After the hopeful tone of his debut album, love is not dying, American singer-songwriter Jeremy Zucker lets his experiences marinate in a different way with his sophomore album, CRUSHER.
According to the 25-year old New Jersey native, his sophomore album came after “months of digestion” of his past relationship, which was the inspiration of his first album.
“With ‘love is not dying’ there was a lot of sympathy and a lot of empathy, a lot of ‘where do I fit in all this?’ and when I put that out, I got to live with it for four months before I started making music again,” he said.
After admitting to “feeling lost” after the first album and having to deal with the isolation of the pandemic, Jeremy came to the conclusion that he was not treated well at all in his past.
“A lot of it came from introspection and spending time by myself. I didn’t experience any new things, but this album comes off as mature because I’ve spent more time marinating and analyzing things instead of writing about them when the emotions are really raw,” he explained.
Prior to its release, Jeremy had been teasing about the themes of his sophomore album, dropping the singles “Cry for You”, “HONEST” and “18”. For him, these singles were “a solid mix” of what the album is. With a lot of somber angry tunes, ‘CRUSHER’ is a “purposely jumbled” album that serves as a cathartic release of pent up emotions. However, Jeremy clarifies that CRUSHER is not, in fact, a revenge album.
“I’ve been dropping little hints here and there, and I’m writing about the same situations and I’m writing after having a couple of months to sit down and digest it. There’s a lot of anger in the project, but it’s not really a revenge album. It’s an expression of anger and it’s not designed to hurt anyone,” he clarified.
Moreover, he called the album a “response” and a way for him to “take back what I said.” Taking inspiration from early 2000s alternative rock and post punk, the album shows off a Jeremy Zucker who is raw, confident and unapologetic.
“It’s no longer about us, or me. It’s about you. During the writing process of this album, I became more myself than ever. I focused on more energy driven elements of music production: live drums, saturation, and a bit of yelling. ‘CRUSHER’ is a word that describes something or someone that ‘crushes’–in my case, it was the aforementioned person who crushed me. It felt right to be front and center visually to support the music, instead of putting the music in front of me like I feel I’ve done in the past,” he stated.
CRUSHER is currently available on all major streaming platforms nationwide.