Nick Jonas gave fans the first taste of his upcoming Sunday Best solo album on Sunday (Dec. 14), naturally, during one of his Sunday Best Brunch events in Toronto. The Jonas Brothers member and solo star dove into the moody ballad “Gut Punch” at the brunch while joined on stage by his non-JoBros younger brother, Franklin Jonas, and album collaborator JP Saxe.
“Gut Punch,” due out on Jan. 1, will appear on Sunday Best, Nick’s first full-length solo album in five years, an 11-track project exploring his life as a husband to actress Priyanka Chopra and dad to their daughter, Malti, which is due out on Feb. 6.
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According to a release, Nick “shared an intimate conversation about the origins of ‘Gut Punch’ and the deeply personal themes woven throughout the album” at Sunday’s gathering, where fans also got an intimate, stripped-back performances of new songs, reworked favorites and a behind-the-scenes look into the personal stories that inspired the LP.
In an accompanying video describing “Gut Punch” in which an off-camera Chopra asked her husband pointed questions about his work, she wondered if there was a lyric on the record he was afraid to say out loud. “‘I hurt my own feelings,'” an emotional Jonas responded as the song’s chugging rhythm and acoustic strumming bubbled up and fans heard him sing the lacerating refrain, “Hit me like a gut punch/ I hurt my own feelings/ How did I get so good at being mean to myself?
In an earlier video, Jonas let the emotionally naked lyrics play out as he pointed to self-affirming phrases reminding listeners that they should give themselves a little more grace. “You’re exactly where you’re meant to be,” a silent Jonas nodded along to, before pointing to the mantras: “you don’t need to have everything figured out,” “you can’t be behind on your own timeline” and “you’re allowed to be proud of how far you’ve come.”
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Jonas has been performing “Gut Punch” on the JoBros’ Jonas20: Greetings From Your Hometown anniversary tour, which has seven more shows left this year, including a Monday night (Dec. 15) gig at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.
“I’m so excited to share these new stories, candid thoughts, quiet walks home in the city, and snapshots of my life over these past few years,” Jonas said in a statement announcing the follow-up to 2021’s Spaceman solo LP earlier this month. “And while this album was made over the course of the last two years, it was truly 33 years in the making.”
A release described the album as drawing inspiration from Jonas’ musical roots and early years singing in church choirs, “through unguarded storytelling and moments he has never previously shared publicly… [offering] listeners an intimate look into his world and [exploring] honesty, growth and rediscovery.”
