April 10 — “Somewhere in Your Heart” by Jessica Lea Mayfield

Jessica Lea Mayfield

If you only listen to one song today, make it “Somewhere In Your Heart” by Jessica Lea Mayfield (2011, from the album Tell Me).
Jessica Lea Mayfield is a 22-year old singer/songwriter from Kent, Ohio. To date, she’s released two critically acclaimed albums of Americana/alt country/indie-folk music. I won’t make predictions about her career path, but I’m guessing that she’ll still be making great records 15 years from now.

I don’t mean this as a slight on her, but her story is something that you would expect to see on a made-for-teevee movie. She was raised on a tour bus, performing in a bluegrass band with her family. They moved from Ohio to Tennessee, but the tour bus was their home. She was home schooled, and as she explains in her Nonesuch Records bio, “My parents made a point not to let school get in the way of my education”. At the age of eleven, she got her brother to teach her a few chords on the guitar. She learned quickly and started writing her own songs. A few years later, she started playing with her brother at open mic nights. When she was just 15, she made a bedroom recording EP. Somehow, one of the copies of that landed in the right hands, and she ended up with a record deal. Just after she turned 19, she released her first record With Blasphemy So Heartfelt. Oh, sure. It’s not the impossible-to-believe life story of Taylor Swift, who was professionally writing songs for other people when she was just 14, but there’s still a good bit of made-for-teevee drama in the Jessica Lea Mayfield story.

Most of her songs are autobiographical, or at least based on real feelings about real things. There’s a lot of heartbreak in that first record. And there is in the second record, too. Except on Tell Me, she’s the one doing the heartbreaking. She explained it in that bio:

It used to be me getting my heart broken; now it’s about me breaking other people’s hearts. It’s not something I sat down and intended to do—to write an album of songs about being mean to boys. But it’s kind of what was going on. You meet a boy at a show and then they’re like ‘Oh my God, I fell in love with Jessica Lea Mayfield last night…’ They obsess over you, so eventually you have to write a mean song about them.

In today’s song, it’s easy to mistake the heartbreak as being hers, but it’s not.

There’s a repeated line that might suggest that she’s upset about unrequited love:

I know your love spotlight will never shine on me
I’m afraid to spend forever in the dark

However, it turns out that she’s not losing sleep over it. This line is quite chilling. It literally gave me goose-flesh the first time I noticed it:

I’d rather die young and be forgotten
Than live to grow old loving you

Ouch.

I first learned about Jessica Lea Mayfield thanks to a Music Geek friend who was raving about her one day. I picked up the album, gave it a few listens, and thought that it was pretty good. A few months passed, and I hadn’t give it much thought until she had a really amazing Daytrotter session, which reminded me that it’s a really good record. Good enough, in fact, that I slotted it in at #12 in my list of my 22 favorite non-Canadian albums of 2011. Actually, the Daytrotter session songs are superior to their album version counterparts. That’s just my opinion, but check it out for yourself. I’m especially fond of the Daytrotter version of her big hit “Our Hearts Are Wrong”. The album version has too much low end. That’s cleaned up in the Daytrotter session, plus there’s some really tasty and feedback-y electric guitar down low in the mix.

That session alone is worth about 30 times the subscription fee of $2 a month. Seriously. Do yourself a big favor. Join Daytrotter. You won’t regret it. For less than the price of a cup of gourmet coffee, you get new sessions every day from some up-and-coming bands.

Anyway, back to today’s song. I like the simplicity of it. At first, you think it’s going to be just the vocals and the very quiet guitar and the hushed drums. However, there’s a little outburst at 1:18, with louder, more affected guitar and heavier drums. That outburst lasts 30 seconds, and after the bridge, the next verse is structured differently. The drums are more dense. The guitar is the same, but now there’s some piano on the really low end of the keyboard. It almost sounds like bass guitar. That’s a nifty effect, plus there’s that cold-as-ice line about preferring an early death to a long life with that guy.

Order Tell Me from the Nonesuch Records store here, in your choice of format. And I can’t say it enough… Do yourself a kindness and join Daytrotter. Now.