Tobias Jesso Jr.
“Hollywood”
Digital Single
The world needs another piano ballad about how tough it is to make it in Hollywood about as much as Hollywood needs another cheap, shitty vintage store. That said, the Vancouver songwriter’s poignant break-up ballad with the city rings a little deeper than most, thanks to both his firsthand experience of not making it and his deft ability to stay close to his timeless source material (John Lennon, Randy Newman) without letting it overpower his own. Songs like this and the gorgeous, can’t-miss, “True Love,” feel like the work of a young artist still sifting through his early influences and searching for his own voice. And, when the early “figuring it out” phase yields these kind of results, it’s hard not to get excited about where he could go from here.
