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Singer/songwriter Jane Bruce captures an emotionally honest moment of self-doubt on her new single 'Too Late'. The song is premiering exclusively with Holler. Listen below.
Against a somber acoustic guitar, Bruce's voice climbs, aspiring to something more. "I always thought I'd be farther along, not stuck in first gear like I'm still 21", she sings in the opening moments of the track. Bass and drums enter after the chorus, grounding the song with a heftier weight that balances Bruce's soaring voice.
'Too Late' appears on Bruce's forthcoming debut album, My Bed.
"I think a lot of artists and performers cycle through phases of self-doubt, and this was written during one of those for me", Bruce said. "I felt like things weren’t happening for me the way I’d always thought (and been told by others) that they would. I wondered if I needed to relocate, or majorly pivot".
It wasn't just that Bruce wasn't where she thought she'd be professionally — part of that doubt came down to timing. Bruce wrote 'Too Late' one year after Trump's election. "I felt like I needed to be doing more, and making more noise about myself, but after the election of Trump, as well as my own experience with a sexual assault in a workplace, I felt at a loss as an artist and as a woman," she explained.
In the song's chorus, Bruce keeps reflecting about how "Nobody wants a girl who complains". That line felt especially true for her. "And I think in large part that is still true of our society", she added.
Bruce was born in Ogden, Utah. She taught herself to play guitar at age 15, but ended up earning her BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan before she relocated to New York to pursue a career on stage. In that time, she kept writing music and released the EP It's You in 2017.
She wrote the vast majority of My Bed while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she'd moved to perform in the musical Jagged Little Pill, which was preparing to move to Broadway. Although Bruce was part of a promising theatrical production, things were increasingly messy on a personal level. My Bed came about in the wake of a breakup.
"My Bed is about the sad and sticky process of letting go of a lover, as well as the idea of a life I thought I wanted and trying to find confidence and security in the unknown", Bruce said.
My Bed is out February 11, 2022.
