Canadian artist JP Saxe and singer/songwriter Julia Michaels’ hit duet “If the World Was Ending” isn’t about COVID-19, but feels like it could be.  It was the first song they ever wrote together, and JP remembers how quickly Julia made the song sound “dark and romantic.”

At first, JP only had one line of the song — “If the world was ending, you’d come over, right?” — but Julia picked right up on it.

“Very shortly after hearing [the line], she [sang], ‘You’d come over and you’d stay the night,'” he recalls. “And then we talked a little more about the idea, and I will never forget her singing…the last line of the chorus: ‘There wouldn’t be a reason why/we would even have to say goodbye.'”

“I got chills in my whole body,” JP remembers. “Like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s so dark and so romantic…I love it so much.'”

JP explains why the song, originally released in October, captures our present moment.

“When we wrote the song, we had no idea anything like this was going to happen,” he says. “But I think the song speaks to the part of you that wants to put love before everything else. And I think we are living in that kinda time.” 

Speaking of love: JP and Julia didn’t just click musically, they also ended up falling for each other.

“I think we both just had a lot of mutual respect for each other’s craft. And I think we both really just wanted to impress each other,” Julia tells ABC Audio about why she thinks she and JP connected so well.

“That’s crazy for her to say,” laughs JP. “Because I walked into that session like, ‘I’m about to write with my favorite songwriter in the world. I better bring my [“A”] game!'”

By Andrea Dresdale
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