For his debut appearance on national television, Tobias Jesso, Jr. dressed like a college grad going on his first job interview. Wearing a blue suit (the arms maybe a half inch too short on his 6'7" frame) and a crisp white shirt with the collar buttoned over his tie, Jesso, Jr. sat behind a piano on the set of Jimmy Fallon and belted out “How Could You Babe,” a ballad from his new album, Goon, out today. With floppy hair and a wide smile, he cuts a striking figure—a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon come to life. “It was my first time on TV, and you want to look at least like a professional. I thought it might make up for my lack of experience,” he says by phone from Los Angeles. “We went to some really nice store called . . .”—unable to recall the name, he shouts to his manager, Will, to remind him—“Saks Fifth Avenue. You know it?”
Whatever he’s doing, it’s working. The twelve melancholy heartache songs on Goon have earned Jesso, Jr. comparisons to beloved seventies singers Carole King, Randy Newman, and Harry Nilsson. And though he does sound a bit like those golden age artists, it’s less emulation than a shared approach toward classic, unembellished songwriting. At a time when producers stamp out imperfections with auto-tune, and American Idol tries to find vocalists with superhuman pipes, Jesso, Jr.’s strategy, like so many of the most lasting singer-songwriters before him, is just to pen a song about messy love and sing his heart out. He calls this “amateur—absolutely amateur,” but the word genuine also comes to mind. “It’s hard for me to believe that everyone can look past a shaky voice that maybe goes out of tune and very simple piano-playing ability. Maybe people are going to hear me and think, How did he get here? My seven-year-old son can play piano better than this guy. I’m using maybe nineteen chords per song,” he says. “But I don’t know, it’s just emotional. It makes people go, ‘Wait, this is different from what’s popular.’”
Jesso, Jr., now 29, started messing around on the piano only a few years ago after some time bumming around the L.A. music scene. His career as a guitarist had seemed to reach a dead end and he moved back in with his parents in Vancouver, where he began writing songs about a bad breakup. “The happiest and most accomplished I could feel is after I’ve written a song. I think about people like**Adele,** whose songs are on the radio all across the world and make people pull their cars over and cry. She’s not even aware of those people,” he says. “As a songwriter, you don’t know these people, but they’re taking something you’ve created in a matter of hours and applying it to their own lives.” With production help from indie experts Chet “JR” White (formerly of the band Girls) and Ariel Rechtshaid, his songs are powerful for their intimacy and immediacy, quick little tracks with big, sad hooks. “I just made the record speak to me,” he says. “Relatability is all up to the listener.”
Goon is likely to hit in a big way, and Jesso, Jr. is poised for pop stardom, whether he’s ready for it or not. He may have gotten a small taste of what’s to come earlier this year when international tabloids suggested he was **Taylor Swift’**s new boyfriend. “I went to a Grammy party and I met her, but beyond that it’s ridiculous. I don’t know, she’s nice,” he says. “It’s kind of strange, I never really considered gossip magazines as a possibility that would ever happen in my life.” As Jesso, Jr. tells it, he is just a regular guy with lots of luck. “Maybe I snuck into all of this, but I’m glad to be here,” he says with a laugh. “And I’m not leaving.”