I Know You’re Hurting… comes after the virality of Idehen’s track Mum Does The Washing, a wry and whipsmart poem examining how the world works (which started life as a Twitter thread), set to Parment’s spacious beats. The song has seen the pair propelled beyond Idehen’s wildest dreams this past year, with support from the likes of Jamz Supernova and Huw Stephens leading to sold-out shows and packed out festival performances including rammed crowds at Glastonbury and Green Man, an appearance on Later with Jools, and a support slot on Baxter Dury’s European tour this winter. For Idehen, this is all so special because it marked a new era of his career after around two decades of writing poetry. “In a nutshell, the song has changed my life,” he says.
And so, Idehen began to contemplate pairing his poetry with something more uplifting: specifically, with dance music. “There has to be light at the end, something to hold onto,” he says. It was around this time that an old friend he’d met in London, Parment – also known as producer Saturday, Monday – reached out. The pair began a back and forth on what would become Don’t You Give Up On Me, a single which eventually became the opening song on their 2023 mixtape, Learn to Swim. For Parment, writing apart and then feeding back to each other made for a fruitful collaboration: “I would say we have kind of a sibling relationship…or an old couple, as some say. We’re very straightforward and aren’t afraid to fight for our creative ideas, but at the same time we really do listen to each other and are okay with being wrong sometimes. I love it because I always get to pursue my ideas, but I know there is a guard-rail if I get lost – and I think that goes both ways.”
After years of honing his craft, I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got To Try finds Joshua Idehen’s pen reaching the next level. This is work that is truly arresting – but simultaneously, thanks to Parment’s soundscapes, it often makes you want to wave your arms in the air and dance. In these bleak times that try to push us all further apart, it’s a beautiful, powerful manifesto for hope and collectivism. As Joshua puts it: “There’s a likelihood that we might be planting seeds that we won’t get to see harvested…but the planting is good. The planting is just as important as the watering and the tending and the harvesting. We all have to play a part so that we can have some redemption.”
