Franklin Jonas Drops Newest Single, High & Sad And We’re Feeling Every Word
- SoundCheck Team
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
The Highs, the Lows, and the Raw Honesty of Franklin Jonas’s Newest Release
Co-Contributed by Rebecca McDevitt & LJ Portnoy
A Song That Finds You
Released today, High & Sad is the kind of song that doesn't announce itself; it just finds you. Franklin Jonas and The Byzantines have crafted something that exists in the in-between: not quite a ballad, not quite a confessional, but somewhere more honest than either.
The song opens with "group hallucination" — a phrase that immediately signals Franklin isn't just talking about himself. There's a shared feeling here, something among him and his people that's quietly unraveling. From the first strum, the guitar and banjos don't push the song forward so much as hold it steady, like arms around someone who's trying to hold it together.
Stars Signs and Feeling Out of Sync
What makes High & Sad genuinely surprising is what Franklin reaches for lyrically in those early lines. Pluto's rotation, Aquarius rising, the solar system as a mirror for feeling out of sync with the world around you. You don't hear astrology in country and folk music. (Full disclosure: we have an Aquarius rising on the Soundcheck team, and we absolutely clocked it.) But Franklin uses it with intention, as a way of saying I don't fit where I used to fit. There's grief in that. A quiet mourning for relationships, for closeness, for a version of connection that may have slipped away.
Then comes "Utopian,” that word sitting in the first verse like a wish that knows it won't come true. Franklin isn't describing perfection. He's describing the want of it. The impossible standard we hold our relationships to, and the slow devastation of watching them fall short.
The Chorus: “I’m Fine,” and Everything Between
The chorus lands with a kind of wearied honesty: "High and sad, feeling good and feeling bad, it's how I've been, it's where I'm at." It's the answer you give when someone asks how you're doing and you can't quite tell the truth yet. The highs and lows aren't dramatic; they're mundane. That's what makes it sting. He leans into the classic I'm fine, and we hear everything underneath it.
The verses that follow dig into that feeling with remarkable specificity. "Silent trepidations, pointless conversations,” the small talk of someone who can't get to the root of what's actually happening inside. And then: "Right or wrong, I'm blowin' off all my obligations." Franklin doesn't glamorize it or ask for sympathy. He names it plainly. The executive dysfunction of depression, the way even the most basic tasks can feel impossible when you're in it. The battle between knowing what you should be doing and being completely unable to do it.
The Dam Breaks
The second verse brings "Hoover Dam, she's about to blow,” and to us, that's the image of tears barely held back, ready to break. "Let it all wash over me" follows as release. Permission, almost. A recognition that sometimes you just have to let it come.
Towards the end, the song shifts. Just slightly, just enough. "I don't want to always be, high and sad." This is the first time Franklin steps outside the feeling and looks at it. It's the quietest, most devastating line in the song, and it arrives like a cry for help dressed in restraint. Raw vocals, no flourish, no resolution.
We don't talk enough about mental health in music. Especially in spaces where the expectation is toughness, or simplicity, or not making people uncomfortable. Franklin Jonas does something rare here: he wears his inner life on his sleeve without performing it. High & Sad isn't asking you to fix anything. It's asking you to feel something. And from start to finish, it absolutely delivers.
A Quick Note From The Editors
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, there are resources that can help. Text or dial 988 in the U.S. Know that you are special, and there are people who are here to help. You are always worth it.