The Julia Jacklin Every Morning cover has landed via Triple J, with the singer-songwriter putting a gently downtempo spin on Sugar Ray’s 1999 single as she enters the final stretch before her new album drops.
Jacklin recorded a version of the track for the Australian broadcaster, and the result pulls the song somewhere quieter and more reflective than the breezy, sun-soaked original. The core melody is still there, still doing its job. Just at a slower pace, with a bit more space around it.
Julia Jacklin on the Every Morning Cover: ‘The Song Just Makes Me Feel Grateful to Be Alive’
Jacklin is candid about why she reached for this particular song. ‘I’ve liked it since I was a little kid,’ she says. ‘I love any way to connect with my younger self as much as I can. I feel like we were singing it together: me now, and her back then.’
She goes further, too. ‘I have always enjoyed how spirited this song sounds,’ she adds. ‘I don’t know, the song just makes me feel grateful to be alive. It makes me connected to the source of life.’ That is a lot to lay on a Sugar Ray single, but here we are, and it is hard to argue once you’ve sat with her version for a few minutes.
Sugar Ray never really disappeared from the millennial memory bank regardless of what happened to their chart run. Mark McGrath and co.’s late ’90s alt-pop blend has a stickiness that polished, radio-friendly production tends to produce. Jacklin, who grew up in Australia with the same soundtrack, is tapping into something a lot of people her age will recognise.
The Gem: A Melbourne Album With a Local Address
The cover comes with context. Jacklin is less than six weeks out from releasing The Gem, due on 25 September via 4AD. She named the LP after a pub and live music venue in Melbourne, the city she moved to from Sydney in 2017, according to Pitchfork. The connection between the album’s title and its setting is not purely sentimental: the record was made there, with her band, in that city.
On the production side, Beyond The Stage Magazine reports that the album was produced by Jacklin alongside Robert Muinos and recorded entirely in Melbourne between December 2024 and December 2025. That is a full year in one city, with one collaborator, making something rooted in a specific place. It is the kind of process that tends to show up in the finished record.
The choice of 4AD as her new label home matters, too. The label has a long history with artists who work at the intersection of intimacy and scale, and it is a natural fit for where Jacklin’s songwriting has been heading.
Once the album cycle gets moving properly, there is a lot of road ahead. Pitchfork reports that Jacklin will tour The Gem across North America and Europe from October through to early 2027. That is a long run, and it suggests the album is being backed with a serious live commitment rather than a quick splash-and-dash campaign. For anyone who has seen her perform, that is good news. The Julia Jacklin Every Morning cover is a small taste of where her head is at right now: looking back at where she came from, and getting ready to take the new record out properly.
