“It’s kind of like throwing a little adult fit.” This is how musician and recent CSU, Chico graduate Jayna Feldman encapsulated her new single, “i don’t want to!” 

The song was released to the public on March 3 and explores Feldman’s mindset about entering the next stage of her life as a Chico State alumna. To put it simply, it is a song about not wanting to grow up. The Orion spoke with Feldman and her managerial team that helped her with promotion preceding the song’s release.

The build-up to the songs release is part of a project for School of the Arts Productions students Eric Holland, Anthony Paneno and Page Whittle, although they all knew each other before this project.

“We actually started working with each other like this last semester for our SOTA class,” Paneno stated.

“Yeah, we knew in the first week of the class that we wanted to work with Jayna,” Whittle chimed in.

“I feel like we were one of the first groups to be like ‘Hey, let’s work together on this,’” Holland said.

It started with a project for class, but their chemistry goes beyond the assignment. In the middle of a pandemic, however, collaboration in the songwriting department was difficult.

“I feel like I’m at my most creative when I’m bouncing off of people’s ideas, so the fact that that’s gone has been tough for me. I’ve written a lot of stuff that I really like on my own, but I don’t know, you always need other musicians to lift you up and help you find your sound.” Feldman elaborated.

In-person collaboration may be out of the question for the time being, but that didn’t stop Feldman from enlisting help, for which she secured U.K. producer Josh Northwood.

“I really wanted to find a professional to help me capture this modern folk wave that’s happening,” Feldman said. “When you think about who else is in the genre, like Maggie Rogers and Faye Webster, they have this sound that has really taken over. And when I write songs, it’s just me and my guitar and I make it kinda rootsy, so when I perform the song on my own it comes off as more country. I really wanted to break into this modern folk genre, so I was like, ‘I need a professional.’”

And out of that work came “i don’t want to!” It is the second single of her solo career. With lush instrumentation backing her, the lyrics, while rooted in some sense of dread for the inevitable future, have a cute tone that keeps the mood light.

“I feel like my whole four years of college I’ve just been terrified to graduate and go out to find a real job, and I just came to the realization that I just want a break,” Feldman said. “I don’t want to graduate, I don’t want to go find a job. I just want to chill and make music.”

Feldman’s new single “i don’t want to!” is available now to stream on Spotify.

Thomas Stremfel can be reached at [email protected] or @tomstremfel on Twitter