I was nineteen and three weeks into my first real heartbreak – the kind where you genuinely believe no one has ever felt this bad before and somehow that is fucking comforting. I woke up hungover on my dorm room floor, running the same loop in my head that always ended with me being the reason everything fell apart. My best friend called. I said “I’m on the floor” and she said “stay there, I’m coming.” She showed up with two large fries and a Coke because drunk McDonald’s at nineteen is its own love language and she handed them over and said “eat.” She sat with me through the whole ugly spiral and somewhere around the bottom of those fries the volume in my head turned down enough that I could actually breathe. That was a long time ago but I still think about it when someone shows up for me in a moment I haven’t asked for. Jeki’s ‘Hold On’ is the kind of kindness that finds you while you’re being the cruelest version of yourself and leaves you somewhere that actually feels like spring.
The bassline on ‘Hold On’ is tight as hell and it does not let go. She lays it out over a contemporary R&B production rooted in neo soul and a 90s groove that feels like a slow and luminous late spring afternoon pulling you somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go. The chorus is so goddamn catchy I have been humming it for two days without meaning to. I had plans today, for the record.
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She goes straight for the nerve. “I know it hasn’t been that easy / No it ain’t for anyone / Lately you’ve been so cruel / To yourself / Know that I wish you well.” That line about being cruel to yourself is the one that cuts through everything else, because she is not talking about the world doing damage, she is talking about the inside job. The “know that I wish you well” sits so quiet and so sure, like someone who has been watching you grind yourself down and is finally done letting it go without saying something. God, I fucking love when a lyric does that.
Then the chorus opens up and I need a second. “Hold on darling / Time will figure it out / You’ll find your way somehow.” You do not say darling casually. You say it to someone you are close enough to touch, someone whose face you know well enough to reach for in the dark, and that is a whole damn thing to put in a chorus.
Then she asks the question nobody wants to be the first one to ask out loud. “So what’s the point of it anyway? / Put on this earth tryna find out how to navigate / If we could lay aside our pride, and find some peace of mind / There’s so much more to the surface / We’re here right now for a purpose / Wherever you are I wish you well.” This is where the song stops being a message to one person and becomes a hand reaching out to everyone who has ever sat alone with that question. She does not wrap it up clean. She sits in it with you, which is more than most people I know are willing to do, honestly.
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The outro is where it goes somewhere else entirely. She borrows the rhythm of one of the most famously possessive songs ever put on record and turns it into something that sets you free. “With every breath you take, every move you make / The life that you create / Leads you to your way / Love flows through / All of you / Serving just to wish you well.” The language tips into spiritual and she sells every word without making it feel like a bumper sticker. Her voice carries conviction the way some people carry perfume and it is sexy as hell in a way that has nothing to do with trying.
Jeki was born in the Philippines and is based in Norway, and she is the kind of vocalist who makes you put your phone down mid-scroll and just sit there with your mouth open. NRK P3 Urørt called her “an artist to keep a close eye on” which, okay, understatement of the fucking year. Bergens Tidende said she delivered “the best vocals of the festival” at Vill Vill Vest 2024 and in early 2026 she picked up the Puff Award for exceptional talent which is just the music industry finally catching up to what her voice has been doing to people this whole time. She brings the kind of power and vulnerability to a song that makes you feel like she wrote it specifically about your life and she is carving out space in the contemporary R&B scene that is entirely, undeniably hers.
That girl who showed up to a dorm room floor with McDonald’s and zero questions is still my first call seven years later, my best friend. Seven years of different crises and the same girl every time, same instinct, which is get there and stay until it passes. The large fries have been upgraded to Chipotle or Cheesecake Factory depending on the severity, full debrief over cocktails either way. Last spring she drove across town at midnight on three words from me and no explanation, sat down, and stayed until the spiral wound itself out. We are both older now and she still treats me like I’m nineteen on a dorm room floor, which is honestly the most loving shit I know how to describe. ‘Hold On’ is that person. Jeki built a whole song out of what it feels like to have one.
