“Goliath”

Jessie Reyez is a singer and songwriter originally from Toronto. She’s won two of Canada’s Juno awards, and she’s been nominated for a Grammy. In addition to writing her own music, Jessie’s been a songwriter on tracks by Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, Eminem, and many others. You’re probably aware that there are songwriters and producers whose names you’ll find over and over again in the credits for big hits; Jessie is one of them.

But for this episode, I talked to her about her own song “Goliath.” And the day that she wrote that song, she happened to be in the studio with a bunch of other songwriters and producers. So I also talked to Jordan and Stefan Johnson, from the production team Monsters & Strangerz, and Jeff Gitelman, AKA Gitty. Between the three of them, their credits also include songs by Selena Gomez, Maroon 5, Alicia Keys, Mac Miller, and, again, tons more.

When a group like this gets together to write music, they don’t always know if they’re going to be making a song that’s going to get recorded and released by an artist somewhere down the line, or if the song’s going to get recorded at all. But in the case of “Goliath,” what came out was a song that was very personal to Jessie Reyez.

You can buy or stream “Goliath” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

LunchMoney Lewis – co-writer
Miles Julian – trumpet
Drew McKeon – drums
Lisa and BLACKPINK