At the heart of his latest LP I Love You, I’m Trying, Jordan Benjamin—a.k.a. grandson—opens up with the earnest pop-rock ballad “Half My Heart,” which explores the record’s theme of maintaining responsibility in a relationship even when you’re struggling to take care of yourself. Enlisting his girlfriend Wafia to perform backing vocals on the track alongside co-writer Mike Shinoda, the personal message of the song can be easy to miss under the modern alt-pop sheen of the recording, which Benjamin claimed was inspired in part by contemporaries such as Dominic Fike, Deb Never, and Joji.
For a recent “Neighborhoods” session, grandson performed the full track with only an acoustic guitar as accompaniment, slowing things down slightly while extending the song’s introductory sole backing instrumentation for the full three minutes. Set up at a cabin outside of Buffalo, New York, it’s a peaceful performance that brings a wholly new energy to the original version’s busy layers. Check it out below.
