Jennifer Munoz
Oct 19, 2023
Brooke Josephson's "Good Kinda Tired"
Brooke Josephson’s “Good Kinda Tired” is the best kind of song; she culls it from personal experience. Her intimacy with the song’s subject and mood infuses the writing and performance with impassioned soulfulness you can’t manufacture. It must emerge from within. Her journey toward realizing her artistic aspirations hasn’t always been easy; Josephson, living in New York City during her twenties, juggled multiple jobs between auditions and any gigs she landed. Each month was fraught with worries about whether she’d cover her rent and restricted her ability to enjoy life’s amenities.
She embraced seeming practicality for a time and took a job in the office of a Broadway producer. It addressed her financial woes but at a price. Josephson discovered she came home each evening exhausted from days of pushing other people’s agendas and, as a result, finished her day lacking any energy to chase after her own ambitions. The lesson she gleaned from that experience informs each turn of “Good Kinda Tired” but she widens its scope. The single addresses the ongoing struggle to balance the multiple demands of art, marriage, and motherhood. You hear her commitment to the subject in every line she sings.
It has a brisk pace without ever rushing the song’s development. Drummer Jake Reed lays down a crisp, no-nonsense backbeat for the track that Sean Hurley’s bass reinforces in an unobtrusive fashion. Chris Nordlinger’s lead guitar punctuates the performance in a stylish fashion while foregoing hokey guitar heroics that might undermine the song’s sincerity. Andrew Synoweic’s second guitar helps provide “Good Kinda Tired” with an even fuller body. There are no musical holes in this performance.
Nor are there any lyrical slips. Josephson does an exemplary job tailoring her voice to the arrangement while thriving as the track’s featured performer. She invests her vocal phrasing with the right amount of passion at the right moments and inhabits the writing with cool confidence you hear even during a cursory listen. “Good Kinda Tired”, as well, never overstays its welcome with listeners.
Its accompanying video is the cherry atop an already delectable cake. Produced by Josephson and directed by Michelle Bossy, it’s a concept clip depicting Josephson as an archetypal 1960s housewife at the end of her day and waiting for her husband to come home from work. She climbs into bed and watches Ed Sullivan, seeing herself as a 60’s female rock musician on the show, and the vision prompts her to erupt, jumping on the bed, scattering laundry everywhere, and “singing” along with every line.
The video’s director of photography Seth Fuller, production designer Rose Krol, Devon Bartel’s wardrobe work, and Jed Olmedo handling hair & makeup, make critical contributions to the video’s success. The period furniture, décor, and rich, even gaudy, colors give our eyes plenty to do; it’s a near visual feast for viewers. Josephson, however, remains the clip’s unquestionable center and fills the screen with another side of the same presence she brings to the song as a vocalist. Inspired by a quote from renowned singer/songwriter Harry Chapin, “Good Kinda Tired” is Brooke Josephson’s moment to shine, and she doesn’t disappoint.
Jennifer Munoz