"Don't Give Up on Us" by Nick Jonas, Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Opening Nick Jonas' latest album, Spaceman, is the etherial ballad "Don't Give Up on Us." Though produced by Greg Kurstin, a hit maker whose accolades include Sia's "Chandelier" and Adele's "Easy on Me" and "Hello," Nick Jonas's 2021 album only spun two singles, "Spaceman" and "This Is Heaven." Were listeners and critics too harsh on Spaceman? Slow pop songs with electronic atmospheres and falsetto R&B vocals and lyrics a committed, marital relationship may have left listeners who cynical from their post-lockdown breakup annoyed. It may have bored other listeners. While it may not be a masterpiece, it's certainly worth a revisit. The moody opener of Spaceman isn't lyrically deep, but its atmosphere opens an album that really should work.

I HEAR YOU CALLING WHEN I'M HERE ALL BY MYSELF. Maybe it's the original cover of the album, but I can't help but think about kids pretending to be astronauts. But as we grow up, we may ponder the "Infinite Abyss of Space." We may have looked to the stars when we were little, but going to the stars would mean risking isolation from the ones we love. The concept of Spaceman is also echoed in COIN's "Sprite." The lyrics of today's song have very little to do with space, but Jonas pulls threads of the motif in other songs on "Spaceman" and the music on the track is rather spacey. The singer of the song is convincing a lover not to give up on their relationship. He's pining for her. In December of 2018, Jonas married Bollywood-turned-Hollywood actress Priyanka Choprain. Jonas married the Indian American actress when he was 26 and she was 36. The youngest of the Jonas Brothers' marriage at 26 has, in recent years, overshadowed his status as a sex symbol in his early 20s. Though he still aims to be a bit provocative, a married Nick Jonas is contrasted with his early 20s, posing shirtless for various publications including Attitude and modeling for Calvin Klein.

ARE YOU LOVING SOMEONE ELSE? One of the problems that albums of love songs have is the lack of conflict. Break up albums are fun to listen to as we can either relate to them or we listen for salacious bits of gossip as we make sense of the words. An album primarily made up of love songs needs conflict. And if an artist continues to make album after album of love songs, listeners get bored. It may be easy for Taylor Swift to write a song about the beginning of a love affair. She'll write about the break up. But what's difficult is to write songs about a long-term stable relationship. "Don't Give Up on Us" never gets specific about a real conflict in a relationship. What did the singer do to make the listener give up on him? Are there flaws at play or is the singer just a victim? But again, how does Jonas write about the love of his life? "This Is Heaven" is a pretty good song, but how do you fill a full album with love songs? Many of us cynical music lovers may consider the "in love" album the stalest in a discography. Even Ben Gibbard considered his Zooey Deschanel album one of his least favorites, and Codes and Keys isn't considered a classic in Death Cab for Cutie's discography as much as their older, more down-on-luck and love albums Plans and Transatlanticism are. "Don't Give Up on Us" is fine. It's atmospheric. It attempts conflict. But if Nick Jonas wants to stick around, he's going to need some new material for the next record.

Read “Don’t Give Up on Us” by Nick Jonas on Genius.