The one thing Jack Harlow thinks is better than sex
Jack Harlow has been writing music for a long time. Still only in his 20s, the man has penned a lot of lyrics in his time—but, when songwriting is going well, there’s nothing he enjoys more.
Harlow was still in high school when he first started releasing music. As a 17-year-old in 2015, Harlow put out an EP called The Handsome Harlow, his first ever commercial release. He played gigs outside of his school hours, too, building up a bit of a following in the process. By March 2016 he was opening for Vince Staples.
A few months after that, in June, he released his 18 mixtape. This was only weeks after he’d graduated from high school, but that didn’t stop his career from developing. He started playing well-known festivals like South by Southwest and he kicked on from there. His latest album, Monica, is to be released on March 13.
Harlow’s career is still going strong now, in his 20s, but it’s easy to see how someone who started writing songs at such a young age could, potentially, get bored of things. It’s easy for people to grow out of their adolescent hobbies and pastimes as they grow up, but that is far from what happened with Harlow.
During a conversation on the No Jumper podcast in 2019, Harlow acknowledged that fame and success can be damaging things when it comes to creativity. Becoming fixated on popularity can be damaging for the art that a person produces, and it should be resisted.
“You can’t get in love with the numbers,” he warned, “because [it is] out of your control.”
Harlow painted himself as someone who values the creative process on its own terms, regardless of whether or not it necessarily brings him success. It’s the act of creating that he enjoys, and, if he’s to be believed, he even likes it more than one of our species’ other favoured sensual acts.
“I like it more than sex,” he said of writing music. “Making a good song. I swear to God, it feels so good when you make something that you think is hot.”
Describing the feeling of writing a good song as one of “euphoria,” Harlow went on, “You just feel so good, so that’s what I chase every time I’m in the studio.”