When Jack and Jill go up the mountain, they get more than just a bucket of water. Or, at least, Jill did. Jack didn’t really stay.
Jordan Fletcher on the final song of his Triple Tigers EP classic (released September 27), rewrites the centuries-old “Jack and Jill” nursery rhyme with a surprising modern twist. “About Gil” is a sensitive, almost celebratory portrait of a single mother raising a boy who looks very much like his father, an immature rich kid, leaving a pregnant girl to fend for herself .
But Jack is not the story of “About Jill.”
explore
explore
Check out the latest videos, charts and news
Check out the latest videos, charts and news
“No one likes Jack,” Fletcher admits, “but you don’t want him to be the center of attention.”
When Fletcher showed up at Sea Gayle in Nashville on March 16, 2022 to co-write with Nora Collins (“Leroy”), he had no idea Jack would become a hit. While recovering from the pandemic, Fletcher began to think about the challenges single women face trying to make it in a male-dominated world. He turned to his phone to find a suitable title.
“I think I have 50,000 — and that’s a real number — I think, 40,000 or 50,000 voice memos on my phone that are parts of songs, ideas, parts of ideas, full songs, completely unorganized,” he said. “I have this thing called ‘Jack and Jill.'”
They soon discovered that they could use this title to write about a woman finding her own path.
“He said, ‘You know everybody knows Jack, but they don’t know Jack and Jill,'” Collins recalled. “That drew me in. He started playing a little guitar part, and then I started writing the first verse.
The nursery rhyme gave them an obvious starting point, and they modified it enough to change the direction of the story: “Jack and Jill had time to kill.” They made out on the path, and things moved quickly: By the end of the third line, she Pregnant, he decided he was “too young to have a baby,” and he left the choice to “Jill.” It was a subtle hint that she had considered abortion (they wrote this three months before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision took away the abortion option for many women). They broached the topic with such grace that the controversy was all but eliminated.
“I think it’s important,” Collins said. “You know, it’s ‘Let’s lighten up a very difficult topic and let’s empower Jill.'”
The rest of the verse and chorus paint Jack as a playboy who ends up living an easy life with a girl he met in college. It’s at the end of the chorus that the chorus debuts: “Everybody knows Jack/But they don’t know Jack and Jill.”
Musically, “About Gil” belies the seriousness of the story, using airy chord progressions and breezy rhythms sustained by hard upbeats, inspired in part by Fletcher’s appreciation of reggae music.
The second stanza contrasts Jill’s struggles with Jack’s good fortune. She worked two jobs, drove a used car, and saw Jack’s reflection every time she looked at her son. But she still loves this child very much. “She was in a very, very difficult situation,” Fletcher said. “It turns out it’s a story for a lot of people, but I didn’t realize it. It’s a story that’s not often told.
The bridge reiterates her ability to maintain a positive attitude and concludes that life has given her lemons, but “she makes very good lemonade.”
“You can’t predict what life will throw at you,” Collins said. “It’s all a choice, how you choose to handle things. Life isn’t easy for anyone, and if you’re a single mom or a single parent, you’re trying to do the best you can for your kids, you have to Make lemonade.
Collins sang on the work tape at the end of the day as they considered several women, including Lenny Wilson, Ella Langley and Miranda Lambert, as potential matches. “About Jill” was well received but not cut. Meanwhile, Fletcher posted a video on his back porch a week after they wrote the song, with birdsong and traffic in the background. Finally he decided to record it himself classic EP.
“To be honest, it’s sweeter when it comes from a man because it seems more objective,” he explains. “I can definitely understand how women might feel like it’s a man-hating song, but if it’s a man singing it, it’s just a very thoughtful song.”
Producer Austin Nivarrell (Jelly Roll, Austin Snell) decided “About Gil” was a song they needed to cut on first listen, and he and Fletcher agreed it should be as simple as possible Present this song. “We wanted it to feel so real and raw,” Nivarel said.
They accomplished this by cutting it down to a guitar/vocal track at the Black River Studios complex on Nashville’s Music Row. Engineer Nick Autry set up two microphones in the center of the studio and several others elsewhere to capture room noise. But after one or two passes, Nivarre turned off the room mic, deciding to make it an authentic reflection of Fletcher’s back-porch demonstration.
Fletcher played about two feet away from the microphone, tracking the guitar alongside his voice, meaning both his voice and supporting instruments were present on every track. The performance itself had to be right, since Nivarel couldn’t make many modifications later – for example, if he were to raise the bass in Fletcher’s voice, it would also raise the bass in the guitar notes.
“Since the vocal mic is picking up the guitar, you get what you get,” Nivarel said. “You can’t make a performance perfect. You can’t do much to edit something like this. So everything the listener hears is very real.
Fletcher also cut 3-5 minutes of ambient sounds from his back porch, and the resulting ambience was used to present the singer more authentically.
“About Jill” offers the clearest glimpse of Fletcher’s voice and artistic sensibility. But after the election, its value increases. Within days, misogynists began posting vulgar “your body, my choice” threats on some women’s social media pages. As a result, “About Jill” rises from a well-crafted song to an important song about decency and true American values.
“I wanted to shed some light on it,” Fletcher said. “It just tells us about the positivity and strength of this woman [does what] Many women do this every day. It’s a side that people don’t want to see, but it’s there.
