JVKE
Talks Releasing His Best Song Ever
ARTIST FEATURE
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ARTIST FEATURE 〰️
“I think I just wrote my best song ever.”
These words, spoken by TikTok’s generic text-to-speech voice (you know the one), are the first thing you see and hear in a TikTok post uploaded on July 19th, 2022 by user @jvke. The 21 year-old singer/songwriter/producer earnestly looks at the camera, instructs you to “wait for the drop,” hits the space bar on his computer’s keyboard, closes his eyes, and starts to play the air piano. The rest of the video sees JVKE lip-syncing, swaying and spinning to the first verse and chorus of his latest creation “golden hour.” The song had dropped just four days prior, and it’s clearly one that JVKE is proud of.
To the casual fan, “golden hour” may just represent the latest addition to JVKE’s hot streak of hit singles, which includes the once inescapable “this is what falling in love feels like.” To JVKE, however, this one was different.
“I remember the day I made the song. Each section just flowed out of me. It felt like I was in a dream,” JVKE said in an interview with When I Make It To L.A. “The song turned out the way it was supposed to — I knew when I made it [that] it was special.”
“Special” is an adjective that’s hard to argue with when it comes to “golden hour.” Aside from its compelling lyrics, the song is undeniably unique in its composition with piano and string parts that feel more fit for a movie montage than a pop song. The song also features JVKE rapping in the verses, and singing in the chorus, a decision he says was intentional from the start. “Music is all about contrast. I felt like if I rapped the first section then transitioned into singing, the singing would be even more impactful.”
Though this song was created with intent, JVKE doesn’t always approach songwriting the same way. On the topic of his process, JVKE tells us “when I start making a song, I think of it like an open canvas, like I’m painting. Sometimes I have a direction I want to go in from the jump, sometimes I let it paint itself.” It’s this approach, and Van Gogh’s famous Almond Blossom painting, that JVKE says inspired the artwork to his track and his other 2022 solo release “this is what heartbreak feels like.” “Though I didn’t paint the cover art myself, I think the painting aesthetic matches well with the feel of the songs: artistic, free-flowing, and colorful.”
With inspirations like Franz Liszt and Van Gogh, you might think JVKE spends his free time studying 19th century art. And while we can’t say for sure whether or not that’s true, we can say that the man has good taste in modern R&B and hip-hop music.
“I made a couple references in this song to Frank Ocean and Childish Gambino, both of which I take inspiration from,” JVKE tells us. Frank Ocean’s 2016 album Blonde is mentioned within the first two lines of “golden hour,” and is the one album JVKE says he’d pick as the “soundtrack to my summer car rides” aside from Daniel Caesar’s Freudian, which is also on his heavy rotation.
As special as “golden hour” and its influences are, they’re still a stepping stone to yet another major career accomplishment for JVKE: his debut album. Even with over 7 million followers and hundreds of thousands of videos created to his music across all social media platforms, JVKE’s career is in its infancy. But that’ll change later this year, he says. “My debut album is coming soon. I’m so excited for this. I have so much more to show the world,” JVKE tells us with a smile. And if “golden hour” is any indication of what’s coming up, we can’t wait to see what JVKE has in store for us next.