It’s been a hot minute since we caught up with Julia Jacklin, but today (December 10) the Australian singer-songwriter returns to our digital shores with a tender holiday tune called “baby jesus is nobody’s baby now.” The acoustic track follows a consistent theme we’re seeing in Christmas songs this year, reflecting a chaotic yuletide mood (Crocodiles, Carly Rae Jepsen) as we aim to put 2020 to bed.
Though here, Jacklin says this track predates the year we’ve all been having, and it serves as a reminder that life was on the skids well before 2020 went and shoved it off a cliff.
“2019 was a pretty rough one for my family,” Jacklin admits. “I was touring the whole year carrying a lot of guilt for not being able to be at home. Singing super sad songs every night was a blessing and a curse depending on the day. I was imagining Christmas as being this time where we all came together again and took a collective breath but then the bushfires hit and my family live in the country so it was a direct threat. I was living in Melbourne, still pretty new to it, and wasn’t able to go home, the roads were blocked and my family were being evacuated periodically for a month. At one point Melbourne was blanketed in smoke from the fires, the sun was this menacing red, it felt apocalyptic and pretty hopeless. I wrote this in my room looking forward to 2020, hoping it would be a reset of some kind lol.”
Welp, we all know how that turned out. “baby jesus is nobody’s baby now,” lowercase presentation well intended, arrives with a visual, directed by Jacklin and longtime collaborator Nick Mckk. “The costume was made by my mother Marion Crossman a couple of weeks ago when we were living together in rural NSW,” Jacklin adds, “and the backdrop was painted by my younger brother Eamonn Briggs on Nick Mckk’s driveway.”
Give a listen below.