I kept a guy around way too long once. His dick game was exceptional. His personality was somewhere between a golden retriever and a brick wall and I mean that in the worst possible way. He complained about club music until I wanted to put my head through a wall. He sulked at parties and I’d stand there with my drink wondering how I ended up babysitting this man’s ass at a venue I actually paid to be at. And yet I stayed. The attachment stays longer than it should. You’re done, fully done, standing in a room with someone you used to adore and the air is thin and you still can’t picture the exit. That’s the energy Jade Barbara is working with on ‘Breathe (A Little)’, and the fact that she wrote the whole damn thing in one session, lyrics on the spot, her first time in Logic Pro, means she either knows exactly how this feels or she’s psychic. Honestly, I’m going with both.
The song opens with a voicemail-“Hey, so I’m with the girls. I think it’s best if you don’t come tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.” The audacity of that delivery. We’ve all drafted that text and never sent it. Jade put it on record.
Then she comes in with: “Inhale, exhale / Babysitting you is like jail / Baby sipping on ginger ale / And complaining why the music so loud.” The ginger ale. THE GINGER ALE. He’s at the club, sober and moody, mad about the volume. I dated this exact man. The way she wraps his whole energy up in one image is everything. And then “Voice on mute, try to read what everyone thinks / Like a dog tries to hide his trash / Don’t spit my name whilst ur kissing my ass” comes flying in and I genuinely lost it. She’s watching him perform social anxiety while calling out the ass-kissing in the same breath. The girl has range and receipts.
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The pre-chorus is where the shift happens. “One hour by, know that rhythm’s got you high / And it’s taking over what’s mine / Too late, too little, what a pity you got stuck in a piddle / Ain’t coming over later.” She’s in the club now, the music is working, and she is done. “Ain’t coming over later” is the most casual, devastating line she could have dropped. No confrontation. She’s simply not coming over. The Y2K dance pop production, built on this punchy fuzz bassline, makes the whole dismissal feel like a shrug. A very sexy, very deliberate shrug.
Then the chorus, and this is where it gets genuinely interesting. “Stone cold, for one day / Can I take a shot instead of you / Before I take it off, you’re breaking up / Doe eyed, dripping your love on me / I don’t know, I don’t know, still I / Breathe a little, when you’re there.” She wants the shot. She wants the night to herself. His attention is all over her and she’s over it. But then “I don’t know I don’t know” and that word “still.” She still breathes when he’s there. The attachment hasn’t died even when everything else has. Barely even comfort. Just a little breath. That’s all she’s got left for him and she’s still goddamn giving it.
Second verse keeps moving. “Call again, in one ear out the other / I’m wondering when you’re gonna make real friends / Touched, baby, that you cry bout’ girls more than me / That you’ll find another and see, that not one of them got my key.” She’s being called repeatedly, ignoring it, and dragging his social life in the same breath. The “touched, baby” is so sarcastic I audibly cackled. He’s crying about girls more than he’s crying about her. She’s got the key and she knows it. That’s the energy of a girl who walks out of a party without saying goodbye to anyone.
The bridge switches to Spanish and I am here for every second of it: “Una más tres, no daisies grow under stress / And I’m still here wearing my dress / Four more by, reconstructing my night / That shoulder give you frostbite.” One more drink becomes three more and she’s rebuilding her night without him in it. Hell, you don’t bloom for someone who drains you. “That shoulder give you frostbite” is so cold it burned me a little. The cold shoulder delivered as poetry. That line is living rent free in my head and I’m not even mad about it.
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That outro is where the whole thing cracks open. “Miss you, miss you / And all I wanna do is say, what you mean to me / There’s nowhere else that I’d be / But when push and push comes to shove / You pull me and I give you up / Yeah, you’re mean, my hearts gone to sea / But baby, my lungs still sit and breathe.” She misses him. She’d stay. The pull is mutual and she’s exhausted by it. Her heart is gone to sea and her lungs still carry him anyway. She wrote this on the spot and it sounds like she’s been carrying this whole story for years.
Jade Barbara is an 18-year-old Sydney-based R&B and dance pop artist who produces her own music and that last part alone is fucking impressive for someone who’s barely legal to drink. She trained at Brent Street, Australia’s biggest dance school, and walked away with multiple first-place titles because the girl competes and wins. She’s one half of duo act SILVER alongside Jesse Aerlic, so she already knows how to run a fucking room. Her debut single ‘i get so sick’ pulled 10k streams in its first week. Ten thousand. In seven days. That’s some wild shit. She’s sitting at over 63k streams across her discography and building this whole career without waiting for anyone to hand her a thing.
The guy I kept around too long finally got the message around month four when I stopped returning calls. No speech. No voicemail. I just stopped. He never understood why. Jade gets it though. Sometimes you’re done and your lungs are the last thing to catch up. ‘Breathe (A Little)’ is what plays when you’re finally breathing again.
Catch Jade as the featured track on our Secret Rendezvous R&B playlist.
