Los Angeles-based soulful pop artist Jackie Lipson releases their latest single ‘Chemicals.’ Perfectly timed to come out during Mental Health Awareness Month, the song lyrically ebbs and flows like the waves of mood changes, and the hit and subsequent withdrawal of a dopamine rush. The song evokes the desperate nature of mental illness and how it can impact your grasp on sense of self. Jackie’s immense command over their voice is on full display in this brooding A-side to their beloved hit single ‘Someday’.
Identifying with an array of marginalized identities – Queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, Jewish, femme, fat – Jackie has countless perspectives on how thin the line of control becomes when the body’s chemistry is in the driver’s seat. The song’s chorus melody and production break open as if to finally release the pain of the mixed emotions and beg for release from this “mix of Chemicals.”
“I want the listener to understand and connect with the feeling of helplessness and the lack of control of untreated mental illness,” says Jackie Lipson. Expanding further, they said, “The pre-chorus ‘call me the pharmacist, I’m making my own medicine. Or just a narcissist, stuck inside my head again’ describes imposter syndrome, a state where it becomes difficult to trust your own experience and, in this case, begin to believe that your anxiety and depression are in fact just narcissism in disguise.”