Stream: Jasper (fka Jasper Bones), ‘Things Change’

Kevin Bronson on February 24th, 2022

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The heartbreak of tumbling from me-and-you-against-the-world to “just me by my lonesome” plays out in “Things Change,” the first single since 2019 from Pasadena singer-songwriter Jasper (fka Jasper Bones).

The 23-year-old’s soulful piano ballad has its roots in a two-year-old journal entry, which with other song ideas he began fleshing out over a few days with producer Cowboy Lansky. “As I’m gathering my stuff to head home,” Jasper says, “he starts playing a few different chords, finally landing on a certain three that resonate. I left with a blank loop of the progression and listened to it on the entire drive home. At this point it was midnight and I decided to park at the place I go to when I want to be away from everything and everyone.

“Alone is where I feel most anxious yet comfortable. Afraid yet at peace. Displaced yet exactly where I’m supposed to be. I sat with all the emotions I was experiencing in that moment and condensed them down to what felt like a voice mail. Slowly but surely, the sky transformed from black to dark blue to blue and by the end of it all I had finally realized that everything had changed and days would be much different, forever.”

The song is the first from a new EP, “Lobo,” the follow-up to his six-song 2018 release, “Cruise Control.”

As for the moniker change, he says: “The ‘Bones’ just represented a version of me that I can no longer relate to anymore, so it felt right to remove it. My original intention behind the name was to help embrace myself better in every way from the outside down to my bones. Thankfully, I’m at a point in my life where … I feel more at peace with who I am.”

||| Stream: “Things Change”