There is a tension at the heart of Jake Whiskin’s music: introspective songwriting set against arrangements that feel built for open roads, crowded rooms and speakers turned all the way up. On his latest single, “The Mess I’ve Made”, that contrast comes sharply into focus.
The Leeds singer-songwriter’s final release ahead of his new EP, Over The Edge, “The Mess I’ve Made” confronts excess, regret and the destructive patterns we can unknowingly build into our lives. Beneath the story of a relationship struggling under the weight of those consequences sits something more personal — an examination of escapism, loneliness and what happens when bad habits begin to catch up with you.
Recorded in Los Angeles with James Flannigan, the track draws on the widescreen Americana that has long shaped Whiskin’s musical world, with the influence of Full Moon Fever-era Tom Petty sitting alongside the alternative rock he discovered growing up through his father’s record collection. Yet Whiskin remains unmistakably rooted in Leeds, his Northern accent cutting through the American influences and giving the music a character entirely its own.
It is a balance that runs throughout Over The Edge, arriving on 2 October. Across the EP, Whiskin moves through nostalgia, heartbreak, excess and the different ways we attempt to escape ourselves, pairing emotional vulnerability with increasingly ambitious production.
Having already earned support from BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, BBC 6 Music and BBC Introducing, alongside syncs in Culpa Mia and Made In Chelsea, Whiskin enters this next chapter following a sold-out UK and European run with Barns Courtney.
For House of Solo, Jake Whiskin opens up about the self-destructive period behind “The Mess I’ve Made”, recording in Los Angeles, the Nirvana album that changed his life, learning to embrace his Northern voice and why Over The Edge represents an artist increasingly willing to take bigger swings.
Jake, “The Mess I’ve Made” feels like one of those songs where the title almost tells you everything before you even press play. What was happening in your life when that phrase first came to you?
Sometimes it’s hard to remember exactly where a line or melody comes from because, when I’m songwriting, it’s kind of an intense experience. I’m so locked into the process that the world kind of disappears, and the songs usually just appear from that void. I’ll work intensely on something and then, the next day, listen back and see if it makes any sense. Thankfully, this one did and was likely born from me being a tad silly with the way I was living at the time.
You’ve described the track as being about excess, regret and the negative patterns we create for ourselves. When you’re writing something that personal, do you know immediately that it’s going to become a song, or does it take some distance before you can actually write about it?
I think it doesn’t necessarily take distance to write about it, but it takes distance to understand that’s what I’m writing about. I very rarely set out to write about a particular thing, as it just feels forced to me. There are usually some things going on in my life or in my head that find a way out into songs if they’re important enough.
There’s something interesting about making a song about self-destruction sound huge and almost euphoric. Why are you drawn to putting quite dark lyrics against music that feels expansive and uplifting?
I’ve always loved the juxtaposition between contrasting emotions in music. It feels cathartic to have something that has emotional weight that you can dance to as well. When I play shows, I’m often joking around between the songs; otherwise, it would just be a little bit intense, as my songs do lean into more reflective and emotional subject matter.
It’s not like I’m trying to be funny or anything, but it’s just who I am as a person. I write sad songs, but I also try to have a laugh. That juxtaposition is just who I am as a person, really.
The new EP, Over The Edge, explores excess, nostalgia, heartbreak, bad habits and escaping yourself. Was there a particular moment when you realised all these songs belonged together as one body of work?
Definitely. There were a lot of songs to choose from, as I stopped releasing music for a few years but never stopped writing it. I’m not always the best judge of my own work because I’m so close to it, so I was working a lot with my manager, sending songs back and forth, and through that process we kind of landed on these four and they made sense.
I think lyrically I’m often tapping into nostalgia, heartbreak and escapism anyway, but the thing that tied this particular set of songs together was the excess. They all had this mood of feeling lonely in a crowded place too, which was quite interesting.
You recorded “The Mess I’ve Made” in Los Angeles with James Flannigan, and you’ve spoken about that Full Moon Fever-era Tom Petty influence. What did being in LA actually bring out of you that you might not have found making the record back home in Leeds?
I think new environments and the unfamiliarity that comes with them can draw something out of you, where there’s more freedom to experiment and try new things. On the other hand, familiarity can sometimes create a boundary around how you see yourself, which can be quite limiting.
So, on this EP, I guess I felt more freedom to do what I wanted, whether that was making a huge-sounding track, tracking the drums myself, or just cosplaying as a cowboy and drinking mezcal after the sessions. It was a fun experience for me.
Your music has this big American, widescreen quality to it, but then your Northern accent comes through and immediately makes it yours. Have you ever felt any pressure to smooth that out, or has keeping your own voice always been important to you?
Honestly, compared to most of my family, I think my Northern accent is pretty smoothed out! Definitely not, though. I like that it comes through a little.
The truth is that singers make choices, experiment and find what works for them, and I think I’ve struck a balance that works for me. I grew up listening to a mix of artists from both the US and the UK, so I was never gonna sound like a full-on Northerner after years of pretending to be Kurt Cobain and Billie Joe Armstrong, but I’m glad there’s still a bit that comes through.
Your dad’s record collection introduced you to artists like Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Neil Young and Tom Petty. What record from that collection completely changed the way you thought about songwriting?
Nevermind by Nirvana was the one that changed music for me. I was really young when I heard it, and it was the first time where music was more than just noise. I felt all these waves of emotion, and I couldn’t understand, as a young kid, why listening to this thing was affecting me so much.
Ever since then, I’ve kind of chased that feeling from the music I listen to or the music I make. I went down the rabbit hole of Nirvana, which led to other rock bands, learning guitar and then writing terrible songs for years until I kind of figured out how to do it. But Nevermind was kind of the catalyst for the direction of my life, honestly.
Jack Saunders compared what you do to Springsteen, Elliott Smith and Sam Fender and said there’s something really special in your voice. When someone on Radio 1 says something like that about you, does it give you confidence, or does it almost add another level of pressure?
Trying to do music for a living can be tough. There’s a lot of rejection and things that don’t materialise the way you’d hoped, so when you have positive moments like that, you have to enjoy them and use them as fuel when you’re questioning it all.
I remember the night he said all those things. I’d opened a show to a handful of people, and it was exactly one of those moments. Not like a crushing disappointment or anything, but just a lot of energy given for little return. I was questioning what the hell I was doing and whether I was any good, and in the taxi home I saw that he’d played my track.
I listened back and was blown away by what he said and started thinking, ‘Maybe I am alright at this. At least Jack Saunders thinks so, anyway.’
You’re clearly someone who cares about lyrics, but you also write songs that can become pretty massive musically. What usually arrives first for you: a lyric you need to say, a melody, or just a feeling?
I collect lyrical ideas day to day when something strikes me, maybe a phrase or sometimes more like a stream of consciousness. I have hundreds of notes like that littered across my phone in a sort of chaotic way, next to shopping lists or stuff I have to do in the week.
Usually, the rough basis of words will just appear in the melodies and, once I have the foundation of an idea, I can pull from the notes I’ve collected to see if there’s some connection between what’s happening in real time and a lyrical idea I came up with in the past. Often, there is.
Other times, I’ll look through one of the notes that’s more of a stream of consciousness and pull a line from that, which gets the wheels in motion. There’s no one way to do it, but I’ve found a few patterns over the years.
You’ve just come off a sold-out UK and European run with Barns Courtney. Did playing these songs night after night change the way you thought about any of them before the EP was finished?
Well, it was kind of the other way round, actually, where the EP was finished with all these full arrangements and then I went out to play the songs in a really stripped-down setting on the acoustic, which was kind of scary at first!
Every lyric and melody is exposed, and I think it just reaffirmed to me that I could stand behind the songs before putting them out. People seemed to particularly connect with my new songs on that tour too, which was cool.
Your music has ended up everywhere from Radio 1 to Culpa Mia and Made In Chelsea. Is it strange hearing one of your songs suddenly soundtracking somebody else’s story when it started from something incredibly personal to you?
I think a great thing about music is that, once you release it, it’s not really yours anymore. It transcends the environment you wrote and recorded it in, and sometimes even what it meant to you.
Someone can hear what you wrote and feel something totally different to what you had in mind, but that’s fine. I feel grateful that anyone connects with what I do.
My song ‘Joyride’ was on Culpa Mia, and that seems to be the one that streamed quite a bit after that movie came out. I’ve never seen it, but if a Spanish rom-com helps my music reach more people, then that’s fine by me.
With Over The Edge arriving on 2 October, what do you think this EP tells us about Jake Whiskin right now that your previous music couldn’t?
All the music I released before this was across a pretty short period of time, so there is a very set sonic identity that I’d developed in that time. I’ve not thrown that out of the window, but I think this EP tells people that I’m gonna try different things as an artist and take big swings with the songs I put out into the world.
Whether it’s a little more pop or a bit more energetic than before, if it’s what I feel inspired to do, then I’ll do it.
Maybe the next music I release will be the most raw and reflective folk songs I’ve ever written. I honestly have no clue right now, and that’s kind of exciting.
