Jordan Suaste gets existential in debut EP ‘maybe i already am’

December 9, 2024

11:05 am

The musician opens up on being loud in life while using silence in their music.

Growing up in Salt Lake City, Jordan Suaste only had about 50 kids in their school grade for most of their life. The musician didn’t have much community in person but found commune in the IDGAF attitude of popstars; particularly Sam Smith.

“I love the energy of like, ‘I don’t give a f*ck. I’m going to do what I want.’ That’s why I love these artists that are breaking down walls that shouldn’t be there,” they explain.

Before long, Suaste’s solace grew from just listening to music and expanded into creating it. “[Music] is like my therapy,” they confess. “Everyone has their things that they use to process their emotions and for me, that’s just writing. I love writing and I love singing and it’s always just been kind of like my diary.” But rather than hide it (with an attached lock if you were a Claire’s Accessories girlie) like most of us, Jordan chose to share their diary by turning it into heartbreakingly beautiful songs.

An outlet borne of isolation is now driven by a desire to nurture. Fresh off their first tour, Jordan is building his own community through his fans and cites impact overreach as his core value. For Suaste, sharing their music is their way to hold a stranger’s hand when they feel alone; just as Sam Smith did for them.

While they embody the idgaf attitude of their heroes, Jordan stands definitively as their own artist entirely. In an industry cacophonous with production and layering, Jordan swims unabashedly in silence. By using sparsity in production, Jordan is hoping not just to punctuate lyrics, but to send the listener headfirst into the rawness of emotion.

“Silence is important. I think we’re so busy. We live in a world that’s so full of distractions and everything stimulates you… I feel like sometimes we need that moment to sit with ourselves. We need to be like, ‘okay, I see you’ to yourselves.”

Their track “god or the universe or something else” is the perfect example. “I wrote that song in my bedroom [at] three in the morning… and I was really, really, really lonely. I was at a really low point for a really long time and I just kind of hit this point where I was like: ‘please.’” The lyrics are a poignant spiral into the depths of anxiety our brains can take us on. “If you’re God or the universe or something else / I’m begging you, please send help / I can’t seem to find myself,” they sing over a scarce piano backing. Where others might lean into instrumentation to make their emotional point, Suaste does the opposite: “I think the whole song is just a giant please to whatever Is there. I wanted to capture the feeling of being alone…the silence of when you’re alone,” they explain.

Suaste has new music to focus on with the release of their debut EP “maybe i already am” but their recent tour reshaped their relationship with their hit song, “Body.” Like many artists, Suaste is forever grateful for the opportunities that arose from the song but they yearned to stretch out from beyond its shadow. “I didn’t expect “Body” to hit so hard…I don’t love that song. A lot of people do, and obviously the song got me where I am. But like seeing people sing that song and being in a room with people and like being able to connect in that sense… it just really shook me a little bit and like brought a new love for the song back into my life.”

Between their mission to spread love and their invigoration from tour, Suaste is ready to walk with their head held high into the world’s current state of uncertainty. While many communities feel paralyzed with fear or overwhelmed with rage, Suaste is determined to continue showing up. “I have gone my whole life fitting into this box and trying to tone down who I am for everybody else and I’m not going to do that anymore. We were starting to get to this place and we are going to keep going that way. And I think that now that the queer community and other minorities need to be like, ‘we’re going to speak up and we’re going to be loud. We don’t have to take this sitting down. This is the time for us to come together and really fight for what we believe in, you know?”

They note that for a whole, they had gotten “lazy” with their fashion “but now, every time I’m going to be out there as queer and beautiful and just myself as I can be because I think that especially with the uncertainty, now is the time that we need to be… together. We need to be loud.”

If there’s one thing you take away from Jordan Suaste’s being, besides their incredible (while short) discography, is their mastery of knowing when to be quiet and when to be battle-cry level loud. Perhaps something we could all channel a little more in our day to day attempts to take up space for the better.