Jenny Owen Youngs Shares New Single 'Someone's Ex'

Singer, songwriter, producer, and podcast host Jenny Owen Youngs has shared a new single and video, “Someone’s Ex.” 

Recorded during the Avalanche sessions – her first full-length solo album in over a decade released on Yep Roc Records a year ago this week – Youngs pulled “Someone’s Ex” from the album’s final track listing as she didn’t feel it matched the tone of the rest of the songs.

“This was the last song we recorded during our week of principal tracking at Isokon, and I think we were itching to dig in a bit harder than we had been, to let it rip a little,” says Youngs. “We found this slightly more bombastic instrumental approach, compared to the rest of the album, but the vocals maintained the same mellow, more introspective color of the other songs. When we got to the mastering stage, we knew we needed to cut one song from the eleven we had recorded, and sonically “Someone’s Ex” just felt slightly to the left of the rest. I hated to leave it out, because the lyric is right in line with the album thematically: it’s about believing in love, about possibility, about holding on. I’m so happy it’s finally out in the world.” 

Written by Youngs and Tom Peyton, “Someone’s Ex” was produced by Josh Kaufman (The National, Bonny Light Horseman, The Hold Steady) and features Youngs on vocals/guitar, Josh Kaufman (guitars, bass, piano, synthesizer, organ, percussion, drum machine) and The Walkmen’s Matt Barrick (drums, percussion).

Avalanche, which garnered critical acclaim from Paste, Under the Radar, FLOOD, Brooklyn Vegan, and more, unpacks the past ten years of Youngs’ life with her elegant precision, warm voice and intoxicating melodies. Written with a host of collaborators and co-writers, including Christian Lee Hutson, who co-wrote “Everglades,” S. Carey, Madi Diaz, The Antlers’ Peter Silberman, and Christian Lee Hutson, the collection is an achingly beautiful exploration of loss, resilience, and growth from an artist who’s experienced more than her fair share of each in recent years.

Born and raised in rural New Jersey, Jenny Owen Youngs fell in love with The Beatles at an early age, eventually finding her way to The Cranberries and Elliott Smith in high school. Her self-released debut, Batten The Hatches, landed a high-profile sync in the Showtime series Weeds and led to a deal with Nettwerk Records, which re-released the album along with her 2009 follow-up, Transmitter Failure.

Critical acclaim followed along with tours in support of Regina Spektor, Ingrid Michaelson, Frank Turner, and Aimee Mann. In 2012, Youngs released her third album, An Unwavering Band Of Light, and moved to Los Angeles to focus on writing songs for other artists and film and TV.

In 2016, Youngs co-wrote Pitbull’s “Bad Man,” which debuted at the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards; in 2017, she co-wrote Shungudzo’s “Come On Back,” which was featured in the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack; and in 2018, she co-wrote Panic! At The Disco’s smash hit “High Hopes,” which broke the records for most weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart and is seven-times platinum. 

Along the way, Youngs also launched Buffering The Vampire Slayer, an episode-by-episode podcast devoted to Buffy The Vampire Slayer that attracted more than 160,000 monthly listeners and led to a book deal with St. Martin’s Press. Youngs recently launched a new series with her podcasting partner/ex-wife called The eX-Files and has a narrative fiction podcast due out next year.

Photo credit: Josh Goleman

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