How Jensen McRae became L.A.’s next great songwriter

Jensen McRae is pondering deeply on a point her therapist shared with her during their initial meeting.

Reflecting on my emotional vulnerability and the tumultuous whirl of feelings I’d been experiencing, I shared this with a trusted confidant. She challenged me, saying, “You haven’t truly conveyed a feeling to me; everything you’ve expressed is an intellectual concept.” This statement hit me hard. She continued, “Emotions are embodied, they live within your physical self. Thoughts, on the other hand, reside in your mind.

“This was like six years ago, and I think about it constantly.”

A Los Angeles-born individual who took her academic aspirations to the challenging Harvard-Westlake School, McRae penned her initial song at about 8 years old; as a teenager, music served as her means of dealing with the harshness of life. However, when she reflects on her earlier works, what stands out to her isn’t that they were overly raw — it’s that they weren’t raw enough.

As a cinephile, I’ve often found myself trying to analyze my emotions instead of embracing them, perhaps as a means of avoiding vulnerability. But now I realize that intellectual depth and emotional sensitivity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there’s a way to approach my feelings with academic rigor while still honoring their sensitive nature.

McRae’s sophomore album “I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!” indeed exists, as evidenced by its impressive performance. This LP, released on Dead Oceans – a well-regarded independent label known for artists such as Mitski and Phoebe Bridgers – delves into the breakdown of two romantic relationships through polished acoustic pop songs. These tracks skillfully employ raw emotional detail to explore intricate themes like gender, privilege, and abuse.

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In a TikTok post from 2023, which became popular in Massachusetts, she showcases the intimate world she once knew with an ex-partner. The song “Let Me Be Wrong” resonates strongly with the anxiety of a high achiever: “A strange feeling in my heart whispers I’m okay but not exceptional,” she sings, her lyrics rhyming so perfectly that it seems as if she is waiting for the listener to acknowledge her with a nod of approval.

Title transformation: “From Savior to Self-aware” – A candid confession of the narrator’s misguided beliefs in her ability to change another, initially omitted from the album but later included upon persuasion by her team. “I consider myself a mature and self-realized individual,” she admits with a chuckle. “So, acknowledging that I believed my love could transform this person – well, it’s quite humiliating.” The song “Savannah” explores the lingering scars following a breakup, while “Daffodils” presents a haunting tale of a man who “swipes bases while I’m asleep.

As a cinema-loving soul, McRae’s tunes never shy away from confronting pain yet they can be downright hilarious at times. In her song titled “I Don’t Do Drugs,” she playfully points the finger at substances, yearning for those toxic familiarities that once comforted her. And in just a few lines, she breathes life into the character of the man in “I Can Change Him.

1. The same old $8 cologne he always uses

2. He’s the same old guy who can’t stand being lonely

3. It’s the same old cigarettes he keeps rolling

4. The same old “Plastic Soul” album by Cozmo

1. That same, always used $8 cologne
2. He’s the guy who can’t stand being alone, just like before
3. Those ever-present cigarettes he continues to roll
4. The “Plastic Soul” album from Cozmo that never changes

When asked which she prefers, making people laugh or cry, McRae responds swiftly. “I feel proud when I manage to make someone cry,” she shares while sitting on a park bench in Silver Lake during a recent afternoon. “However, being known as the funny person is more crucial to my identity than being seen as the sad one.” She flashes a smile.

She admits to making jokes that some might find inappropriate, with people sometimes responding, “That’s insensitive of you to joke about that.” To which she replies, “It’s just my way of coping – the unfortunate event actually happened to me personally.

Wilson, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 82, was a trailblazer and innovator in the world of music, pushing boundaries and exploring the infinite potential of sound.

June 11, 2025

McRae’s music has garnered attention from notable admirers. In 2024, she shared a stage with Noah Kahan during a tour, and more recently, she played music with Justin Bieber at his residence following his friendly message on Instagram about “Massachusetts.” Not long ago, McRae – an alumna of USC’s Thornton School of Music – performed two sold-out home shows at the El Rey. There, she debuted “Savannah” by sharing with the audience, “You are not your past traumas; you are not defined by the worst thing that has ever happened to you.

Patrice Rushen, an accomplished jazz and R&B musician who guided McRae during her time at the Thornton School’s popular music program, describes her as exceptionally talented. While ‘gifted’ might seem like a common term to describe this talent, Rushen emphasizes that McRae is truly exceptional in this regard. She commends the intricacy and accuracy of McRae’s songwriting, highlighting her unique ability to perceive beyond the obvious and choose precisely the right word or nuance in her storytelling. During her studies, McRae mastered performances of Rushen’s classics, such as “Forget Me Nots” from 1982.

“I adored her as a student,” Rushen adds.

McRae hails from Santa Monica and spent her childhood in Woodland Hills, growing up in a close-knit family. Her father is African American, while her mother is Jewish, and she has two siblings. The eldest brother serves as her business manager, while the younger one plays keyboard in her touring band.

The singer portrays herself as both a model student and a favorite of her teachers, a label she playfully attributes to her father, who is a lawyer and attended UCLA and Harvard Law School. She humorously notes that his birth certificate identifies him as African American, which seems unusual. “He was born in 1965,” she says, “and it reads ‘Negro’ on his birth certificate, which is astonishing. His whole life, he instilled in us the idea: ‘You must be twice as good to get half as far.’ Although I was born in the 1990s, that mentality still had an influence on us.

In addition to stating this, she mentions her time at Harvard-Westlake was significant. Being one of the few Black students there, she made a conscious effort to avoid being underestimated. Now, she finds it amusing when people underestimate her because she is so confident in her abilities that whenever someone doubts her talents, she responds, “You’ll discover you were wrong about me before long.

In the autumn of 2015, I immersed myself in the songwriting techniques of James Taylor, Sara Bareilles, and Taylor Swift, and then, following my freshman year at USC, I took to the stage for the very first time outside of a school talent show. This milestone performance occurred at L.A.’s Hotel Cafe.

She remembers joking about this, ‘I’m not sure if my mom realizes this, but I asked her not to visit.’ At the time, she playfully said, ‘I’m 18 now, I’m grown up, and I’ll be with all these amazing people.’ However, the crowd that night turned out to be just the bartender and the other performers.

Her significant creative leap occurred when she penned her song “White Boy” at age 20. This composition expressed feelings of invisibility, and McRae felt she had truly accomplished something because upon completion, she remarked, “I could never play this in front of anyone.” A few years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she playfully tweeted a jest about Bridgers writing a song describing hooking up in a car while waiting for vaccination at Dodger Stadium. The post quickly gained traction, garnering shares from numerous individuals, including Bridgers herself.

McRae stated, “I needed to stow my phone in a drawer as it was continually vibrating,” before she ultimately penned the tune herself and titled it “Immune.

Title “I Can’t Explain How, But They Found Me!”, references a quote from “Back to the Future”. McRae aimed for a richer sound than her 2022 debut’s folky tones; she teamed up with producer Brad Cook in North Carolina to record the album. Cook has previously collaborated with Bon Iver and Waxahatchee, adding hints of early 2000s pop from artists like Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson to enrich the tracks.

As a vocalist, McRae skillfully manipulates her voice to convey a touch of sorrow, as heard in “Tuesday,” a poignant piano ballad depicting the heartbreak of betrayal, made even more poignant by the indifference of the betrayer. At the El Rey, McRae intensified this motif with a captivating and personal performance of “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” a song written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin that Bonnie Raitt turned into one of pop music’s most powerful anthems of despair.

McRae learned a method for songwriting at USC, referred to as “toggling.” This technique was demonstrated by one of her professors using the example of John Mayer’s song, “Why Georgia.

McRae explains that the first line, “I’m driving up ’85 in the kind of morning that lasts all afternoon,” is a depiction of the external environment. Following this, the second line, “I’m just stuck inside the gloom,” focuses on internal feelings. This duality between external description and internal emotion is something he emphasizes when writing poetry; he sets the scene, the setting, and then expresses his feelings about it.

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McRae excels at immersing listeners in situations, for instance, as shown in “Savannah” which opens with: “There is an intersection in your college town with your name on it.” To achieve such intriguing detail, she might compose several lines of a verse initially, then discard the initial ones, often just extra words, and rearrange the rest so that the final lines become the opening. This gives her a challenge to surpass her previous work.

As a seasoned movie critic, let me express that Maddie McRae possesses an impressive array of talents, but she acknowledges that songwriting is merely one facet of the complex persona any budding pop star must cultivate. Despite the grueling nature of touring, which she describes as “physically taxing” due to her thyroid condition and chronic hives, she continues to relish the thrill of performing on stage.

Recently, she took to TikTok to shed light on her health struggles, disclosing her daily medication routine in a bid for transparency about chronic illnesses. However, even in this openness, an unsettling incident occurred when a fan recognized her at her allergist’s office and casually mentioned they were there for their vaccinations as well. This interaction, McRae shares, left her somewhat uneasy.

McRae considers social media as a place where she punches in and out, implying her work-like approach towards these platforms. She acknowledges its crucial role in helping her establish an audience. However, she’s far from being against smartphones. As she puts it, “I adore using my phone.” Being born at the right time, she says, is a blessing. But when it comes to perpetually viewing images of herself, which serve as her business card or portfolio, she emphasizes that those aren’t her true self as a human being.

At the beginning of January, she removed TikTok following its temporary shutdown due to President Trump’s ban on the app. “Later, it quickly returned, but I couldn’t reinstall it again. Consequently, for about a month, I didn’t have access to TikTok. Interestingly enough, I managed just fine without it.

Arguably better?

It’s likely that I am using it again since I need to promote something. At first, I found it overwhelming and hard to believe I would use it, but a week later, I got used to it again.

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2025-06-18 23:02