Jensen McRae is one of the most exciting and prominent black voices in the folk-pop scene. McRae is from a black-Jewish background, and explores themes of race and gender in her music. Comparable to the likes of Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell, her works explore the complexities of youth, womanhood and hypersensitivity. Her haunting voice and cathartic lyricism creates a saccharine listening experience. Here are some of my favourite songs from her 2022 debut album Are You Happy Now?.

Her haunting voice and cathartic lyricism creates a saccharine listening experience

One of my favourite songs from McRae is entitled ‘Adam’s Ribs’. The track retells the biblical story of the garden of Eden, exploring Eve’s banishment from paradise. Poignant and heart-wrenching, this song explores codependency in the most extreme form: quite literally being made of someone else, ‘You break, it makes me bloom / It’s like I’m made of you’. The song also touches on modern ideas about heartbreak- a sense of being so interconnected with someone that you simply cannot let them go, ‘This love letter begins / To Adam from your ribs’.

She validates and unforgivingly expresses feminine emotion by discussing how heartbreak alters individuals: ‘This heartbreak quietly rewired me / My world is ending now / Don’t tell me to calm down’. McRae refers to ideas about religious guilt and repressed sexual desire by alluding to, and arguably criticising, the experience of growing up in an orthodox religious environment. Spending my adolescence in a similar environment myself, I particularly love McRae’s insightful perspectives on this classic biblical tale.

McRae poignantly encompasses feelings of vulnerability and danger…

Another beautifully sad song on this album is ‘Wolves’. Its simple electric guitar instrumental backs a tragic recount of assault at the hands of the “wolves”. It discusses the looming fear of the violence that women experience throughout their lives, ‘Though I got away / I never walked the same / Now I bury my smile and show no interest / Now I carry myself a little different’. McRae poignantly encompasses feelings of vulnerability and danger, whilst also touching on ideas about victim-blaming: ‘Why did I ever trust a fox? / I ignored all of my teachings / How I survived I can’t believe’. Her emotive vocals and harrowing lyrics delicately express a frighteningly universal experience.

The track has a nostalgic quality, encompassing the self-reflection that makes McRae’s work so excellent

‘Machines’ is another track that offers an exploration of hypersensitivity and mental illness. McRae depicts a loss of the past in the lines ‘I found wings in my attic / One more superpower I’ve outgrown’. The track describes the feeling of being unable to shake your sadness, and the ways in which depression debilitates its victims, ‘Oh, I can’t sleep this one off / Now I know that I bleed months’.

She reflects on religion and the concept of humanity, implying that God and humanity are one in the same, ‘I think I saw God in the bathroom / Some pretty girl was holding her hair back’. The track has a nostalgic quality, encompassing the self-reflection that makes McRae’s work so excellent. If you like Taylor Swift’s Folklore, this track is sure to be another favourite.

McRae’s emotive vocals only add to this, creating a beautiful and insightful listening experience

Finally, I want to discuss ‘White Boy’, one of McRae’s most emotionally vulnerable songs. It focuses on racism and relationships by highlighting the inner turmoil and conflict people of colour experience when dating interracially. The song tragically discusses how McRae’s own identity is moulded and impacted by her romantic interactions.

The opening line ‘Now my hair smells like smoke / Something’s burning, I don’t know what it is’ creates an image of decay as a result of this toxic relationship. The song balances the reclaiming of control, ‘I don’t owe you anything / I am learning not to sing for you’, with a romantic desire to please ‘If I stand down, If I bleed / If I am what you ask me to be / White boy, what will you make of me?’. It describes the universal feeling of losing one’s self within a romantic relationship, but also highlights the added complexity of interaciality within these relationships, particularly when one partner is more socially privileged than the other.

McRae’s intense feelings for the song’s subject is counter-acted by her anger at the systems that undermine her ‘Passion play, almost biblical / White girl arrives, I turn invisible’. Social expectations impact and influence her behaviour, but McRae actively recognises this, ‘Twirl my hair, watch my voice jump the octave / I don’t like who I am for you, White boy’. This track discusses a feeling that many people struggle to vocalise, emphasising the ways in which relationships are complicated by social factors. McRae’s emotive vocals only add to this, creating a beautiful and insightful listening experience.