There’s something instantly gripping about Allan Jamisen’s new single “Gotta Do.” It’s one of those songs that seems simple at first — a catchy electronic pulse, a repeating phrase, a hypnotic groove — but the more you sit with it, the more you realize how much life is actually packed into it. You can feel that this track came from a real place, not just a studio experiment or a clever idea. Jamisen wrote the song during a brutal stretch of his life: working long hours, trying to hold himself together emotionally, and caring for his mother as her health declined. Somewhere in that emotional fog, he found himself muttering, “I gotta do what I gotta do… she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.” It was just a survival mantra — something people say when there’s no perfect choice, only the next step. But in Jamisen’s mind, that phrase turned melodic, then rhythmic, then suddenly meaningful in a bigger way. That’s exactly how the track plays out. The lyrics stay incredibly simple, almost like fragments of thought. But the repetition makes them hit differently. What starts as self-preservation slowly turns communal: “We gotta do what we gotta do.” It feels like someone moving from pain to acceptance to a kind of quiet strength.
Musically, the song grows in the same way. It opens with soft, dreamy synths — almost like staring at a dim ceiling at 2 a.m., trying to get your mind to slow down. Then the beat kicks in, the synths get grittier, and suddenly you’re in this warm, buzzing electronic world that feels both energizing and emotional. The drops don’t explode — they bloom. The whole track feels like a slow exhale turning into a heartbeat. One of the most touching parts is knowing that Jamisen’s late mother is actually in the background vocals. Even though she was incredibly ill, he brought her into the creative process because it was something meaningful they could share. That alone gives the song a weight that you can’t fake. You can’t tell where her voice is, but you can feel the emotion behind the decision to include it.
“Gotta Do” also carries the fingerprints of Jamisen’s long, winding artistic history: the Phoenix choir kid, the LA club singer, the Copenhagen painter-electronic-experimenter, the musician recording on a four-track cassette machine, the outsider pop storyteller absorbing the Bee Gees, Bowie, Iggy Pop, Velvet Underground, Motown — all these lives, all these people, folded into one artist. The track carries that same mix of rawness and style, simplicity and depth. After recording the vocals in Phoenix, Jamisen flew to Denmark to finish the track — a sort of creative homecoming. And maybe that’s why the song feels so honest: it comes from someone who’s lived many lives, hit the bottom a few times, and still keeps creating. In the end, “Gotta Do” is more than a groove. It’s more than a mantra. It’s a reminder of that strange balance we all face — trying to take care of ourselves, trying not to lose people we love, trying to stay human in a messy world. It’s repetitive in the best, most grounding way. By the time the last drop hits, you don’t just hear the line “We gotta do what we gotta do.” You feel it.
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