There are some lessons you spend years learning, even though they sound incredibly simple when you finally say them out loud.

Be you.

That’s really where this song began.

We grow up surrounded by expectations. Some of them come from other people, some from the world around us, and plenty of them we quietly place on ourselves. We get ideas about who we’re supposed to become, what we should have achieved by a certain age, how we should look, how we should behave, and what a successful life is meant to look like.

And somewhere amongst all of that noise, it can become surprisingly easy to lose sight of the person underneath it.

One of my favourite Australian bands, Bodyjar have a song called ‘Glossy Books’ that really resonated with me lyrically in my late teenage years when I discovered it. I wanted to write something along the same theme, but with my own touch.

“Be You” is my little reminder that you don't have to spend your life trying to fit somebody else’s version of who you should be.

It’s about accepting the things that make you different, trusting your own instincts and allowing yourself to grow into whoever you are becoming, even when that person doesn’t quite match the plan you once had.

That idea became especially important while I was writing Still Becoming.

The album is full of songs about growing up, changing direction, making mistakes, looking backwards, moving forward and realising that life very rarely follows the neat little map we imagine for ourselves.

So it felt right that “Be You” should be the first song.

Before all the stories, memories, wrong turns and lessons that follow on the record, this is almost the starting point:

This is who I am.

Maybe I’m still figuring some of it out.

Maybe I always will be.

And that’s completely okay, as long as i am being tru to myself.

There’s also something deliberately uncomplicated about the message. I didn’t want “Be You” to feel like some enormous life philosophy. Sometimes we don't need another person telling us how to reinvent ourselves or become a better version of ourselves.

Sometimes it’s enough to stop for a moment and realise that the person you already are deserves a little more credit.

Wear the thing you like.

Listen to the music you love.

Laugh too loudly.

Change your mind.

Start again.

Be awkward. Be confident. Be uncertain. Be ambitious. Be quiet. Be ridiculous.

You don't have to perform your life for everybody else.

I think I've become much more comfortable with that as I've grown older. There are parts of ourselves we spend years trying to change, only to eventually realise they were never really the problem.

And perhaps growing up isn't about finally becoming the perfectly finished version of yourself.

Perhaps we're all just still becoming.

So that’s “Be You”.

A pretty simple message to begin an album with.

But sometimes the simple ones are worth hearing again.

xxoo IJ