If you pause in Harvard Square and tilt your head ever so slightly, it’s nearly guaranteed you’ll hear someone bemoaning (not unjustly) the area’s revolving door of storefronts. Hell, you don’t even have to go far online to find a news segment or forum post enumerating the Square’s long-gone businesses and increasing shift from charming to commercial. But when Jordan Maye frets over palpable change in Cambridge, she’s not looking at historic signs and vacant shops — she’s staring inward.
The Berklee student tunes out the bustle of the city to reveal a “Hush” on her new single, an epic first-person confessional fit for a rock opera. Released earlier this month (February 15), the song speaks from a place of disquiet as Maye combs the streets for a sense of stillness — literally and mentally — amidst a whirl of slush and rushing strangers.
“I was at a bar waiting for this Harvard student I was dating,” Maye explains. “We were going to celebrate her birthday. Things were going too fast for me, and I was scared. More accurately, I was moving faster than I could keep up with. I kept thinking about how things come and go.”
Sitting alone by candlelight with no one but a bartender and her thoughts to keep her company, the situation cracks open a meditation on life’s fleeting relationships for Maye. She shifts from the bar to a bus home between verses, stewing in unease yet self-soothing with a poignant hook that loops in her mind (and now ours, too): “The pain of losing loved ones doesn’t sting that much / Just hush, hush, hush.”
Turn up the volume on “Hush” below.