Ray Hawthorne, one of the most refreshing and relatable voices in pop punk, is back at it. Shortly after the (addictive) single release of “Overwhelmed,” he’s just dropped his latest track. “Burn New Jersey Down” (ft. Pete Zen) perfectly captures the all-too-real feeling of coming to terms with your feelings about your hometown and everything you were trying to escape. The song brings upon feelings of nostalgia and comes across immediately as an instant classic. On the track, Pete shares:
Burn New Jersey Down is a postcard of where we came from and why we had to leave. It’s built on very specific small details that don’t sound important until you’ve lived them, eating sandwiches off trash cans outside Wawa, bringing your girlfriend to the boardwalk knowing you’re going to have to fight someone who smacks her ass right in front of you, being pressured to going into the family business of either carrying Sheetrock or “waste management”, there’s really no in between.
Me and Ray realized pretty fast we grew up the same way. Tough love dads, no safety net, watching all our friends get wrapped up in addiction, but also feeling limited about our surroundings eventually leaving for LA and never wanting to go back.
We wrote it in about twenty minutes, because there was nothing to think about. It just came out. Every lyric was already baked into our DNA.
It sounds like a nostalgia song, but it’s more like a song where we put a pin in the past so we can accept that we miss our friends and family that are either stuck there or have passed away, but there’s a reason we left and why we’ll never go back.
I’m not even going to sugarcoat this here: Ray Hawthorne is cool as shit. I’ve had the honor of interviewing him a few times, and he’s my favorite person to chat with. So, to tell you that I had the opportunity to play Truth Or Dare with him and Pete Zen … well, let’s just say this one is a must-watch!
