John-Robert (Rimel) has done a lot of living in his 25 years. He was just 13 when his child-prodigy credentials earned him an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Six years later, he dodged a scholarship offer to Berklee School Of Music and headed to Los Angeles, where he was signed to Nice Life/Warner by Grammy-nominated producer Ricky Reed (Leon Bridges, Lizzo). Things were looking up in 2023-24, with John-Robert opening for Madi Diaz, Rayland Baxter and even Liam Gallagher. But by early 2025, he was back home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley regrouping after a label split, reassessing everything from career ambitions to his creative touchstones.
It’s telling, then, that he named Where Do You Wanna Go? (Don’t Give Them Four) after the title track, a slinky white-soul number that glows like a beacon pointing the way out of the doldrums. Tracked in his bedroom and at sessions in Brooklyn with producer Ronnie DiSimone (Daisy The Great, Del Water Gap), the new EP finds John-Robert embracing spontaneity, humor, romance and uncertainty with a new-found willingness to step well outside his Appalachia-tinged folk/pop comfort zone.
Here’s more on each track from John-Robert.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Where Do You Wanna Go?”
“A song about a crush and timing. The saxophone was recorded by Ognjen “OGI” Gotovcevic in his bedroom during a trip to Los Angeles. A badass solo at the top of a song is a bold statement that sets the tone. I thought the ‘Get Nasty’ sample was funny. I like to surprise my friends when I send them demos. It made me laugh, so I just left it in there.”
2) “Did It Just Because”
“What if infidelity sounded fun instead of tragic? The reason for cheating is always because you wanted to. There’s a refreshing sense of accountability in that answer. With that as the chorus idea, I packed the song full of frivolous excuses for cheating and called it a day.”
3) “Tethered”
“This one captures the rollercoaster ride of an on-again, off-again relationship. The highest highs and lowest lows … It’s addictive. That emotional whiplash is really what I wanted the song to feel like.”
4) “Anna”
“Crushes are fun and precarious at the same time. It’s that emotional game of chicken where nobody wants to blink first and admit they have feelings. This song lives right in that tension.”
5) “Low Roller”
“I’d moved back home and gotten a pizza-delivery job—reflecting on where I was and where I could still go. Most of the demos for this were tracked in my bedroom, and then we recorded the song in New York with Zac Coe on drums and Zoe Zeeman on bass. Ronnie DiSimone and I handled additional production afterward. We only had one day to rehearse and one day to record, so there’s a real immediacy to the whole thing.”
See John-Robert live.
