“Jimmy” by Tones and I

“Jimmy” is someone the singer knew when she was a child. He liked to play like other kids but overall was a reclusive lad who appears to have been the a victim of or at least regular witness to domestic violence. Another notable aspect of Jimmy’s history is that he was the son of an absentee dad. 

One day things reached the tipping point for the titular character. He regularly fantasized about “running away”. And apparently he spontaneously mustered up the resolve to do so, or something equally monumental occurred, as suddenly the narrator doesn’t “see him anymore”. 

So this song is based on Tones and I remembering him. But the intricacies of the storyline aside, the idea this entire narrative is actually meant to the point to is the reality that no one knows what’s actually going in a person’s life just by looking at him or her or engaging in trivial interactions with a person. 

So the implication is that Jimmy would appear as a normal child to you and I and even more or less to the narrator herself, though she too was a child at the time. However, the truth of the situation is that he was basically going through hell. The hell was so much so that even at a young age he wanted very much to get away from the reality which defined his life.

Facts about “Jimmy”

“Jimmy” was released by Bad Batch Records as the fifth song on the playlist of Tones and I’s debut EP, “The Kids Are Coming”, on 30 August 2019.

Jimmy is a character that was actually introduced earlier on the EP on a track called “Johnny Run Away”. And in that particular song he is depicted as a young boy who is likely gay. “Jimmy” was written by Tones and I and produced by her regular collaborator, Konstantin Kersting.

Did Tones and I release this as a single?

No. The EP (“The Kids Are Coming”) on which this track appears produced four singles. They are as follows:

• “Dance Monkey”
• “Johnny Run Away”
• “The Kids Are Coming”
• “Never Seen the Rain“