Singer/songwriter Jackie Lee McLean (formerly Roan Yellowthorn) embraces her true self in her debut solo single “All Mine Now,” a unflinchingly candid, uplifting, and inspiring folk-pop revelry.
Stream: “All Mine Now” – Jackie Lee McLean
Jackie Lee McLean is done being anyone other than herself.
“Stopped taking my Lexapro about three weeks ago, wanted to remember how to feel,” the singer/songwriter expresses on her debut solo single. “Now I’ve got my sex drive back, but worries on my mind, spinning like a great big ferris wheel.” Immediately exposed and equally gripping, it’s as powerful a reintroduction as anyone could hope for: An instant establishing shot of identity and artistry, setting the tone for all that’s to come. McLean embraces her true self in “All Mine Now,” a candid, uplifting, and inspiring folk-pop revelry.
Stopped taking my Lexapro
about three weeks ago
Wanted to remember how to feel
Now I’ve got my sex drive back
but worries on my mind
Spinning like a great big ferris wheel
I know that I’m not so big
and I don’t look so strong
There’s a bigger world inside of me
Unpolluted wilderness,
the universe at large
Galaxies and stars that you can’t see
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “All Mine Now,” the Jackie Lee McLean’s debut single under her own name. Formerly performing under the name Roan Yellowthorn, the upstate New York-based singer/songwriter took listeners on an intimate journey of healing and self-empowerment on her sophomore album Another Life, released in 2021 via Blue Élan Records.
A vulnerable and visceral work brimming with raw emotion, Another Life remains a powerfully revealing deep-dive into McLean’s inner sanctum, and serves as a fitting prelude to the unfiltered and unflinchingly honest image she presents to us now under her own name. Vulnerable and exposed, “All Mine Now” is a poetic confessional – an unburdening that brings us closer to the artist than ever before.
“Making this song was an integral part of the journey of making my solo album,” McLean tells Atwood Magazine. “The last time I wrote for Atwood, I documented the year-plus long process of making the album Another Life when I was still on my record label and still performing under the stage name ‘Roan Yellowthorn.’ A lot has changed since then.”
“This album is the first one that I’m putting out as an independent artist and as me – Jackie Lee McLean. And this feels like a step in a lifelong journey towards embracing and claiming who I am as a person and as an artist. From the start of my musical career, I have shied away from using my name and shied away from really embodying myself. I felt like it was safer and easier to create a kind of separate identity for my art.”
“But there was frustration that came with that, too. Over time, I started to feel like the stage name was a shroud, covering me and making me unable to really express myself as me. I felt I had to live up to this created identity. I also felt like the identity I embodied for my art was separate from the one that I lived every day and, since my music is so personal and the topics of my songs are so intimately entwined with the experiences I’ve had as a person, that separation felt like a fracturing. I started to crave less separation. I started to want to really telescope all of my identities into one. I didn’t want to be one person some of the time and, other times, someone else. I want to be me all the time and I think that that ‘me’ can hold the identities of artist and human and whatever else I am.”
Her first song under her own name sees McLean reveling in a moment of unapologetic self-expression.
It’s a type of self-love she denied herself for years – the kind we feel when we are in full alignment. true to ourselves in every way. This is exemplified in the chorus, where she sings:
And it’s all mine now
It belongs to only me
It’s all mine now
Won’t let you on it anymore
It’s all mine now
And I’ll keep it for my own
“I wrote this song almost two years ago, on a five-week cross country road trip that I took with my partner and children in an RV across the United States. It was a freeing time and I had very few responsibilities and possessions weighing on me. I felt like I could just be. I had some mental space to think and imagine and write. And this is one of the songs that came out of that trip. I wanted it to be a ‘driving song’ about a literal journey, and also about an emotional one.”
That driving metaphor turns literal in the second verse, as McLean recalls a moment on the road that sent her down a rabbit hole of introspection:
Driving through New Mexico I thought I saw your face
Plastered on a billboard 10 feet high
Just a false alarm but still I felt my heartbeat race
Only settled down when I passed by
Thought you were the answer to me for the longest time
Thought you were the person with the key
Lord, what was I thinking there’s a path you’ll never find
Leading to a place you’ll never see
“Driving is where I do some of my most creative thinking and imagining,” she smiles. “I wrote the song ‘Acid Trip’ (on my 2021 album, ‘Another Life’) about the thoughts I experienced while I was driving and this song, ‘All Mine Now’ is in some ways an answer to that. ‘Acid Trip’ was written when I was still in a place of trauma in my life – really trying to pick apart a snaggled ball of emotional threads. When I wrote ‘All Mine Now’ I was on a journey, too, but it was a different kind. I was not trying to run from something. I was meditating on the experience of being where I was and being alive. I was feeling like what I have and what I am is mine. I felt an ownership of myself that I hadn’t before.”
And it’s all mine now
It belongs to only me
It’s all mine now
Got no claim on it anymore
It’s all mine now
And I’ll keep it for my own
I was feeling like what I have and what I am is mine. I felt an ownership of myself that I hadn’t before.
Deeply personal and impassioned, “All Mine Now” is a spirited reintroduction – both to Jackie Lee McLean the human, and Jackie Lee McLean the artist.
“In a lot of ways, the song ‘All Mine Now’ and the album that it’s part of is a meditation on where I am,” she says. “I am an independent artist now and I thought that I would feel lost without a record label. But actually I feel found. I feel like everything I do creatively is finally mine. I’m not doing it for anyone else. I’m just doing it for me. And the emotional journey I’ve been through of claiming my own identity as a person – that feels like it’s all mine now, too. I am happy where I am and I feel like for the first time, I’m in control of my story and my path. And it feels really, really good.”
Sun’s on the horizon getting closer to the edge
Vibrant wash of color in the air
Heaven has a paintbrush of blues, yellows, and reds
Makes the world ahead feel like a prayer
Tried to give my heart to you a little at a time
Thought that it was something we could share
“All Mine Now” is without a doubt the start of something special. Stream Jackie Lee McLean’s “debut” single exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stay tuned for more to come as the singer/songwriter embarks on this exciting reintroduction, all leading up to the release of her debut solo record later this year!
And it’s all mine now
It belongs to only me
It’s all mine now
You didn’t want it anymore
It’s all mine now
And I’ll keep it for my own
And I’ll never be alone
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