Watch What Happens - Jeremy Jordan

jimmy fallon

We were just talking about haunted, your debut single and your lead single on this album which has actually had the #1 spot on the top 100 for almost 6 weeks now. The audience cheers and Brielle blushes, hiding her face. Why don't you tell us a little more about this hit song.

Well, as you said, haunted is my debut single. It's also the first song on my album, so a lot of it is like storytelling, or like an overview of the whole relationship. I think it's largely responsible for the success of hell, seeing as it blew up after being out for a little more than a week. But I wrote haunted the morning I saw the text from my ex-boyfriend. I couldn't find it in me to cry, so instead, I wrote a song. I finished it in about an hour, called my management team, and told them that I wanted to release an album and that I had just written a lead single.

Wow. So you decided to make an album, just like that?

It was a very spur-of-the-moment decision, to say the least. But I had just finished the song and I loved it and I didn't think I'd be able to return to the ballet world after what happened, so I figured why not write an album? The crowd and Jimmy laugh.

That's incredible.

Thank you. Brielle smiles softly. That day was full of planning and digging through old songs to distract myself. My ex and I were supposed to have a photo shoot together, but he was gone so I went and had my own personal photo shoot and used one of the pictures as the album cover. But the next day I just cried in my hotel room. Brielle gave a short laugh.

So some of these songs were written before the breakup?

Yes. nonsense, fast times, bad for business, vicious, read your mind, how many things, and tornado warnings were all written or at least started and conceptualized before the breakup.

Oh, so a good chunk of the album was written without an album in mind.

Sort of. I will say that fast times, vicious, and tornado warnings were only concepts until I was single and decided to write an album. There were also a good amount of changes made to the existing songs to make them less cringey and more realistic of the relationship. I was finally able to see the duration of my relationship without the rose-colored glasses.

I'm curious. Which song were you the youngest when you wrote it or came up with it? Brielle laughs and hides her head.

That would have to be nonsense. I wrote it when I was about 14 years old, maybe a month after we started dating. It kind of-

Wait wait wait. You wrote nonsense when you were 14?

Brielle laughs. Yes, the first version of the song was written when I was 14.

That's insane.

Well, it started out as a very ridiculous song. If you think the lyrics are random now you would be totally lost listening to the original recording. It's funny to me because one of the original lyrics I kept was 'woke up this morning thought I'd write a pop hit' but, um, I hadn't woken up to write the song, I had just happened to be up at like 4 am and wanted to write a song. I had been out that night with my new boyfriend, and I was definitely intoxicated, and I wanted to write about how head-over-heels I was for this guy. Looking back over it 3 years later there were a good few changes I had to make.

So how much of the song is using parts from the original?

I mean the basic structure of the song is what I wrote early that morning. I used the same melody I had come up with at the time and a fair amount of the original lyrics are in the song, albeit they might have been moved to different places. I think the biggest changes are that the vocals are much better, the song is now a fully produced piece of music, and the lyrics, while being nonsense, are cohesive and fun and cute rather than word vomit. Some of the original lyrics just made absolutely no sense and some of them were just a little too explicit to use.