Thank You, Jake

For making me feel more alive.

4 min readJul 21, 2018

It was 2012, also my first college year.

My college is not really far from home but it’s in a different city and took about a couple hours of driving. Anyhow, it’s still a new environment for me.I already have kind of staple friends for playing music since high school, have formed many bands and played in gigs, also have similar taste in music. Turned out they were all went to college in a different city, only one who happened to be the same.

Playing music is really my favorite thing to do, especially if you have found friends who have mutual interests. Therefore, it’s important for me to look for another friend to form a new band and start practicing.

However, college is busier than I thought. For me, first year is the busiest, also you have to adapt with the surroundings there.

This makes me lazy to do anything which relates to my passion. I managed to start the day exhausted… and repeat that all over again. At that point, I haven’t found friends who have mutual interests in music and nearly lost my interest in there. Even though I brought my guitar, I rarely play it.

Until one day, this song came out:

Wow. Who the hell is this guy? Almost has the same age as me. Can play guitar. Has a cool attire (especially the Harrington). Has uniquely beautiful voice. Most importantly, a singer-songwriter.

His nature is like a mistreated-angry-teenage-boy who had grudges in the past and turned all the things that he perceived beautiful as inspirations for him to make the world a better place. Woah. I didn’t realize I just wrote that.

That’s the second think I care about, actually. The first one? Yes, it’s the music. The fucking music. I haven’t heard a musician in his age group create something so arousing yet well-done. The transition from the verse to the chorus on “Two Fingers” is gigantic, you can hear how the atmosphere of the song changed. He developed simple chords and fuss it to many genres such as folk, rock, blues and country. His lyrics also got my attention, for example:

“So I kiss goodbye to every little ounce of pain,
Light a cigarette and wish the world away,
I got out, I got out, I’m alive and I’m here to stay”

I really love it when musicians interpret their life into a song, then merging it with their actual condition. “Two Fingers” is actually about him surviving his life along with the good and bad things he encountered. His blatant perspective is very noticeable in most of his songs, here’s the other example:

“Fill my head with the future,
Fill my eyes with the sky,
The whole of my life getting left behind,
But I’ve never felt more alive”

This comes from “Taste It”, a song about the thrill you’ll get from trying to attain your dreams and plans. It seems he has created many songs from a long time ago, later he chose and polished it when he’s about to release his debut album because they all have a strong foundation. For me, his album’s atmosphere excessively stands in the 60s, acoustic-heavy, hooked with a creatively-catchy deliver of chorus and uncommon guitar strumming.

I listened to his album almost every day. It lifted me up and encouraged me to make my own song, however, the important thing is I got to play my guitar more often. I’ve recommended his album to my friends, sadly only a few people got into it.

One day, I hung out with this friend of mine and suddenly he picked up my guitar and started playing “Paranoid Android”. Then I said to myself, “What the hell? I’ve been hanging out with him a few times and I just knew if he can play guitar and played one of my favorite songs?”. Right after that, I recommended him to listen to Jake Bugg and he’s fucking like it! Later, we often performed as a duo or a band in events and even did a cover of “Two Fingers”.

I dedicated this post to Jake Bugg, don’t care if he read it or not. I won’t say anything cliché like “his music changed me” or else. I appreciate his endeavor in music, it inspires me to do the same and I hope you all can learn anything good through listening to his music or reading this post. Once again, thank you, Jake.