{"id":340309,"date":"2025-12-10T21:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/340309\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T21:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:58:07","slug":"tobias-jesso-jr-on-grammy-nomination-working-with-justin-bieber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/340309\/","title":{"rendered":"Tobias Jesso Jr. on Grammy Nomination, Working With Justin Bieber"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTobias Jesso Jr. celebrated<\/a> turning 40 with a serendipitous gift: Justin Bieber\u2019s \u201cSwag,\u201d an album he\u2019d worked on over the past three years, happened to be released on the same day his new decade began this past July. \u201cI was cleaning up my house, getting ready for my birthday, listening to it. I was like, \u2018I can\u2019t even fucking believe he did it,\u2019\u201d recalls Jesso from his Los Angeles home as he prepares to move to Australia. \u201cI was in the room for all of this melting pot stuff and here it is, the finished thing, and it was so good. I love those records, and it was such a proud moment. It was just amazing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSwag\u201d was one of many milestones this year for the singer-songwriter, who scored a 2026 Grammy nomination for songwriter of the year (non-classical) in early November. He\u2019s no stranger to the category \u2014 he won the trophy during its inaugural year in 2023 \u2014 but his inclusion further cemented his standing as one of pop music\u2019s most dependable scribes. A seasoned veteran whose first credit was on Adele\u2019s \u201cWhen We Were Young,\u201d Jesso appeared in the liner notes this year for songs including Miley Cyrus\u2019 \u201cGolden Burning Sun,\u201d Haim\u2019s \u201cRelationships\u201d and Olivia Dean\u2019s \u201cMan I Need,\u201d the latter of which became one of 2025\u2019s breakout hits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSince debuting as a tender balladeer with his debut solo album, \u201cGoon,\u201d in 2015, Jesso has amassed a songwriting discography that spans everyone from Daniel Caesar and Camila Cabello to Harry Styles and Dua Lipa. He exercises the luxury of often saying no to collaboration and picks projects that align with his own tastes and interests. \u201cI only want to work on music that I\u2019m gonna put on a playlist for myself,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like being a part of a product that you know you want to use when it\u2019s done. It\u2019s a lot different than being a part of something where you\u2019re like, \u2018I would never fucking use this product.\u2019 You know I mean? It gives you a different sense of purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Jesso, that meant stepping into the world of Bieber back in 2022 to begin work on \u201cSwag,\u201d which picked up four Grammy nominations, including album of the year. The pop singer assembled a group of certified hitmakers \u2014 Dijon, Carter Lang and Dylan Wiggins among them \u2014 to forge a new musical direction following his change in management. \u201cI think Justin was in a period of going like, \u2018How am I gonna represent myself?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cAnd a good way for him to proceed with that was to put people around him whom he trusted.\u201d Jesso recalls that the album slowly took shape as they wrote in locations like France and Iceland, where he realized everything had finally fallen into place. \u201cAll the trust had been built. The family was a unit. We just needed to wrap it up, put the pieces together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also appeared in the credits for Dean\u2019s \u201cMan I Need,\u201d a global hit that reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Jesso was introduced to the English singer-songwriter after his frequent collaborator Sir Nolan, with whom he co-wrote Caesar\u2019s \u201cAlways,\u201d invited him to work on \u201cSomething Inbetween\u201d with Dean. \u201cI have a routine where I go in trying to make everyone feel comfortable and settle down easy,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I could tell within five minutes she doesn\u2019t need that \u2014\u00a0she gave the forceful energy of somebody who was there for a reason, knew what they were doing, who they were, what they wanted to sound like and was ready to rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid his fruitful songwriting career, Jesso carved out six weeks to record his long-awaited sophomore album \u201cShine,\u201d which he released with little notice in late November. The album is a curtailed collection of eight songs that could potentially scan as demos \u2014\u00a0he performed and recorded each one over and over, picking the best for the project \u2014\u00a0and addresses everything from the grief of a divorce to the blessings of his son. It was an unlikely venture for Jesso, who essentially swore off his solo career after releasing \u201cGoon,\u201d disillusioned by the spotlight and the pressures that came with it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Shine] was the culmination of what happened in my 30s and how I had processed my own advice and everything I was going through,\u201d he says. \u201cI was so bummed out and depressed and in a weird place, but the music wasn\u2019t stressful. It was so helpful. I hadn\u2019t really needed that for a long time. I\u2019d been so in my head. And I was using all of my music stuff for other people. So it was really strange to come back to it. And I think I came back to it in a grounded way, where I\u2019m already saying to my manager like, oh, I think I could do this again. And this is way, way better than what it was like for \u2018Goon,\u2019 you know, but I\u2019m a different person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShine\u201d was, in the end, the product of working out who he is as a musician while helping others to do the same, outside of the expectations and accolades that come with it. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful that I\u2019ve established a career where Grammys could be a part of it,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I would definitely love as many Grammys as they want to give me. But it\u2019s not the intention or the goal. My whole thing with the Grammys this year was just to not sacrifice my own integrity to get it. And if I do get another Grammy and it\u2019s based solely on the songs that I\u2019ve been a part of, I\u2019ll feel very proud and also proud of the artists that I worked with for making it all happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tobias Jesso Jr. celebrated turning 40 with a serendipitous gift: Justin Bieber\u2019s \u201cSwag,\u201d an album he\u2019d worked on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136,189057],"class_list":{"0":"post-340309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-tobias-jesso-jr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}