Sweetheart

Sophie's staff pick "Arguably one of Aotearoa's best songwriters & producers, SJD's version of cinematic pop, electronica & psych soul on this album still has me going back to it weekly. A masterpiece"

SJD is the musical project of Sean Donnelly (he/him), a musician and songwriter from Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), and currently based in Ōtepoti (Dunedin), under the Mozart Fellowship at Otago University.

SJD takes a piecemeal approach to genre, thoughtfully employing electronics, strings and sounds to subvert the traditional 3 minute pop song structure. A quiet overachiever, SJD is one of Aotearoa’s most lauded songwriters, winning two Aotearoa Music Awards, the Taite Music Prize (in 2013 for Elastic Wasteland), and was shortlisted for the APRA Silver Scroll in 2007 for his song Beautiful Haze. 

“I felt the strong impetus to complete an album after the first lockdown in 2020”, says Donnelly. “There was a surge of inspiration and energy and I wanted to capitalise on it-I didn’t expect to get quite as obsessive as I did!”

Sweetheart is a bold statement, tackling thoughts of isolation, loneliness, and depression. “It's about trying to break out of isolation and make contact with the very real people that surround you. About trying to be a good human and what that means in the weird fucked-up pseudo sci-fi world that we live in.  

Tracklist