Mastodawn

Joanna Sternberg Sings “I’ve Got Me”

Listen to this track by New York City-based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist Joanna Sternberg. It’s “I’ve Got Me”, the title track of their second record that came out in June of 2023. It followed their debut Then I Try Some More from 2019, a record that established their artistic voice as one who leads with stark self-examination, candour, and with a homemade approach to presenting music that is highly personal and universal at the same time. Scoring high marks with critics upon its release, music publications noted that this follow-up revealed greater ambition beyond that debut while still retaining its aural coziness.

Sternberg wrote the songs that appeared on the record during a period of personal transition out of bad relationships and substance use. Putting the new record together had been challenging on other fronts, corresponding with the initial phase of the pandemic. Sternberg included songs they’d tinkered with for many years even before their debut while also writing new ones.

Old and new, the songs are couched in a sound that suggests 1930s dustbowl folk textures meeting with the melodic qualities of the American Songbook. Sternberg’s voice sounds like it belongs to someone you know, singing the tunes as they sit beside you, if not directly for your benefit. In fact, it seems like this song, and others on the record, are necessary for the songwriter to sing, rather than presented primarily as a way to entertain an audience.

Art in general plays an important role for many people to make sense of their lives and existence in a world that often feels so isolating. Even for people without ADHD, autism, and being non-binary as Sternberg is, feelings of self-doubt, self-consciousness in social settings, and struggles with identity and purpose plague many of us.

Navigating the intricacies of relationships and how that corresponds to how we view ourselves in them and outside of them challenges everyone. Sternberg reflects these themes strongly in this tune, which presents many of these struggles upfront. But it also contains a turnaround that captures something that’s equally powerful in everyone’s life.

Joanna Sternberg performing in 2019. image: Roberta (cropped)

The song starts off in a bleak but plain-spoken place nested in an undeniable truth; that good or bad, we’re stuck with ourselves. However we present ourselves to the world, or how other people project traits, characteristics, roles, and identities onto us, we can’t escape our own internal voices, fears, doubts, and feelings. When we wake up, there we are. When we go to bed, there we are still.

In between as we engage in the routines and rhythms of our lives, the internal chaos of our histories, perceptions, and anxieties come right along with us. Sometimes those inner demons speak out of turn at exactly the wrong moments. We have our baggage to carry with us, no matter how heavy it is. And the only way forward is through.

“And all my faults and flaws and lies
Are no one’s fault but mine
Between self-hatred and self-awareness
Is a very small thin line
I can’t stop my worry, and my fury
Of all that I’ve done wrong
I waste so much time I mean it
So much time …”

~ “I’ve Got Me” by Joanna Sternberg

Left by itself, this section of the tune might be construed as an exercise in wallowing in self pity, employing stark language that hits like a hammer, in particular the lines between self-hatred and self awareness is a very small thin line and I waste so much time, I mean it, so much time.

But “I’ve Got Me” isn’t a self-pitying statement of suffering, dissatisfaction, or hopelessness. It’s a journey away from it. Sternberg accomplishes this by being upfront with their language, as always. But they also manage to convey a temperature change in their delivery as the song progresses, doing so with great subtlety.

As much as “I’ve Got Me” is about being subject to forces that have shaped us beyond our control, it’s also a song about taking back that control. It’s a statement about ownership and of doing the things that are necessary to set ourselves on the right roads as we see them after making mistakes. This involves taking actions even if those actions seem small.

Why is it so hard to be kind and gentle to myself?
Take the box of self-deprecation
Lock it and put it on the shelf
Then wait five days, take that box
Throw it in the fire
Maybe one day
Oh, yeah
One fine day

“I’ve Got Me” catches the song’s narrator at a point of realization. They haven’t quite put their self-doubt and insecurity to rest. But the vision for how to do that is here. “I’ve Got Me” is a declaration. It’s a manifestation that if laying down one’s burdens can be pictured, then it’s also achievable. By putting it in a song, the song itself becomes a vehicle for emancipation for its author, just by singing it. For us, it models our own struggles and therefore reminds us that we aren’t as alone and powerless as we think.

In this, “I’ve Got Me” isn’t a diary entry or even primarily a means of art therapy for its author. It’s also an expression of empathy and care for anyone who feels a bit lost and unsure of their own worth sometimes. It acknowledges that the act of pushing through struggles, baggage, and pain is a human reality beyond just a single set of circumstances. The implicit takeaway in “I’ve Got Me” is a call for self-love in the midst of that, no matter who we are or what we’re carrying around with us.

By the end of two minutes and change of a running time, Sternberg’s tune can be as much about us as it is about them. We’ve all got ourselves, warts and all. But we’ve also got ourselves; whole universes of warm emotions, treasured memories, unique perspectives, and possibilities that the world has never seen the like of ever before.

Joanna Sternberg is an active musician, songwriter, and visual artist today. You can learn more about them at joannasternberg.com

For more on Joanna Sternberg and the role that songwriting and making art plays in their life, check out this 2023 interview on Pitchfork.

Enjoy!

#2020sMusic #folkPop #joannaSternberg #singerSongwriters #songsAboutExistence