JAWNY

Singer, songwriter, and producer Jawny first developed his signature mix of bedroom pop and lo-fi indie funk after launching his career in 2016 as Johnny Utah, quickly achieving widespread attention when the 2019 track “Honeypie” went viral. Following a pair of early EPs he switched to the Jawny name and issued his debut mixtape, For Abby, in 2020; the EP The Story of Hugo followed in 2021. A 2022 collaboration with Beck paved the way for the full-length album It’s Never Fair, Always True, which appeared in 2023.

Born Jacob Lee-Nicholas Sullenger in San Francisco, he picked up the guitar at age six and began producing music while still in his teens, creating beats for rappers by the time he turned 15. After a short stint in college he moved to Philadelphia at twenty to focus on music professionally. He chose the alias Johnny Utah in reference to Keanu Reeves’ character from the 1991 film Point Break, and Z-Tapes Records released his self-titled debut EP in 2018. Later that year came the follow-up EP Big Dogs, which included the single “Really Meant” featured in an episode of HBO’s High Maintenance. The funky 2019 single “Honeypie,” often likened to the work of Mac DeMarco and Beck, marked his first mainstream breakthrough, accumulating millions of streams and soundtracking thousands of TikTok videos.

Interscope Records signed him in early 2020 and put out the mixtape For Abby that same year. His first project under the Jawny moniker—an intentional nod to the Philadelphia slang term “jawn,” used as a versatile stand-in for almost any noun—was conceived as a story about a man attempting to reconcile with an ex and was recorded primarily in Sullenger’s Los Angeles apartment. In 2021 the For Abby single “Sabotage” reached Billboard’s Alternative Radio and Alternative Airplay charts, and he released the four-track EP The Story of Hugo, thematically linked to the mixtape. Three 2022 releases—“Take It Back” with Beck plus the solo singles “Strawberry Chainsaw” and “Adios”—served as the initial tracks from his proper debut album, It’s Never Fair, Always True, which arrived the following year.