Didn’t You!

Release Day!

Today, The New Hippies present to the world, their latest single: “Didn’t You”. Now available everywhere you stream your music.

Didn’t You is easily one of my favorite songs we’ve ever done. It’s one of the first times I felt like I was able to really accurately convey what I heard in my head on the record. It’s big and cinematic and every note or texture feels really intentional and cohesive. That’s my opinion at least.

I first got the idea for Didn’t You the day I arrived at Understanding’s house in Jersey for the first day of Season 2 of Wu-Tang: An American Saga. RZA was talking with some people in the kitchen for a while, and nobody else was really awake yet, so I was just in the living room with an acoustic guitar and started playing the main riff that the marimba plays on the track. We made the first demo in the basement studio, which is essentially the same studio they recreated for season 3 of the tv show, so if you’re wondering what it looked like, now you know. That was Spring 2021 I believe, and then we came back to it once we got live drums set up at our house.

Didn’t You is mostly me talking to myself, like it usually is when I write songs. 2021 was the secondd time I had worked in that studio; the first was in 2017 when The New Hippies originally went to record an album of songs we wrote in school, most of which have never been released. Maybe one day. Anyway, being in that room and in that house for an extended period of time felt like the completion of a cycle in a way. A chance to look back and honestly assess. Did I actually achieve any of the goals I set? Did I really believe what in what I was doing? Didn’t I want this?

The bridge was changed out a couple times, and the one we stuck with is an old lyric I wrote in 2013 or 14 that I would occasionally sing to myself. It’s sarcastic but like, it’d be nice to have some money to use for all this and to like, live in America today. You get it.

Well, that’s Didn’t You, by The New Hippies. I really enjoy this one, and it gives you as much energy as it gave me. Peace.

-J.P.