MJ Lenderman - You Don't Know The Shape I'm In
MJ Lenderman tells the story behind his song "You Don't Know The Shape I'm In."
Jake Lenderman plays and records under the name MJ Lenderman. He put out his first album in 2019. In addition to his solo work, he鈥檚 been a member of the band Wednesday, and he鈥檚 also featured on the Waxahatchee hit song 鈥淩ight Back to It."
In September 2024, the fourth MJ Lenderman album came out. It鈥檚 called Manning Fireworks. The New Yorker named it the best album of the year, and Stereogum, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork all put it in their top ten. For this episode, I talked to Jake about one of the songs from that album, called 鈥淵ou Don鈥檛 Know the Shape I鈥檓 In.鈥� The song itself took shape in a few different ways.
Coming up, you鈥檒l hear the way the song started as a demo, and then how that got fleshed out, and then how it got rebuilt, and then how Jake completely reimagined the whole thing.
