When your affection has been repeatedly hoarded and discarded by those you’ve deemed precious enough to receive it, you start to wonder: Am I the fool here? Kara Jackson has been through this kind of heartbreak before, and, on her new single “Pawnshop,” the Chicago singer-songwriter refuses to fall for the same tricks again, insisting on her self-worth. Country slide guitar, a rustic shaker, and acoustic strums swirl around her sunbeam of a voice as she reckons with an exploitative past relationship: “You picked me in a pawnshop/I was used but good as new/Shiny as a tattoo,” she accuses, offering vivid metaphors with dual implications. Acts of selfishness have left her feeling used, but Jackson knows her value: “I’m not a liquidated asset/I’m sharper than a jewel/What kind of miner does that make you?” She may have gotten her heart robbed, but listen and you can feel it beating right where it’s supposed to be. The joke’s on the other person.
