I Love You, I’m Trying

The music that Jordan Benjamin creates as grandson has always felt like a live news dispatch from the middle of a societal breakdown, as he hot-wires together mosh-rock riffs, trap beats, industrial noise, and searing social commentary into tracks that feel as volatile as a homemade bomb. But on his second album, the chaos is largely confined to his head. As its title unsubtly suggests, *I Love You, I’m Trying* is a more personal and vulnerable work than 2020’s pandemic-era address *Death of an Optimist*, as Benjamin comes clean about addictions (of both the substance and social-media varieties), career insecurities, and past experiences with suicidal ideation. “This album for me was, first and foremost, an acknowledgment that I’ve had a problem with my mental health for a while that I’ve been kind of running away from, or pushing down in some ways,” Benjamin tells Apple Music. “I needed to address it as directly and bluntly as I could.” Sharing his darkest thoughts with his fans has been a healthy, therapeutic process that’s ultimately brought him to a happier place in life. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” he says. “I’ve managed to take these little songs that I’ve been writing and turn it into a lifelong connection with people across the world.” Here’s his 12-step program to finding inner peace. **“Two Along Their Way”** “The main recording is actually my father when he was my age. He was signed to a record label, but it got bought by another label, and my father’s record never got to come out. But this is a beautiful song about heartbreak and reminiscing on the way things were versus how they are. So, I recontextualized it and worked with a producer to bring it to life and then had my partner and girlfriend Wafia—who sang across the whole album—add some harmonies on it. The focus was setting up this kind of fantasy: We’re going to be looking backwards while moving forwards.” **“Eulogy”** “The song speaks to this overwhelmed feeling that I have and that I share with so many people right now, where everything is all being delivered in the same place. When I swipe through my phone, I can go from this horrifying demonstration of police brutality, and then swipe to some couple that’s managing to backpack around the world in 45 days. All these things just culminate in this fantasy of just kind of opting out of the whole thing.” **“Something to Hide”** “It’s an exploration of my own personal relationships to the themes that my music covers, as it relates to addiction, mental health, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation. In many ways, we come across as a happy, healthy family, but this is what families are going through. As the youngest sibling, I was always the peacemaker, the class clown, and I think that’s where my desire to perform came from. We’d be in the middle of a really awkward family dinner, and there was this impulse to not address the problem. That’s what inspired this song.” **“Drones”** “The line that sticks out in this song is ‘Just tell me one good lie.’ We have these secrets, and would you rather try and address them and then move through the world with this anxiety and unease? Or do you bury it and deal with those consequences somewhere down the line. ‘Drones’ is about that bomb going off in the distance and saying, ‘Oh, that’s just fireworks’—like the sort of thing a father might tell their child to keep them from knowing just how unforgiving the world can sometimes be.” **“I Love You, I’m Trying”** “All I wanted was for things to feel easy, and easy just couldn’t come, between dealing with my own mental health and the various temptations that come with living on a tour bus. Long-distance relationships are just hard to navigate. Whether or not you’ve been through what I’ve been through, you can understand this feeling of desperation: ‘I want to be there for you, and I’m doing my best, but I’m really in over my head here.’” **“Half My Heart”** “It speaks to the cyclical nature of falling apart, only to have to build it back up again—like, you’re only hurting yourself by throwing these tantrums. If I want to throw a plate at the wall, at some point, I’m going to be the one that has to sweep it up. This is when I begin to reflect on this album: Is this productive? And if not, then what is the point of getting so worked up about the world at large if you’re not going to do anything about it?” **“When the Bomb Goes”** “I have my own relationship to substance abuse and, frankly, it’s kind of worked out for me so far—knock on wood. Especially on tour, it feels like pressure builds up inside of me, and then one of the ways that I can release that tension is to get blackout drunk and make a mess. I’ve just had these nights that I barely remember. And it’s not a good feeling the next day, but there’s some sort of clarity that comes from being really, really hungover and trying to find my wallet, and my phone is dead.” **“Enough”** “In the verses, I’ve got this kind of back-and-forth conversation going on. Again, the vocals are supplied by Wafia, who provides this subconscious voice where I’m admitting to myself, ‘This party sucks,’ but out loud, I’m saying, ‘This is awesome!’ And again, this is when I start to ask, ‘If not now, when am I going to be the kind of person I want to be, make the album I want to make, and live the life I want to live?’ I think this song is meant to be this unifying call to a certain action in your personal life.” **“Murderer”** “I wrote this exaggerated homage to narrative hip-hop songs like ‘Stan’ by Eminem. I wanted to tell this story of a one-hit wonder who loses his mind. And I wanted it to be contextually relevant to my life, and I wanted to give it a sense of urgency. Thankfully, it isn’t based on a true story. But there’s absolutely truth in the frustration that I felt during the pandemic, with this onset explosion of pop-punk music, which I felt was super derivative and detached from soul. And I just wanted to make something that was fun and poke the bear a bit.” **“I Will Be Here When You’re Ready to Wake Up” (feat. Wafia)** “Amidst all of this turmoil in my personal life, and these fantasies of annihilation, I’ve been in a loving relationship. And I think we all have someone who would be really sad to see us go, or who will be there on the other side of these episodic breakdowns that I suffer from. And so, I wanted to give this sort of reassuring lullaby that I’m so fortunate to have to somebody else that might not have it.” **“Heather”** “A really necessary step in getting out of your own way is being there for somebody else and realizing that it’s not all about you. I’ve had fans now for years, and sometimes those early super-fans grow up and move on—they used to message you every day, and you’re left wondering what happened to them. And so, ‘Heather’ is about a fan who ultimately committed suicide, and it will serve for the rest of my career as this promise to myself—and hopefully to my fans—that we can be there for one another as we continue to move through life together.” **“Stuck Here With Me”** “‘Stuck Here With Me’ poses the question ‘If this is the one life that we do have, are you going to waste it wishing you had somebody else’s?’ At the end of the day, I have so much to be grateful for, and it’s a life that’s really worth living. We took all of these human experiences—laughing, crying, fucking—and turned them into a hundred voices shouting at you, and it just ends with this big cathartic release, and then the sound of me crying. And that’s what it’s all about: You get up and wipe your tears and you go to sleep, and you wake up the next day and keep doing it. That’s my second album.”

Trading in high-octane missives against the world for more journalistic revelation, Grandson faces his demons nose-to-nose and allows us all to be privy to the messy death match that is I Love You I'm Trying.