Song You Need: Kara Jackson asks the tough questions on “pawnshop”
Listen to a new song from Jackson’s Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? , out April 14.
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Words matter to Kara Jackson, a Chicago-based songwriter who previously served as the National Youth Poet Laureate in 2019. On her new song "pawnshop," Jackson explores the ways in which different people treat each other and how only one person can determine your own worth: you. If that sounds a little like an Instagram platitude, then Jackson's incisive songwriting is on hand to lend weight to the message.
Built around the kind of country guitar chords where every shift of the fingers echoes out on the fretboard, Jackson uses the gently lilting backdrop to ask important questions. "When you become somebody’s bandit, and their heart becomes your loot, what kind of player does that make you?" she asks later adding: "I'm sharper than a jewel. What kind of miner does that make you?" Jackson's voice doesn't lean into the anger her words hint at, remaining an oasis of calm as she puts the errant lover in their place. She's not mad, just disappointed, and it's hard not to feel some of that residual pain as she says her piece.