Recommended Tracks: “Your Friend,” “Richard Siken,” “God Has a Hitman”
Artists you might like: Tracy Chapman, Lizzie McAlpine
Jensen McRae is a lyrical and vocal prodigy who has been releasing music since 2019. When she posted a portion of her song “Massachusetts” on TikTok in 2023, it became immensely popular, and since then she has been widely recognized for her storytelling lyrics and killer vocals, reminiscent of artists like Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell.
In 2025, she released her sophomore album, I Don’t Know How, but They Found Me!, which explored the ways that love can “knock the wind out of you,” as Jensen explains. With I Don’t Know How, but They Found Me… Again!, she released disc 2, the deluxe part of the album consisting of 9 songs plus 3 tracks for which she collaborated with guest artists Brandi Carlile, Brittney Spencer and Maisie Peters.
With these deluxe songs, McRae takes on a more reflective and stripped-back style, which puts the spotlight on her clever, self-aware lyrics and the chilling emotional range of her voice. Throughout disc 2, she describes an explosive kind of love and the deep wounds it will leave.
The wordplay in “Annihilated” portrays this idea most clearly. With the lyrics outlining a passionate relationship that ended suddenly, the line that ends every chorus is “no longer an eye elated,” reflecting back on the exciting rush she felt when she was in love. The title being spelt the way it is, the lyric is meant to be heard ambiguously both as “an eye elated” and “annihilated,” two equally intense states of mind that this kind of relationship will cause at different points.
“Richard Siken” is undoubtedly the most heart-wrenching song on the album. The lyrics paint a picture of someone’s first relationship in which they were treated badly, but didn’t have enough life experience or awareness to leave. It also touches on the ways you allow someone to mistreat you because you’re unable to let go of the love you feel towards them. The song is named after the poet who wrote the poetry collection crush, which hints at her incredibly vulnerable feelings towards this person whose way of “loving” her would only hurt her: “if you love me, baby / you don’t love me in a way I understand.” Her ability to render her voice to different textures really shines here: in the chorus when she sings “at least you’re not my first” she sings the words so gutturally, and it never fails to make me tear up.
Her vocal versatility can be heard also in “Just like You,” a single that she released earlier this year, and one of the few highly produced songs on the album. In the verse, her voice takes on a light, silky quality until it grows into her more recognizable powerhouse style in the chorus.
In “God Has a Hitman,” the details are what sets Jensen apart as a lyricist: she is able to layer the story with complexity in such a limited space. She describes the painful feeling of seeing your ex with someone new, but what makes it unique is her characterization of the new girlfriend that she fixates on. Like the songs of this style in the past—“Girl Crush” by Little Big Town and “Heather” by Conan Gray come to mind—she similarly puts the girlfriend on a pedestal, but she goes a bit deeper than these other songs have in terms of the woman’s character: “she’s just the right flavour of fucked up / a sick bird who still gets you hard.” She describes the woman as imperfect, but still someone appealing to her ex, and recognizing the imperfect humanity of your “hitman” is maybe even more painful than seeing her as flawless.
Where most of the songs have an acoustic country vibe, “Your Friend,” the only song with a solo piano accompaniment, sounds more like a pop/soul ballad. The way her voice echoes, you feel as if you’re in the room with her, which is the perfect intimate atmosphere for the emotion of this song.
In the song, Jensen outlines the inability to let go of someone you love, so much that you want to keep them in your life as a friend despite the pain that it will cause. The song depicts a very relatable sense of desperation and a hint of denial, where the last line, “you don’t want me back, do you?”, leaves you with an almost uncomfortable irresolution because of how hopeful it is.
KEEP UP WITH JENSEN MCRAE: Instagram // YouTube // TikTok // Website
