I was covered in crumbs the day I broke the Internet

"It wasn’t until Justin and Hailey Bieber reposted the clip that I realized I was probably being a poor judge of my own work."

Angels!!! This essay is written by one of my fave songwriters - Jensen McRae - and I feel so fucking blessed to have her words in my lil newsy. Show her some of that gorgeous shit you should care about love and go stream her killer new album I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!

Luce xxx

I was covered in crumbs the day I broke the Internet.

It was January 2021, and I had tweeted a joke about Phoebe Bridgers. The joke speculated about what kind of song might be featured on her next album; I imagined a banger about hooking up in the car while waiting to get vaccinated at Dodger Stadium. When the tweet got more than a few cursory laughs, I decided I should write the song myself. Crafting a Phoebe Bridgers parody as one of her biggest fans was a low lift task; within thirty minutes, I had written it, posted it, and gone to sleep. Roughly 36 hours later, I was driving around LA with my mom, scouting potential music video locations and housing an almond croissant, when I found out that my little video was trending on Twitter’s entertainment section. Photo included for proof:

@jensenmcraemy PB3 impression #ZodiacSign #SkinCare101 #foryou #originalsong #indie #songwriter #fyp #xyzbca #fypsounds #fypシ

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It’s been more than four years since that moment, and sometimes I still feel like a 23-year-old covered in crumbs. Going viral once feels like lightning in a bottle. Prior to that, I assumed it was something that only happened to other people, something of which I was incapable. After it happened, there was, of course, pressure to make it happen again. To be honest, I still didn’t think I could do it. I thought the circus that had precipitated the creation of my song “Immune” was a one-time thing. Even as I became more dogged about posting my original music on TikTok and Instagram, I still never expected any particular video to get outsized attention. A few of my videos over the next couple of years raised their hands, but none quite managed to generate the frenzy that “Immune” did. Until November of 2023, when I wrote a song about my New England-bred ex-boyfriend.

@jensenmcraewrote last night & can’t decide on a title - obvious contender is #videogames but I also like #christianbale & even possibly #batman or #favoritebatman - sound off below 🤠 #originalsong #songwriter #foryou #fyp

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“Massachusetts” was just as much of a shock as “Immune” was. Like all my other posts, I was mainly doing it for fun, hoping to carve out a dozen or so new fans with every clip. It was incredibly humbling to see such an overwhelming and almost unanimously positive reaction to this song that I wrote about finally being able to remember someone fondly after months of agonizing over their departure. And it was especially surprising seeing so much excitement about the song when I knew I was about to head to North Carolina to record my second album—an album that did not include my latest viral moment. It wasn’t until Justin and Hailey Bieber reposted the clip that I realized I was probably being a poor judge of my own work. (More than a year later, when Justin invited me over to his house to write with some of his friends, he told me that “Massachusetts” had made him feel “seen.” Who knew that one little online clip would ever transport me so far?)

While “Immune” never really had a place in the larger narrative of my first album, “Massachusetts” is clearly a perfect ending to the story of my second. Where “Immune” was a totally fictional creation born out of boredom and isolation, “Massachusetts” is autobiographical, a raw and deliberate response to the years of life experience I had once lockdowns started to subside. Two sides of the same coin, I guess. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you never know what’s going to make you go viral. It can’t be bottled; it can’t be predicted; it can’t be gamified. I mean, it can be, but there are no guarantees. You could make the argument that “Immune” might have been a marketing gimmick (it wasn’t), but there’s really no reason why “Massachusetts” took off the way it did, other than that I accidentally spoke to people. I saw them. I met them where they were. And they told their friends about it, who told their friends. So it goes.

In support of my second album, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!, I got to play “Massachusetts,” the song that changed so much for me, on Jimmy Kimmel Live - my first ever late-night performance. It’s a long way from my mom’s passenger seat, covered in crumbs.

Jensen xxx