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Oct 09, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Dory Kronick

Maiden King is the solo project of Chicago-based singer/songwriter Jake Hawrylak. Hawrylak has moved in many different directions over the years, including playing bass or collaborating with outfits like REVERB, Alicia Walter, Joe George, and Reno Cruz, as well as acting as producer, engineer, and composer for a great many other projects. Most recently though, he began exploring his own style of intricate and lush songwriting, taking cues from expansive Americana, knotted rock guitars, and cinematic orchestral pieces. He also pairs those touches with an equally introspective side, with lyrical narratives exploring insular moments of derealization, youthful escapades, and questions of self.

These all come together with Hawrylak’s forthcoming debut album, Who Else Were We Supposed to Become?, out December 1st of this year. Hawrylak has already shared the album’s lead single, “Young Country,” and an stand-alone track, “echo,” and today he’s back with another new single, “Free,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Free” is an exercise in both simplicity and complexity, with Hawrylak crafting a track that thrives in the contrast between its disparate parts. It opens with a simple steady drumbeat, yet colors those easygoing rhythms with tangled knots of lead guitar. Similarly, the bright and spacious chorus gives way to dreamy ambient washes of synths and sighing wordless vocals. Hawrylak packs the track with unexpected left turns, whether he is changing up the simple rhythms, adding in a new guitar part, or letting the track fall away into a simmering pulse before bringing it roaring back for an ascendant climax.

Hawrylak also describes the track as an attempt to merge two sides of himself. “Most days I find myself oscillating between the urge to take myself way too seriously and the urge to take myself way less seriously,” he says. “The song started as a means of marrying the two feelings by way of examining my relationships to myself and other people. The feeling of ‘freeness’ that I covet in the choruses came from the recognition that too much of my own emotionality gets caught up in the wants and needs of others and that my perception of their perceptions tends to affect what I ‘choose’ to do. But is it even a choice then? I wanted to interrogate the sources of my desires in a tongue and cheek kind of way that ultimately left room for me to reject all the things that don’t feel like ‘me’.”

He continues, saying, “I got way too into a lot of psychotherapeutic thinkers for a good bit of my 20s and am still kicking around some of those ideas to see where they land. I always like Jung’s idea that the self is something we orbit around but don’t ever necessarily get to experience fully. The ‘freedom’ I’m seeking in the chorus is a mindset free from things that don’t feel like they belong in that orbit. Humor has always been a wonderful tool for me to see myself through and I wanted a song that was a bit tongue-and-cheek to balance out some of the severity of the subject matter. Nothing better encapsulates this energy for me than the ending. I still cringe sometimes at the simplicity and directness of the lyrics there but there was ultimately no other way to capture the ‘fuck off’ kind of sentiment that was at the heart of this song. It’s about rejecting the things I let in that tell me what and how to be and embracing more of the messiness of who I actually am.”

Check out the song early below. Who Else Were We Supposed to Become? is out on December 1st of this year. Pre-order the album here.