Rose Garden by Nick Jonas & the Administration

Album: Who I Am (2010)

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Songfacts®:

This pensive, acoustic mumber is the opening track from Who I Am, the debut album from Nick Jonas & the Administration and Nick Jonas's second album without the Jonas Brothers. Jonas explained to USA Today why he recorded away from his brothers: "I had written five or six songs that were on my heart, things that were just pouring out of me with this new and exciting sound. They weren't necessarily right for the Jonas Brothers, but I thought they could be perfect for something else."
Nick cut the album in eight days with Jonas Brothers' longtime producer John Fields, who also played bass. Additional members of the Administration include drummer Michael Bland, guitarist David Ryan Harris and keyboardist Tommy Barbarella, the latter having played in the New Power Generation. Jonas told USA Today: "We would set up in individual booths and play simultaneously. There are very few overdubs on the record. Some songs are full live. It has a raw, late-'60s/early-'70s rock/soul sound."
Jonas told Billboard magazine about this cut: "That was the first song I wrote for the record. It's a story about a young girl who finds her safe place in the rose garden - wherever it is in life where you feel most comfortable, where you can be yourself, where you can find love or just be alone if you need to."
Nick admitted to Time Out that this song was in part inspired by a difficult break-up. He said: "I think it did have a personal connection with me, but it was also a story I was trying to tell, a story that, yes, I did feel a connection to personally, and there was something I could relate it to, but I also wanted it to be general—about how everyone can find their safe place in the rose garden, whether it's a person in their life, an actual place or a thing that makes them feel safe. There are some songs that are personal, about relationships and things, but what I've tried to do, like my idol Elvis Costello does, is kind of put a disguise on it. We speak a little more literally in Jonas Brothers songs, and this one I wanted to disguise with a story."

Comments: 1

Nancy from DetroitNick Jonas is a genius with his song writing abilities

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