j solomon

Another Under 1M Spotlight for this week is j solomon! J stands in a very alternative punk rock genre that somehow meshes with today’s trends. He recently released a two song EP called “LEARNING HOW TO SWIM” last week. He has around 45,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and does pretty well on TikTok as well. He caught my attention with his song “LYING AROUND” off his recent EP, so let’s get right into that review.

The electric bass and the soft hi-hat hits that start off the track are soon accompanied by an electric guitar that plays a really cool lick that leads us into the pretty obvious cheating story. The first verse starts off with a little suspicion or even accusation of a woman that has been cheating on her boyfriend. The boyfriend, described in the first person by J as “I,” did everything he could to figure out where his girlfriend was cheating. Once we understand the matter at hand we head into a short guitar break that flows into the chorus. The chorus reveals that he is literally going crazy trying to figure this out and will not stop until he does. The next verse leads us to a potential suspect of who his girl has been spending all this time with. He goes after him and gets himself into some trouble along the way. Eventually he is caught with the line “hands up at the liquor store” but then decides he has more pride then to be chasing these guys around. We transition again to the chorus through another guitar break. A longer guitar break follows the chorus and then one more chorus repetition revealing that he was going so crazy about this situation that “I could try to play it cool/ But I would listen through your floorboards/ You know that I would sleep on your doormat.” He is admitting to all of this stalkerish behavior to confess that it was driving him absolutely nuts. The more he repeated this part, the louder the guitar got. The song ends with what sounds like him unplugging or turning off his electric guitar, finally giving his rage a rest and maybe even just walking away from the girl. 

Full disclosure, I saw one of J’s TikToks that reveals that this entire song is made up! Well, he had me fooled. The storytelling of this track is exciting and really kept me on my toes. I’ve seen a few TikToks from him as well that suggest that he is desperate to get this song into FIFA. Hope we can get his dream accomplished! If you liked “LYING AROUND” I highly recommend the songs “Mona Lisa” and “LEARNING HOW TO SWIM.” Love it J!