Cory Graves
Check Out a Sweet Little Jazz Number About Long-Term Love From the Singer’s Long Delayed Solo Debut.
Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week.
Jenna Clark – “Fifty Years.”
RIYL: Growing old with you.
What else you should know: If the title of this song seems familiar, it might be because you’ve heard the Dallas transplant sing it around town at one of her many local shows. Or maybe you’ve caught it somewhere online, floating around as a loosie online over the past couple years.
So, while it’s not exactly new, we feature it here because it’s now got a home as part of the jazz singer’s long-coming freshman album, released just last week. Then again, the songs that make up that collection aren’t exactly “new,” per se, either. Says Clark, she’s just been sitting on the fully mixed and mastered songs for more than two years, nervous to release them for a variety of reasons.
“A record, a photograph, a painting, an artwork of any kind is just a time stamp in the artist’s life,” she says. “Just like this highlight reel we’ve all grown accustomed to. All this to say, I’m ready. I can’t hold on anymore.”
It’s origins date back a few years before that, starting to take form during a trip to visit family in Florida for what would turn out to be the last time she’d see her grandfather. From there, the lyrics took a sentimental turn, paying tribute to her grandparents’ 55-year marriage.
“I realized this song is a celebration of life with another,” she says. “Every time I hear it, I like to think of people dancing to it at their wedding and remembering it together.”
So, in the way that she sings about lovers feeling like they did on the first day they met after being together for decades, listen to this single again and fall for it anew.
Cover photo by Leah Jones.