Jason Parker Releases Debut Album ‘What Makes a Man’
Aotearoa pop artist Jason Parker has a few things to get off his chest, and he’s doing it in a pink-and-white rugby jersey. On his new album What Makes a Man, out today 13 November, the artist turns the question on himself: what have he and many other young queer New Zealanders been taught masculinity should look like, and how much of it actually feels like him?
Parker introduced this new chapter with first single One Week Sober, questioning who he was without the things he’d relied on to define himself. The album continues along that theme, unpacking self-worth, expectations and the pressure to measure up to someone else’s idea of a man.
Created with long-term collaborator Maude Minnie Morris, What Makes a Man pairs introspection with the catchy, hooky and sparkly pop Parker loves, drawing on the 2010s world of Katy Perry, Rebecca Black and Carly Rae Jepsen. This is a more open Parker, working through the expectations he’s absorbed from others, and those ones he’s put on himself.
The closing title track brings that inner conversation into focus. Its question keeps changing as Parker considers his upbringing, the hurt people pass on, and what makes someone deserving of love. Even the pink-and-white rugby imagery joins the conversation: a familiar symbol of masculinity, worn through Parker’s own queer, playful identity, rather than being treated as something he has to change himself to fit.
The focus single Glory Days turns the artist’s reflection towards his people. A lighthearted opening builds into a melodic chorus, with Parker’s vocals opening up as he reckons with the cost of leaving rural Hawke’s Bay to find himself. A younger brother growing up, a sister becoming a mother: the song holds the moments he’s missed alongside a determination to be present for the ones still to come.
“My idea of what makes a man is seeing yourself through the eyes of the people who love you the most,” says Parker. “This song is my way of telling those people that I will show up for them.”
There’s no universal answer waiting at the end of What Makes a Man, and no new checklist to replace the old one. Masculinity is what you make of it. For Parker, that means recognising himself in the people he loves.
Photo Credit: Luke Penney
