John Shakespear Sees Love Through a New Lens on “Such a Fool” (premiere)

“On one level, this song tells the oldest story ever told,” John Shakespear says, detailing the themes that his latest single, “Such a Fool” explores. “It’s about someone who’d do anything for somebody else, even at their own expense. But on another level, it’s about an older person looking back and seeing how young they were to be thinking those things, and accepting that time changes everything and life and love renew themselves. Heartbreak is the worst, but it can also be kind of funny in retrospect. It’s the oldest song on the record, but producer Devon Dawson and mixer Greg Giorgio helped me make it new. We built an orchestra around it.”

In this sense, then, “Such a Fool” caters to the overarching theme of Shakespear’s upcoming album, Spend Your Youth, a collection of politically-minded eloquence and a cadence of coming-of-age stories, the Boston-bred, Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s latest single from the project fits snugly into the latter frame. As an aspiring artist in the business-oriented academics of Vanderbilt University, Shakespear draws from what he sees as his split between identities and worlds to craft these autobiographical murmurings. “Such a Fool” is an orchestral exercise in love and irony that nearly anyone can relate to.

Spend Your Youth is set to be released on 10 May.