Jack Kays Goes Home Again on “To Be American”

Jack Kays returns with “To Be American,” his latest single and the newest chapter in the Cincinnati-born singer-songwriter’s ongoing run of confessional pop-punk.

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• The New Single
• Where Jack Kays Is Coming From

Jack Kays has released “To Be American,” his newest single and current focus track across streaming platforms. The song marks his latest release since 2025’s DEADBEAT! (LIVE) EP, continuing the steady drip of singles the Cincinnati native has built his career on since breaking through with 2020’s “Morbid Mind.”

Kays has spent the run-up to the release promoting the track directly to his fanbase — his TikTok bio currently reads simply “‘To Be American’ out now,” a low-key rollout consistent with how he’s introduced past singles like “Blow It” and “Tether,” letting the song reach listeners through his existing streaming audience rather than a heavy press campaign. As of this release, Kays counts over half a million monthly listeners on Spotify and more than 400 million career streams, built largely on the strength of word-of-mouth and sync placements rather than mainstream radio.

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The title arrives from an artist whose music has always leaned autobiographical. Born Jack Kays in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1998, he grew up training across nearly ten instruments — starting on drums at age three, then piano, saxophone, guitar, and bass — before a turbulent stretch after high school that included homelessness and drug addiction. An educational trust helped him get into culinary school, find stable housing, and get sober, and it was that period of recovery that led him back to music and the breakout single “Morbid Mind,” which climbed the charts on the strength of TikTok clips before landing him a deal with Columbia Records.

Since then, Kays has built a catalog — 2021’s MIXED EMOTIONS, the Travis Barker-assisted EP MY FAVORITE NIGHTMARES, and 2024’s two-disc album DEADBEAT! — defined by blunt, diary-style songwriting about mental health, addiction, and isolation, delivered through a blend of emo rap, pop-punk, and folk. “Music is an outlet for me,” Kays has said of his process. “I write as if I were writing in a diary, and it’s all very fast.” That same directness carries into “To Be American,” a title that continues his pattern of writing songs that read like plainly stated emotional confessions rather than abstracted metaphors.

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Kays has also spoken about deliberately staying outside the traditional industry machine, choosing to base himself in Washington, D.C. rather than Los Angeles. “I moved away from LA because I didn’t want to be part of a music scene,” he’s said. “I just want to be a person. That’s my ultimate goal in life: to just exist.” That instinct — putting distance between himself and the music industry’s usual centers of gravity — has become as much a part of his identity as the songs themselves, and it’s part of what makes a title like “To Be American” land as personal reflection rather than a broader statement.