We all know Jaden Smith is a person of many talents; he can act, sing, rap and write, but it turns out he has perfected some serious dance moves that lean heavily into Michael Jackson territory. For his performance Thursday night on
The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (weeknights 11:35ET on CTV2), he pulled out all the stops for his new song, “Cabin Fever,” and it is the most upbeat-joyful-pink-bubblegum-pop-unicorn-dream few minutes that will carry you through the weekend with chill vibes.Set on a colourful stage situated on the edge of a picturesque cliff, Jaden serenades the landscape, dressed like David Bowie circa “
Space Oddity” years, under a rainbow and in front of a technicolour car. He snaps a picture on a Polaroid before breaking out into song.
“Cabin Fever” may look and sound like a blissful escape, but the lyrics are all about longing for the one you love and being unable to see them. Hmmm, sounds familiar! Turns out, it was in fact written about and during the COVID quarantine.“It was written in a time where I really wanted to see somebody but we both couldn’t see each other and the world was just keeping us apart,”
he told Fallon ahead of the performance. “As much as we wanted to see each other, we knew that just for the safety of ourselves and for our families and for everyone around us, that we can’t see each other.” He then explains that the visuals from the performance and
music video are the daydream of what it might be like if they did see each other. Hence the rainbows and hazy happiness![video_embed id='2009901']RELATED: Jay-Z and Roc Nation opening a school of music [/video_embed]If you were thinking that vibe sounds totally different from Jaden's previous musical efforts, you would be right. The 22-year-old said he purposefully wanted to go in a different stylistic direction. Name-checking inspirations like Bowie and The Beach Boys, Jaden said he's been inspired by listening to old music with satisfying vocal harmonies and genre-specific instrumentation. With that in mind, he's been trying new things with his guitar teacher to give his fans something new to chew on.It’s no surprise that Jaden can write and perform a song in any genre, obviously it runs in his family—his pops
did win the first-ever Grammy for
Best Rap performance in 1988, and has since delivered a cornucopia of mega hip-hop smash hits. But can we also take a moment to appreciate Jaden’s MJ-inspired footwork? The pelvic thrusts, the foot swings, the moonwalk: it’s like he studied The King of Pop’s entire
Motown 25 performance and delivered it in his own way.We all need something uplifting and fun to carry us through the weekend, and fam, this is it.Watch
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon weeknights at 11:35ET on CTV2.[video_embed id='2007723']BEFORE YOU GO: Unpacking Beyoncé's 'BLACK IS KING' visual album [/video_embed]
