The conflicted cinematic catharsis of Giveon’s ‘When It’s All Said And Done’

It has often been said that in this world, nothing can be certain but for death and taxes. However, there is one inevitable element of the human condition which this infamous aphorism foregoes entirely—heartbreak. Enduring the prolonged sensation of heartbreak can be both excruciating and all-consuming, but to soundtrack that experience poses an even tougher gig. Not only do you place your fragility, flaws, denial and internal conflict on display to the world, but you’re also tasked with making the losing game that love is, somehow worth playing again.

Though difficult to do, it’s a challenge that Giveon Dezmann Evans, known mononymously as Giveon, has risen to. The Longbeach, CA native was catapulted into the limelight this February, after holding up the chorus on Drake’s ‘Chicago Freestyle’, where his baritone vocals tiptoed delicately over the track’s piano keys to silky-smooth effect. A month later, he would release the seven-track EP titled TAKE TIME and earn himself a Grammy nomination in the process. The EP chronicles isolated events in the prolonged experience of one’s heart being torn in two. 

However, during the process of a breakup, residual emotions are retained and former flames can yearn to reunite, if for just one final moment of intimacy. For Giveon, such sentiments fuelled the creation of an epilogue to the events of TAKE TIME, in the form of his latest EP, When It’s All Said And Done. As the US Election results trickled in, he spoke about being conscious of emotional denial, battling against the “muscle memory” of physical love, and why there’s no such thing as oversharing.

Congratulations on the success of the EP. How are you taking in everything that’s happening right now?

My mum is texting me every five minutes about election stuff, but overall I’m pretty good. I’m going to spend November just working: making music and studying music. I think that’s my favourite headspace to be in—work mode.

I wanted to touch a couple of tracks from the EP. In both ‘Still Your Best’ and ‘Last Time’ your lyrics particularly hone in on love’s physicality—you imagine the moment of having someone running into your arms and physical acts of intimacy with them behind the closed doors. Do you think that, in part, the yearning for such physical love comes from the muscle memory humans build up throughout a relationship? In a way, your body needs time to uninstall these physical expressions of love, and as your body begins to realise it can no longer exercise this form of love it yearns for it even more.

Yeah. I never would have phrased it as “muscle memory” but that’s absolutely it. I remember talking to someone and they told me that there are three forms of a breakup: verbal, physical and emotional. Sometimes people think they break up with someone completely but they only broke up with them 66%. The muscle memory is what gets a lot of people stuck and it gives me the songs that I can keep on making.

I feel as though the records on When It’s All Said and Done tie strongly into the metaphorical idea of the ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. It’s mentally and emotionally expensive to be there and the feeling of reentering it can feel very familiar. By the time you reach the events of ‘Stuck on You’, despite knowing that it’s bad for you, you still go to see your ex because it allows a momentary respite from heartbreak. What was the objective of taking a listener through this very defined narrative arc?

I wanted there to be a very palpable tension: the listener is meant to feel the push and pull of denial. That’s the beauty of a body of work versus a single. You’re afforded the room to unpack a thought process. If you listen to ‘Still Your Best’ it doesn’t sound like the same person who made ‘Stuck On You’. I’m a ‘project artist’—I like to treat a project like a season and each song is an episode. Even though the EP is short, the constraints of a limited runtime allowed me to be concise and to express things straightforwardly. I’m excited about the next project where I can be more elaborate with my lyrical description.

Do you think that there’s a specific value in being concise?

It’s certainly the approach that I’ve been taking—cutting out the fluff. At the same time, with this next body of work, I do want to add a little more poetry. I want to be able to show you how “I’m still your best” instead of just telling you—really paint pictures, but as I said, I’m wary of adding too much fluff. Of course, I’m excited about the reception that everything’s getting but I still feel like I have a lot of growing to do as an artist and a storyteller.

You’ve noted in previous interviews that Frank Ocean and Sampha serve as inspirational figures for both your sound and the emotional range you look to tap into. Beyond just the music itself, it’s very apparent to anybody who’s seen your music videos that you take time to cultivate a very specific image. Are there any particular artists, be that in film or music, who inspire your visuals?

I love being able to create a visual to accompany a story I’ve written. As you pointed out I’m a big fan of Frank Ocean and through his work, I became more engaged with film directors like Stanley Kubrick. The aim is for the music video to feel unapologetically cinematic, that’s why up till this point, all my music videos have been shot on film. It offers a more timeless approach. I want it to feel like a movie you can watch over and over again.

I wanted to ask you about the trope of using voicemails as interludes for songs, particularly in R&B. Are there any other tropes native to the genre that we can see you exploring in the future?

I try to stay away from stuff that could be read as so traditional that it’s corny. As far as the voicemail thing, I would walk to school listening to Take Care and Good Kid Maad City. I love how it ties into the transitioning and sequencing of a project. Maybe on my next project, I could start something that sets a new wave for the kids walking to high school.

Pre-pandemic you toured with Snoh Aalegra, and she features on the EP’s penultimate track ‘Last Time’. On the chorus of the track, you both tell us that you want just one last intimate act of closure with a former flame. Will your future projects tell us if you were both able to keep this promise?

I kind of want When It’s All Said And Done to answer the question in a way in which people will know that I’ve moved onto something else. Maybe there will be a moment in the album where it’s touched on, but I do want to close that chapter… hopefully, I can.

One of the qualities of your music that seems to resonate with many listeners is how you articulate experiences with such similarities to the way we’ve lived them. Is part of your intention as an artist to show your listener that they’re not alone?

Of course, the stories I recount are things that people have already gone through. There’s only so much of a perspective that I can touch on without it being something that you’ve already heard. I just try to tell it in my own way. I love it when people say that I took the words right out of their mouth. That’s my favourite compliment.

You’ve said it was important to name your previous project TAKE TIME because time is ultimately what will help you get over someone. The tricky question is, how much time does it take to get over someone?

It depends on how quickly you deal with the closure… or maybe how quickly you get the closure. How quickly are you able to let yourself go through the emotions of a breakup? For a lot of my male friends, we’ll prolong it and deny it as if we don’t feel anything at all. It only hits us later. If you go through the moment of emotional heartbreak exactly after the relationship ends then you can get it out of the way and move on—so it’s kind of up to you. ‘Still Your Best’ was about being in denial before realising that I’m ‘Stuck On You’. That’s why I like to say When It’s All Said And Done was the closure that I needed.

You’re very open with your emotions in your work. I’m interested to know how do you tread the line between oversharing and letting a barrier down for your listener? 

I don’t think there is such thing as “oversharing”, at least in this context. People are drawn to honesty because in a world full of facades, smoke and mirrors there is a noticeable lack of it. I think it’s refreshing to be able to be so emotionally forthcoming as a man because we’re socially conditioned to conform to norms that preclude us from having honest conversations. We know that guys have walls, but I guess my point is that we don’t have to. I have a pretty varied fanbase—I’m an R&B guy singing so you assume there’s going to be a bunch of girls listening to my stuff but guys are listening to me too, having moments of realisation where they’re like “damn, I couldn’t say this before”. If there’s one thing that I hope my work always retains, it’s that degree of honesty.

Giveon’s latest EP ‘When It’s All Said And Done’ is available to stream here and is also available on vinyl.