Since the release of his debut album ‘Tell Me About Tomorrow’ in 2021, Jxdn has lived a hell of a lot of life.
Ditching his stage name in favour of his real name – Jaden Hossler – in 2023, he’s spent the last few years navigating a tumultuous music industry whilst processing the realities of fame, heartbreak, and grief. Struggling with his identity as thousands of eyes watched and critiqued his every move, it’s been a difficult period for the 23-year-old, but now – Jxdn is back.
Reclaiming both his name and his pop-punk roots, the Texan musician’s second album ‘When The Music Stops’ is a tribute to where it all began for Jxdn, and everyone who has made his journey possible. A love letter to rock music, and to those who’ve had his back through everything, it’s a collection of songs distinctly different from one another, yet bound by feeling. From delicate acoustic numbers to indie floor fillers and instant pop-punk classics, it’s got all the markers of an artist ready to take over the world, and when Jxdn does just that – he wants all his fans stood beside him.
To find out more about his return to music and how his latest album came to be, Rock Sound sat down with Jxdn…
ROCK SOUND: It’s been a minute since your debut record, and a lot has changed for you over those years. What inspired you to step back into music as Jxdn?
JXDN: “It was right after When We Were Young this past year, when I had changed my name to Jaden Hossler. I was going through an identity crisis, and I just didn’t feel like myself. I was putting on a front because I was trying to fill a void after my best friend passed away. I needed something, and I thought what I needed was success.
I went to Brazil, which oddly is my biggest country in the world. I have fans there that will stay outside my hotel, and I love interacting with my fans. I went out to talk to them, and it was such a life changing experience. It was right after I released ‘Chrome Hearted’, and there were about 200 kids outside. None of them came up to me and told me they loved it, or they loved my music, they came up to me and said, ‘Jaden, you saved my life’. I had heard it before, but I never really believed it. In that moment though, I understood it, and I understood what being an artist really is to me. It’s about being a martyr; you’re supposed to be a sacrifice for these kids in the world. You feel things, and you express it, so they don’t have to feel it alone. It clicked.
They asked me to sign some stuff, and they had a vinyl copy of my debut record. I wrote, ‘Jxdn isn’t just this’, and I drew an arrow to the picture of me as a baby on the album’s cover. To most people, that might just be a picture, but that was such a moment for me. I’d been questioning what I was doing this for, and I realised that it wasn’t about succeeding. I started this whole thing for those kids, because I was that kid once. Before I got on stage in Brazil, I told my team to put the name ‘Jxdn’ up on the stage. It was a lot of work to change my name back, but in that moment, I was willing to lose everything, because I completely misunderstood what everything meant. After what I went through in my life, I was so fogged, but the clouds parted. It’s not about the streams, the numbers, the money, or the success, it’s those kids. I came back and called Travis [Barker], we met up, and that’s when we made the album.”
RS: Your debut record was stacked full of hits, but what was the vision for album two?
JXDN: “I didn’t make this album for anyone else. When I realised that I wanted to come back to Jxdn, I realised that the project wasn’t really me, it was the community and the family that I built with the help of Travis and MGK. That was so valuable to me, and when I came back and talked to Travis about wanting to make this album, I told him that I didn’t want any hits. If you said that to a lot of people, they’d probably just disregard it, but I was being very serious. Travis looked at me and was like, ‘Perfect, let’s just make a great album’. That’s the energy that Travis carries with him 24/7, he just wants to make good music. He doesn’t care about the outcome, and so having him on my side made this project effortless. We didn’t make any hits, we just made good music. That good music turned into great music, and that great music turned into the album that’s going to change everything for me.”
RS: The record is an impressive 17 tracks long, and there’s a little bit of everything sprinkled within that. There are indie songs, nu-metal songs, punk songs. It feels like a real love letter to rock music…
JXDN: “That’s a phenomenal way of putting it. The motif of the album is, ‘When the music stops, the world keeps singing’. The literal and metaphorical music of my life stopped for two years, but so many things brought me back to it. It was the people, the world… it’s created this idea that we are music. It sounds bizarre, and some people will say that music is just a sound, but I disagree. A sound is just a sound, a song is just a song, but music is us. You wouldn’t be able to create music without us, and that’s such a beautiful idea. With this album, I scaled the entire landscape of rock because I felt like I’d always been forced into a box. People expected my second album to be another version of my first album, this pure pop-punk sound, but I don’t want to be pop-punk forever. I’m trying to reach the world, and I’m an evolutionary artist. I want me and my fans to grow together. This is absolutely a love letter to rock, because I’m grateful for everything it’s given me, and I’m excited to show where I’m headed right now.”
RS: All these songs come from a gritty, vulnerable place, and opening with a heart-on-sleeve acoustic cut like ‘Lost Angel’ feels like a real statement. Is being that vulnerable about things in your life that have caused you pain something that comes easily to you?
JXDN: “I didn’t even think about it, to be honest. I look back and I’m like, ‘Man, I was as vulnerable as I could be in that moment’, but it’s all a process, and to me, it was the only option. It came easily because I had nothing left. I had hit rock bottom, and it is cliche, but you can only go up from there. I’ve been in love with cliches recently, because they’re becoming increasingly true. I wanted to be so vulnerable that it either made people uncomfortable, or it forced them to be vulnerable themselves.”
RS: ‘When The Music Stops’ zig zags through genres and styles at such an impressive rate. It isn’t bound by any sonic rules, it’s just driven by feeling…
JXDN: “It’s all feeling. I listen to so much music these days, sometimes I have to stop myself because I get carried away. I love following the journey of music. On this album, I reference artists like The Strokes and Deftones, but I wasn’t thinking about it when I made the songs. I wanted to create a feeling, and there are so many artists that are writing for feeling right now, but they’re not the ones getting the flowers. The people getting recognition are the ones who are creating music because it works, and for my own personal psyche, I wanted to destroy that. That mindset was a disease that started to infiltrate my brain, and my opinions of my art were based on the streams and views it got online. That’s such a detrimental thing to people who create from the soul, and that’s where I create from. I had to make a drastic change, and this album was the perfect way to kick it off. I’m trying to start a revolution.”
RS: It feels like an acknowledgment that you don’t have it all figured out, and that’s okay. Are you hoping that the album serves as a reminder that it’s okay to go through shit and come out the other side?
JXDN: “If anything, it’s an encouragement to let it happen. I wouldn’t be the artist that I am if I didn’t go through everything that I went through, even though I hated what I went through. There must be an answer in there somewhere, I’m just trying to prompt a question for people to find that out.”
RS: It feels as though these songs are such a true representation of yourself, and it’s a truly special album. Having grown so much since your debut record, what does the future of Jxdn look like for you?
JXDN: “I thought about the future so much that it almost ruined me, but I also struggled with focusing on the past. That’s how I see depression and anxiety. Anxiety is thinking about the future, and depression is worrying about the past. I’m obsessed with the grey right now, and I think there’s gold in the grey. I’m not searching for the extremes; I just want to find my place within the dirt of it all. Recently, I’ve been obsessed with living, which is such a contrary thing to me. In the future, I’m just trying to inspire other people to feel that same way, and I’m not worried about the music. I made the best music of my life in my bedroom alone, so I’m trying to strip myself of every bit of ego, pride, and self-absorption that I feel. That’s what this album is about. I don’t know anything, but I have an ambitious and exciting plan for the world. I want Jdxn to be the face of a revolution of music, and whatever it takes, I’m going to do it.”
Jxdn’s new album ‘When The Music Stops’ is out now.