Jeremy Parsons doesn’t write songs so much as he throws lit matches into his own past and watches what survives. “Who Was I” is one of those songs that doesn’t care if you’re comfortable, doesn’t care if you’re impressed, and definitely doesn’t care if you think it’s “too much information.” That’s the point. This is Parsons grabbing the listener by the collar and saying, You want context? Fine. Here’s the mess.
At its core, “Who Was I” is a quarter-life crisis memorialized in real time. Not romanticized, not neatly resolved, just dragged into the daylight and interrogated. Parsons opens with a gut-punch of a line—“Who was I at 25 / Just a drifter on the wind getting so damn high”—and right away you know this isn’t a redemption anthem engineered for playlists. This is the sound of someone remembering how close curiosity came to becoming a coffin.
What makes the song sting is its refusal to pretend that rebellion is glamorous forever. While his parents were building lives, faith, and furniture, Parsons was chasing noise and nights, feeling “mediocre” in the way only artists do when they haven’t yet figured out that wanting to sing is already the point. There’s no sneer here, no cheap generational argument. Just the quiet horror of realizing that other people chose certainty—and you chose uncertainty because anything else would have killed you faster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe7pnpYGpjM&pp=ygUYamVyZW15IHBhcnNvbnMgd2hvIHdhcyBp
Then comes Nashville, that beautiful lie every songwriter tells themselves at least once. Parsons went, didn’t “make it,” and here’s the kicker—he doesn’t sound bitter about it. “It can’t ever hurt you if it ain’t what you want.” That line alone dismantles an entire industry of false dreams and LinkedIn success stories. Failure, in this song, is just information.
Musically, “Who Was I” stays out of its own way. Acoustic, unflashy, almost stubbornly plain. No tricks. No hooks begging for mercy. The song knows the words are enough. And Parsons’ voice—weathered, human, unpolished—carries the weight of someone who’s lived long enough to laugh at the idea of a straight line.
The real brilliance arrives in the final realization: a quarter century feels huge until you realize it’s nothing if you don’t do anything with it. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s accountability. It’s gratitude. It’s survival.
“Who Was I” isn’t about youth—it’s about outliving it. And Jeremy Parsons doesn’t offer answers. He offers proof that asking the question at all means you’re still here.
–Leslie Banks