Jake Jackson has spent his working life inside songs. A recording and mix engineer since he was 21, he listens to a track all day, taking it apart to work out how to make it better — and after 200 passes, he writes, a song reliably stops meaning anything. Six months ago he was driving past John Lewis on the M40 with his wife and stepdaughter, Raye’s I Know You’re Hurting on the stereo, and realised he was crying. It was the third time he had heard it. It was the first time he had listened. Music had made him emotional before, but only ever because of the melody or the arrangement. This time it was the words: “I can see you standing on the edge … You give when you have little left to give.”
Two decades of not saying it
Jackson had been struggling with his mental health for twenty years — almost half a lifetime — and had hidden it, “scared to admit it to my family, even to myself.” The recent stretch had been the hardest: Covid, a divorce, becoming a stepfather to teenagers, turning 50. He had put his career first, working 80 to 100-hour weeks at its peak, and had begun to question what his legacy would be. He would sit in silence, “a face of thunder,” wallowing. His family would ask what was wrong with him and he would bite his tongue, not knowing what to say, just knowing he needed to do better. Raye’s line lands exactly there: “And you hide it so well, you do.”
Permission, then a GP appointment
What the song gave him was not insight but permission — hearing his own pain articulated by someone else let him accept that he was struggling. Two months later he booked the appointment with his GP, who prescribed antidepressants. He also began music therapy, and found that exploring his thoughts through music, the thing he instinctively connects with, has been far more effective for him than CBT ever was.
Worth being precise about that, because it is the part most readers will fight over. Jackson had tried cognitive behavioural therapy many times and found that he would “just talk without acting on the steps.” He is not arguing against it; he is describing a modality that did not fit him. The same holds for medication. When his wife first suggested asking the GP about antidepressants, a couple of years earlier, he was reluctant because he thought it would kill his creativity. Four months in, he reports the opposite: he feared the drugs would close something off, and instead they opened up the space to access it.
The tattoo and the song he wrote in an hour
A couple of weeks before writing, he had the musical notes of the line “close your eyes and let this music get to working” tattooed on his forearm — he had messaged the producer for the score — as a reminder of where he was compared with where he had been. His music therapist then suggested he write a song; the lyrics poured out in an hour, and he has an urge to make music like never before. He argues less, lets things go more, and his family have noticed: he is, by his own account, a better husband and a better father. The album that started it is called This Music May Contain Hope. Its final track is called Joy, which is also where he says he has ended up.