Singer/songwriter Jaime Wyatt pushes herself further than ever on her captivating new record, Feel Good. Released today (November 3), the project offers a soundscape undefinable by a specific genre, expanding past the limits of the alternative country label often given to her two previous records.
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Producer and Black Pumas member Adrian Quesada helped shape this fresh creative direction, building around Wyatt’s unfiltered, heartfelt lyricism. The collection of songs offers listeners a peek into the gifted Texas native’s mind as she examines personal struggles, moments of joy, bigotry and violence, painful loss, and the realities of living life on the road.
Feel Good finds the acclaimed artist at her creative best, offering comfort and hope for those still trying to define themselves during a transformative life chapter. Below, Jaime Wyatt tells the story behind each track on Feel Good in her own words.
1. “World Worth Keeping”
(Strauther/Wyatt)
“World Worth Keeping” came from a jam at Verdugo Studios in Los Angeles. We had just played Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, and the band and I were talking about making music for the kids to dance to. Joshy Strauther was playing on the Wurlitzer, and I was on guitar and played the lick on my 335. I was also making everyone play “4 on the Floor” soul beats without going to the five-chord. I think we jammed that thing for 20 min on one take! I was mostly playing guitar, [and] then I just blurted out, “Take a look around you. There’s a world worth keeping,” and really couldn’t get much more on the verses until I walked away from the session and was able to freely write in my notebook about what that phrase meant. I knew it was bold, and nothing about the lyrics could afford to feel cheap.
I realized that the phrase came as I was pleading with someone in my life at the time who was becoming increasingly negative, and I knew I couldn’t save our relationship. But the phrase was bigger than just me. I wanted the listener to share what I felt, and I saw the opportunity to incorporate the physical Earth and rally for the planet in the song.
I consider myself to be environmentally conscious and recycle like crazy—[I] love composting, much thanks to learning about nature conservancy in my childhood in the Pacific Northwest woods. So I wrote about ten different verses but found that the simple approach of showing, not telling, was painting a picture. “The Heat Out on Burgundy St.” felt like something Lou Reed would say, and I was loving the pocket of the verse, almost like a Dylan rap. In the last few years, I learned that poor air quality is typically a problem in the regions hit harder by poverty, and it’s important that people know that fact. Then I took on the perspective of Mother Earth and tried to channel my own struggles and neglect that the Earth must feel by saying, “Do you feel me? Can you see me? Do you hear me?” As in, “Do you have compassion?” So, the song is physical and emotional, too.
Climate change is a direct result of pollution and irresponsible extraction, and that is making the planet warmer and causing all the hurricanes and fires. It is important to talk about so that there is a planet for the next generations to come. In the second verse, I put some blame on billionaires and express my dismay with such damage to the Earth, but I also wrote the song from a place of hope, as I truly believe in the power of words and music to rally people together. In this song, anybody can advocate for the planet.
2. “Feel Good”
(Egart/Wells/Wyatt)
My bass player in Nashville, Nicholas Wells, came up with the bass riff at a rehearsal, and I remember the moment he recorded it on his phone because it was that kind of riff. It felt timeless, reminiscent of both the 1970s and even the 2000s. We started jamming this song at a studio in a double-wide trailer outside of Nashville with a wonderfully talented musician named Alex Devor. Alex and Nick are originally from Huntsville, and I’m convinced there’s just R&B flowing in the water there. I was improvising the lyrics again in the studio to bookmark melodies and phrases or even just words. The music inspired some introspective event or proclamation, so I came out singing, “I quit lying this week.”
Then I started relating my experience with healing the inner child, to this line admitting to insidious self-destructive habits, like people pleasing and self-forgetting. “I quit working for the past underneath” is perhaps a goodbye to shame, a rebellion against guilt, or misdirected projection. For the verses, I almost always use internal rhymes. I’m obsessed with internal rhyme; that’s why I love Dylan and hip-hop music. While playing with rhymes, I stumbled on “I quit hurting myself this week.” “I quit working for forgiveness I don’t need” just refers to the societal pressure to be a martyr and find freedom from judgment and damnation. Humility is something right in the middle, and I’ve mistaken martyrdom with humility many times in my life. This song is about being brave and being your own hype man, honestly.
I was afraid of the chorus at first, being so simple, but it is really the pay-off, lyrically. I surrendered to the simplicity of “All I wanna do is just to Feel Good” because I’ve felt it creatively and spiritually lately, and it’s what I want to manifest more of. I want to “Feel Good,” and I want others to “Feel Good,” let go, heal with music, be your best self, be brave, and live your best life. The verses are contemplative and open to interpretation, but it’s a commitment to radical self-acceptance and self-love, or at least to the process. “Feel Good” is the manifesto of the song and for this time in my life. “Feel Good” is the thesis of the album as well.
3. “Back to the Country”
(Hartman/Wyatt)
I came up with the guitar lick when I was writing it with Ryan Hartman, and we were playing some rock n roll boogie vibes, kinda Chuck Berry, kinda country, but then the lick came out sounding like Exile or southern rock, so I thought it worthy of pursuit. We took it to the studio, and I started singing conversational lyrics through a nostalgic lens, running the song four times or so. It felt like a story song, and I think that’s what inspired the chorus when I sang “Back to the Country, to the country one more time.”
Then we took a break at the studio for about 30-40 min, and I realized the chorus was for my fan-turned-friend, B Paul (they/them), who passed away from cancer last year. They came to Nashville to see me, and I took them to the country to feed mini horses and to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Robert’s Western Wear.
I only knew B Paul for a short time, but I felt like I’d known them for ages. Our birthdays are five days apart, and we both were obsessed with clothing and music. They did my hair for my set opening for Paul Cauthen at the Brooklyn Bowl, and I’ve never had my hair look that amazing.
4. “Love Is a Place”
(Ryan/Wyatt)
I wrote this in Nashville with Kyle Ryan, who played bass with Kacey Musgraves for a number of years. We wrote the chorus first, which, in all truth, is where I tend to start. I had set out to write a love song, as I was recently in love and my first open and queer relationship, and Kyle had just married his wife with a baby on the way, so I was in luck. We talked about our relationships and shared the beauty and the healing aspects of love.
It felt important that I write a love song to a woman in person, as I had never revealed the gender of my lovers in other songs. I first started to do it with another song in a totally different studio, and some random guy told me I wasn’t allowed to write about gay stuff! So it became more important that I do it and that I write a very classic pop love song.
We were humming and strumming, and the first line and lyric to seemingly appear was “She has freed me from a lifetime of pain,” and we very quickly finished that chorus. I must give due props to Kyle for writing the phrase “Love is a Place.” This line is one of those stunningly simple and somehow vulnerable lines. I believe I said the response line at the end, “And would you take me there?” It felt really Motown to say that. I had just read the autobiography by Lamont Dozier, and I felt like I was tapping into his wheelhouse.
The verse progression and story I really had to work for. There was a different verse for a while, but it wasn’t hitting like the chorus, so I had to beef it up and maybe the song uptempo when I took the verse to the piano and found that cool, descending progression. I was struggling to find the verse lyrics but resorted to the “show-not-tell method,” and Kyle had great metaphors to offer. He came up with the first line, “Looking out the same old glass, I call out, and they just walk right past,” in regards to a new perspective while being in love and previously being lost and helpless.
But I’m most proud of the bridge, as I found the line, “Seven-silver angels singing hallelujah.”
5. “Hold Me One Last Time”
(Strauther/Wyatt)
The verse was strong and came right away, and it wasn’t originally connected to the chorus yet. I heard this riff in my head that was slightly out of time but in a cool way. It felt soul and rock n roll and punchy, so I knew the words should be slinky but percussive and concise. I was hinting at the personality subtleties to communicate the feelings of mutual dissatisfaction in this dying love.
“And if I’m just not that one, tell me now” wouldn’t have hit so hard emotionally without Will Scott playing drums and stuttering the drum fill right before landing on the word “one.” I was trying to tell both sides and admit some fault when I said, “And I’m sure you have your reasons why you thought goodbye was a better word to say.” Sometimes, it is just out of everyone’s control, and sometimes, we’re young in relationships and not equipped to weather the storms.
Then we were jamming another feel and stumbled upon the chorus. Joshy had a progression that was descending in a gospel way, and I quickly started singing “And before I reach for the door,” about my relationship being on the verge of ending. It was at that point when it could go either way; we could’ve broken up then or given it another try, but both our hearts were broken. So, the chorus was unfinished for many months. And honestly, that chorus was highlighting a huge question in my life, and I couldn’t finish the song till I knew the answer.
A few months after my relationship mutually ended, while I was editing lyrics and listening to our studio work tapes, I found the appropriate tagline, which would bookend the chorus. “Just Hold Me One Last Time.” I was reflecting on the last time I hugged this person and how bittersweet it was.
I am very proud of the bridge lyrics and how the bridge melody melds back to the hook line. “Didn’t I please you? Didn’t you make me need you?” [It] breaks all the rules of what good poetry and songwriting should be, and yet it took me to such a sincere place in my heart, I had to keep it in there. It recalls all the sweetness of the once-blooming love while still having to part. I only hope this song helps people struggling in love or out of love.
6. “Where the Damned Only Go”
(Jaime Wyatt)
This song was inspired by a documentary series about missing indigenous women in America and how many of these cases go unsolved. Then, I reflected on all the forgotten souls I’ve seen and known. People who have been condemned by society for their skin color, religion, sexual orientation, mental illness, drug addiction, or for simply being poor. “Never got the deal, and so I’ll have to steal just what you’re looking for” is the narrative of both the villain and the victim. It’s survival, or it’s predatory. “Where the Damned Only Go” is for the casualties of society, both living and not living, in an attempt to honor those who have been unjustly dishonored, dismissed, or disappeared.
I was a drug addict as a young person and have been to places and seen things most people haven’t seen, so it felt important to say, “People look away. It’s all that they can do, stop and look away, oh but haven’t you felt the ground?” About society ignoring and abandoning their wounded, but also seeing that people are constantly overwhelmed and emotionally checked out in this day and age.
I wanted to embody the rage and the sadness through animals and symbolism, so I enjoyed writing the verse, “There’s a blackbird sitting by the side of the road, yellow moon coming in a little too low, coyotes screaming in the dead of the night, I’ll be buried in the desert where the damned only go.”
I miss hearing the coyotes howl in the canyons of Los Angeles. The blackbird feels like the all-knowing and the all-seeing eye watching over; the yellow moon coming in too low represents the pressure crowding different societies, or maybe it was just the worry of a Mother for her child. I’m not really sure, but emotionally, it feels accurate.
The bridge is slightly out of key musically, which feels amazing when it shifts. I finished the bridge at singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins’ house in East Nashville. I wrote the song on piano, and I was intent on making this song my opus, so I called my manager and played different parts for him over the phone in Denver and said, “How ’bout this line?
After all the laughter that we shared
Neither thought the darkness could appear
After all the laughter that we had
I never, thought you’d ever disappear
Finally, the chorus is a chant, a conversation with the missing. It was really hard to stay simple here. I ran this by my manager several times, and I’m so glad I kept it as is. Big thanks to Don Strasburg for encouraging lyrical growth, but also where to stay direct. I tend to forget the importance of repetition in songs.
I know that you’re gone
I know that you’re gone
I know that you’re gone
But it still feels like you were never here at all
I think we all know someone who disappears from our lives, as if to never have existed at all, but the chorus is the space for that grief. It’s incessant, like someone would say if they were trying to reckon with the truth in the absence of a loved one.
7. “Althea”
(Garcia/Hunter)
I didn’t write that song, so as a songwriter, why would I take the time to arrange and record a version of the Grateful Dead‘s “Althea”? I recently fell in love with Robert Hunter’s lyrics, but when I looked at Althea closer, the lyrics felt like my own story of learning how to love. Also, I wanted to make a super groovy, soul rendition of a Dead song.
8. “Fugitive”
(Jaime Wyatt)
I wrote “Fugitive” from bed when I had COVID-19 the year before last. My dad always told me to write lyrics and work on songwriting when I was ill. That has always stuck with me, and I’ve gotten good at it, maybe! The song is about gun violence, and I can’t even remember if I was inspired by a school shooting or a case of police brutality because they have become so common in America.
“Two cops draw for their pistols in the night, too dark to see what was wrong and what was right” reminded me of something Springsteen would say. I labored for the verses after the first, I think. Watching the news and seeing social media, I had to say, “Do you feel better with your wishes and your prayers? How about the families sitting next to empty chairs?”
The melody and the structure were revealed right away, but I didn’t finish the song in one sitting. I kept running “Fugitive, just a kid, better run run run, “but it took me a while to find that the verse and pre-chorus had these rhythm pushes on guitar, and the chords didn’t change all that much. where the drums would be, where I could sit little lyrical hooks. I always hear the drum fills when I’m strumming a guitar. I found the pre-chorus by way of these rhythms: “How can we live, just to give, or to run like a fugitive? Not a lot of words rhythm with give, so it was a word hunt.
I love it when a melody hangs on a chord and rambles almost too long.
9. “Jukebox Holiday”
(Wyatt/Jenkins)
This is the first Motown/R&B-inspired song I ever wrote. I wrote it with Austin Jenkins on a random one-off writing session in LA at the old Bedrock Rehearsal space. He is a brilliant writer, and I presented “Jukebox Holiday” in demo form with one verse and one chorus. I was playing with rhyme and singing lyrics that reminded me of classic pop. “I don’t even know what love is, but I know I like the way you move.”
I went a little deeper on the second verse, “These are then breaks for all the folks that make a wage, living on heartache day to day, shining a plate or window pane.” It’s not written for just one person, though I know there’s a lover of mine in the song, and also my friends are in the song. They were working in coffee shops and bars and restaurants in LA and driving to blow steam off at night. I was singing about the struggle to make ends meet and how to find joy through the struggle. I’m pretty sure it was about a straight girl who didn’t love me back.
I sent the demo to Texas country singer Charley Crockett to sing, but he thought I should cut it. I was worried straight people wouldn’t receive my perspective honestly, so it took me years to get this song properly recorded.
10. “Ain’t Enough Whiskey”
(Walker/Wyatt)
This song is obviously about my addiction to cocaine and whisky; it’s about chasing the high. It was a song that didn’t make Neon Cross, but I love it, and I know people love singing along to “There ain’t enough whiskey to keep me warm at night, and there ain’t enough cocaine to keep me standing upright.”
It’s about a tumultuous trip to New York City in the winter with my band while addicted to cocaine and in a very unhealthy love relationship. So I brought this song to Butch Walker, who is a friend, and I just knew he’d help me expand on my chorus, which he absolutely did.
11. “Moonlighter”
(Strauther/Wyatt)
I wrote this song in around one hour, sitting at an AirnBnB in Pasadena, one week before the album. I had just gotten back from Ireland and the U.K. touring and was sad from my breakup. I lost the dog in the breakup, so I’m proud I was able to pay homage to that beautiful creature in the song. I wasn’t sure what to think of the song, but Joshy was feeding me lines; he’s like, “Yeah, this character out there, like a rolling stone.” And I had a note in my notebook about the “Moonlighter” and how they are the outsider and just bop around because it’s the only way they can make a living, a traveling musician or actor or possibly a grifter. “I’m the moonlighter. I need a friend.”
This song is bittersweet; it’s not sad. I love being the Moonlighter, singing, and traveling, but I am wondering what it means for the time lost with loved ones. “I missed the birthdays and weddings and friends having kids.” Either way, the fans will see the Moonlighter again, so it felt right to end the album with this song.
Photo by Jody Domingue, Courtesy of Shore Fire Media
