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JP Saxe

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Toronto songwriter at the piano-confessional end of pop, who turned end-of-the-world anxiety into a duet with 'If the World Was Ending.'

JP Saxe is a singer and songwriter from Toronto who studied music before relocating to Los Angeles. He is the grandson of the cellist János Starker, and his early exposure to classical music sits alongside the confessional pop he later made his own.

He works largely at the piano, in a conversational, detail-heavy style of pop songwriting concerned with relationships, therapy-adjacent self-examination and family. The lyrics favor plain, specific language over metaphor, closer to spoken confession than typical pop writing.

'If the World Was Ending,' written and recorded with Julia Michaels, became widely known in 2020 and earned a Grammy nomination. That year he and Michaels re-recorded it with a group of artists including Sam Smith, H.E.R., Alessia Cara, Sabrina Carpenter, Niall Horan and Keith Urban, produced by Finneas, with proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders.

His debut album, Dangerous Levels of Introspection, followed in 2021. A second album, A Grey Area, came out on Arista Records in 2023 and included 'I Don't Miss You,' co-written with John Mayer. His song 'Same Room' was shortlisted for the SOCAN Songwriting Prize, and he has continued to write for other artists, including a charity single for Serena Ryder.

In October 2025, Saxe sang the Canadian national anthem before a World Series game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers, changing a lyric from 'Our home and native land' to 'Our home on native land,' which drew criticism online.

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