Jake & Shelby – Learning to Love
Today, Nashville-based singer-songwriter duo Jake & Shelby released their dreamlike debut studio album Learning To Love through EMPIRE. A showcase of earworm pop melodies, heart-warming harmonies, and shapeshifting rhythms, the 12-track LP is the perfect soundtrack for anyone who has ever found themselves tangled in love.
Alongside today’s album drop, the pop pair released the new music video for the beautifully devastating focus track “Falling Out Of Love,” which visually displays the push and pull between doubt and conviction heard throughout the record. It reveals the heartbreak of losing love and the truth of learning to love yourself. Wearing her heart on her sleeve, Shelby wrote this song all on her own.
“I hardly remember how I even started this song… I think I had just gotten really tired of the person I was,” reveals Shelby. “I could feel that I was searching for so many things in someone else that I knew were impossible to find, but I couldn’t help it. I could feel how selfish I had become, but I was so lost in my loneliness that I couldn’t help that either. I was in a place where I was so consumed by all of the unpretty things about myself. Part of it was my appearance, but really it was so much more. I had picked myself apart so much that I had convinced myself that surely the other person was falling out of love with me. I know now that I really just thought of myself as someone incapable of receiving love. I want people to be able to listen to this song and feel seen if they’ve ever felt any of the lyrics in this song.”
Thematically, Learning To Love explores all facets of love– falling in, falling out, chasing, questioning, and surrendering to it. The singer-songwriter duo beautifully captured both the highs and lows of relationships with an honest and emotionally-charged delivery. Raw yet polished songs that also oscillate between vulnerability and confidence include “Fragile,” which “trembles at the edge of breaking, yet radiates with humanity” (Atwood Magazine).
Whereas the vibrant bops such as “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and “Loophole,” that encapsulate the feelings of fear and excitement that come with young love, feature soaring melodies that help set the album’s deeply personal yet universally relatable tone.
Straying from their signature stripped-back elegance, Jake & Shelby worked closely with more producers, including Josh Ronen (Kelly Clarkson, Erin Kinsey) and Micah Tawlks (COIN, The Brook & the Bluff), to embrace a far more elaborately detailed sound that is adorned with shadowy beats, Jake’s inventive guitar tones, plus Shelby’s haunting piano and jazz-tinged vocals.
Speaking on the inspiration behind the album and meaning of its title, Jake & Shelby explain, “While a lot of this album is about learning to love someone else, a bigger part of it is about learning to love yourself. It’s about learning to love yourself enough to leave what isn’t good for you. Learning to choose someone who will truly care for you. Learning to love yourself enough to work through trauma from your past. To fully love someone else, the first step is learning to love yourself, and that’s what this album means to us. We hope this album can meet people wherever they are. Whether they’re in a relationship or not, we want them to feel seen.”
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