Childhood promises can feel unbreakable when you’re young. You make them with complete confidence, convinced that the people you love will always stay beside you and that the future will somehow follow the plan you’ve imagined together. Jazzy Gold’s “pinky promise” takes that innocent idea and places it against the much messier reality of growing up.
The Sydney alternative pop artist’s third single from her forthcoming debut EP WTF is WRONG with ME is an emotionally raw piece of alternative pop that blends singer-songwriter intimacy with alternative rock energy. But what really gives the track its weight is how personal its story becomes.
“pinky promise” was written about Jazzy’s cousin, someone she grew up with more like a sister. After spending time apart, the two reunited, giving Jazzy an opportunity to see just how differently their lives had developed. She had moved away, built a new life, and changed considerably, while her cousin remained caught in a familiar cycle that had become increasingly difficult to escape.
That reunion became the spark for the song.
Instead of simply telling a story about two people who ended up in different places, Jazzy looks backwards at the younger versions of themselves. As children, they made promises about who they would become and the things they would never do. Those promises once felt absolute. Growing older has a way of testing that certainty.
The pinky promise itself becomes the perfect symbol for that lost innocence. Something that once represented an unbreakable agreement between two children is now remembered from a completely different place. The song asks what happens when life takes people somewhere their younger selves never expected them to go.
There is plenty of pain in that question, but “pinky promise” doesn’t turn its subject into a villain.
That is perhaps one of the most affecting things about the track. Jazzy approaches the story without placing herself above her cousin. She recognises that both of them have made mistakes and failed to live up to promises they once made to themselves. The difference is that their paths have taken them in very different directions.
That honesty gives the songwriting an uncomfortable edge. Rather than presenting growth as a neat journey where everything eventually works out, Jazzy acknowledges that sometimes loving someone deeply doesn’t give you the power to change their life.
The song’s emotional core comes from that realisation. You can care about someone, remember exactly who they were, and still be forced to accept that you cannot make their choices for them.
It also fits naturally into the world Jazzy Gold is creating with WTF is WRONG with ME. Following “DUMB” and “FUCK I MISS MY MUM,” the new single opens another window into an EP concerned with identity, mental health, growing up and the often chaotic process of becoming an adult.
And “chaotic” is a fitting word for Jazzy’s wider artistic identity. Her music is known for direct lyricism, genre-blending and immersive live performances, giving her songs a sense of immediacy that makes the emotional material feel even more exposed.
With “pinky promise,” however, the intensity comes from the story itself. There is no need to manufacture drama when the subject is already filled with complicated emotions: childhood, family, grief, addiction, distance, regret, and the painful realisation that people don’t always become who you thought they would.
That makes the song feel less like a judgement and more like a conversation with the past. Jazzy is looking at the promises she and her cousin once made, comparing them with the people they eventually became and sitting with the uncomfortable space between those two versions of themselves.
It is a deeply personal chapter in what is shaping up to be a very revealing debut EP. “pinky promise” doesn’t offer an easy answer, and perhaps it shouldn’t. Some stories aren’t about fixing everything. Sometimes they’re about recognising what has changed, understanding what you can and cannot control, and finding the courage to keep moving.
Jazzy Gold will bring the story of WTF is WRONG with ME to the stage with her show at Oxford Art Factory Main Room on October 15, alongside Kyle Charles Hall, Butterknife and Amber Scates, before continuing with two Pleasure Club residency shows in November.
If “pinky promise” is any indication, this is an artist who isn’t afraid to turn the complicated parts of growing up into music that feels honest, messy and unmistakably human.
Jazzy Gold turns childhood innocence, family ties, and the painful realities of growing up into a deeply personal alternative pop statement on ‘pinky promise’
