Jessie Murph just wants to work: “I’m in a state, right now, of just hustling,” she tells Rolling Stone on the latest episode of On Your Radar. “Any chance I get, I’m writing, any chance I get, I’m in the studio — it’s all I care about, it’s all I want to do. I have so much to say — so, so much to say… I have so much music that I’m just ready to let go.”
The musician — whose sound is “a little country, a little hip-hop, it’s a little soul, and it’s a little pop,” as she puts it — is coming off a big breakout 2023: She dropped her debut mixtape, Drowning, last February, and also shared collaborations with Maren Morris (“Texas”) and Jelly Roll (“Wild Ones”). Just last week, Murph released a new single, “Son of a Bitch,” and has scheduled a headlining North American tour that kicks off in April.
Touring has been an especially revelatory experience for the 19-year-old Alabama artist. “I always learn so much when I go on tour,” she says. “One of the best forms of education is seeing different places and seeing how people live. I always come back feeling five years older.”
On top of that, she’s been able to see firsthand the “healing” power of live music. “Getting to see that in front of me is one of the most surreal and beautiful things that I’m so grateful for about this,” she says. “It’s better than therapy.”
Elsewhere in the video, Murph talks about her earliest songwriting memories, building a career on social media, and learning to use it now as a tool to keep in touch with fans (and even bounce ideas off of them). She also spoke about working with Morris (“I have always looked up to her… She’s a legend) and Jelly Roll (“He is the most incredible man I think I’ve ever met in my life”) and shared what fans can expect from her next round of new music.
“Anger — there’s a lot of anger behind it. It encompasses female rage really well,” Murph says. “There’s also tones of sadness. ‘Female rage’ is what I’ll give you. I don’t know if I’m selfish or what, but it’s really hard for me to write about something if I’m not personally feeling it… Shit has been pissing me off, but you’ll see.”