Dear Jean

Album: Not Waving, But Drowning (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Loyle Carner writes a letter to his mum, Jean, telling her he has met a girl and will be moving "half my clothes maybe louder stuff. Out the south, out the house never out of touch."
  • Jean is a special-needs teacher, widowed when Carner's stepdad Nik died suddenly in 2014. The rapper told The Independent: "I wanted my mum to be proud. I mean, it's what she wants for me, but moving on is always going to be hard."

    "Mum listened to the song on her own in the car," the MC added. "She says she sat there, crying in the car, for a long time afterwards."
  • This is the opening track of Not Waving, But Drowning. The closing track, "Dear Ben," is Jean's reply to her son (Carner's birth name is Benjamin Coyle-Larner). Previously, on Carner's debut album Yesterday's Gone, the closing track "Sun Of Jean" featured the MC's mother reading a poem.

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