Jaden Hossler

Jaden Hossler, who performs as jxdn (pronounced “Jaden”), is an American singer and songwriter born February 8, 2001, in Dallas, Texas. He rose from TikTok comedy content and the Bel Air “Sway House” collective to become the first artist signed to Travis Barker’s DTA Records in May 2020, scoring a Gold-certified breakout with “Angels & Demons” the same year and helping build the 2020s pop-punk revival across two studio albums, Tell Me About Tomorrow (2021) and When The Music Stops (2024).

Early Life

Jaden Isaiah Hossler was born on February 8, 2001, in Dallas, Texas. His more specific early roots trace to Southlake and Aledo, Texas, where he attended Aledo High School, before his family relocated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, around age 14, where he spent the rest of his adolescence and graduated from Grace Baptist Academy. He has said his family moved 15 times during his childhood, splitting his upbringing between Texas and Tennessee in a way that left him with a persistent sense of instability. “I was never opened up to the world,” he told Uproxx of his sheltered, devoutly Christian household, where both parents worked as pastors. “I didn’t know you could have posters, didn’t know you could go to concerts. I would make friends, lose friends, and I was always trying to fit in.”

His parents are John Hossler Jr. and Amy Hossler, and he is the youngest of three siblings, with two older sisters, Sophie Hossler-Heath and Haley Hossler. He grew up on classic rock and pop before discovering Juice WRLD and XXXTentacion in high school, artists whose music became central to his own struggles with depression. He has said that seeing Juice WRLD perform “Empty” live at age 18 was the moment he knew music was where he belonged. During his senior year of high school, he was treated for depression and survived two suicide attempts, context he has returned to repeatedly when explaining the purpose behind his music.

TikTok, Sway House and the Travis Barker Signing

Hossler joined TikTok in 2019 and quickly amassed millions of followers doing comedic bits set to music, which led the talent agency TalentX Entertainment to recruit him into the Sway House, the Bel Air content house built around creators like Bryce Hall, Josh Richards and Griffin Johnson. Sway was formally established on January 4, 2020, and its roster expanded to nine members at the height of its early-2020 media ubiquity, Hossler among them. By August 2020 he had 7.6 million TikTok followers, climbing past 9 million by December of that year.

He began his music career in February 2020 with the self-released debut single “Comatose,” which caught the attention of Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. Barker signed him in May 2020 as the first artist on his newly formed label, DTA Records, launched as a joint venture with Elektra Records. Hossler left the Sway House that same month, a departure that lined up almost exactly with the DTA signing and suggested a deliberate pivot away from group-content fame toward a solo music career at the earliest commercially viable moment.

He has described the speed of the signing in vivid terms. “I didn’t think many people would be interested in signing me, and then we get a call from Travis Barker the day after I release my song and he’s like, ‘Yo I’m interested in this kid,’” he told NYLON. “After I met with him, it felt so natural. It was something I couldn’t fight.” To SPIN he was more direct about the effect Barker’s interest had on the rest of the industry: “Then every label in the United States of America hit me up, that’s how much notoriety Travis has,” adding that Barker “treated me as an artist even though I only had one song out. I really just felt appreciated... he’s really the only reason I’m here doing this shit today.” He has repeatedly framed Barker as more mentor than label boss, telling NYLON, “He’s honestly stepped in in a really cool way as a father figure for me... He makes me feel like I’m accepted and he actually does love me,” and comparing the relationship to elite coaching: “It’s kind of like getting an Olympian who’s good at the sport that you’re working on to come and show you how to actually do it correctly.”

Angels & Demons and the Breakout Year

“Angels & Demons,” released in May 2020 alongside the announcement of the DTA deal, became Hossler’s signature single. It was certified Gold by the RIAA and by Music Canada, peaked at No. 5 on Billboard’s US Rock charts, and remains by far his most-streamed song, with more than 202.9 million Spotify streams. In October 2020 he separately signed a global co-publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music, running parallel to the Elektra recording arrangement. By the end of the year he had also released “So What!,” the explicitly suicide-prevention-themed “Pray,” “Tonight” with Iann Dior, and “Better Off Dead,” co-written by Lauv and Blackbear, positioning him as one of the most commercially credible graduates of the TikTok-to-music pipeline within a single calendar year.

January 2021 brought a viral rock cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License,” produced by Barker, followed a month later by “La Di Die,” a feature on Nessa Barrett’s breakout single. Also Barker-produced, the song went Gold in both the US and Canada and the pair performed it together on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Ellen DeGeneres Show in April 2021, a run of daytime and late-night exposure unusual for two artists who had, months earlier, been TikTok creators rather than recording artists.

Discography

Tours and Live Performances

Hossler’s live concert debut came at the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood in June 2021, shortly before Tell Me About Tomorrow was released. That fall he opened on Machine Gun Kelly’s Tickets to My Downfall Tour, then headlined his own Tell Me About Tomorrow Tour (2021 to 2022), the I Hope This Never Ends Tour (2023) and the When The Music Stops Tour (2024), which launched in the US on June 6, 2024 with support from LØLØ and Gunnar before extending internationally, including a stop at Le Bataclan in Paris that September. He was nominated for Social Star at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards (losing to Olivia Rodrigo) and for Push Performance of the Year at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards for his performance of “Think About Me.”

His festival run has included Lollapalooza on both sides of the equator, among them a March 2022 slot at Lollapalooza Brasil alongside Alexisonfire, Machine Gun Kelly, A Day to Remember and Fresno. He has described a US Lollapalooza booking as a full-circle moment given his idolization of past headliner Juice WRLD, calling it “a super humbling experience.” Reception to his live shows has split along critical lines: Brazilian outlet G1 panned the Lollapalooza Brasil set for leaning on playback and argued he “não leva magia do TikTok para o mundo real” (“doesn’t bring TikTok’s magic into the real world”), while acknowledging his stage energy and crowd rapport; Argentine outlet Mitelefe covered the same run more favorably, describing an artist who “enloqueció a la generación Z” (“drove Gen Z wild”) at the festival.

Critical Reception

Press framing of Hossler has tracked a recurring split between skepticism about his TikTok-to-rock authenticity and warmer treatment from genre-loyal outlets judging the songwriting on its own terms. NYLON, covering the 2020 to 2021 pop-punk revival, named him the movement’s “prince” and described Tell Me About Tomorrow as bringing “Warped Tour Heyday To Gen Z,” calling it “a collection of earworm pop-punk with propulsive rock guitars and sludgy vocals with pop-punk’s quintessential suburban emo cadence.” Hossler framed the genre’s appeal generationally: “I think this new wave of punk is really just a new generation ready to stick it to the f*cking man, you know what I mean? I think it’s a Rage Against The Machine moment for sure.”

When The Music Stops (June 28, 2024) drew warmer treatment still, largely framed as a comeback tied directly to his mental-health arc. When The Horn Blows called it “nothing short of an autobiography about the reality of depression and difficulties in everyday life,” praising its structure as telling “a story from start to finish” like “a full novel” rather than a “samey” pop-punk record, and singled out “Sad October” for pairing “a summer-night beat and catchy sound” with “crestfallen and smacked-with-reality lyrics.” Fan discussion on Reddit’s r/poppunkers echoed the reception, highlighting “Candles,” “It Must Suck to Know You” and “Sh!t” as standouts and describing the record as “an evolution from his last.” No major US music trade outlet such as Pitchfork, Rolling Stone or NME is known to have reviewed the album, meaning his critical reputation rests mostly with genre-specific press and his own fanbase rather than mainstream critical consensus.

Visual Identity and Brand

Hossler’s visual identity has tracked closely with the pop-punk revival: skate-punk and emo-adjacent styling, dyed and messy hair, black clothing, chains and band-tee aesthetics consistent with Warped Tour-era influence. His association with Barker, often credited as pop-punk’s defining 2020s producer, placed jxdn within a broader scene revival alongside Machine Gun Kelly, Blackbear and Iann Dior. That branding oscillated sharply in October 2023, when he briefly dropped the lowercase “jxdn” name for his given name, Jaden Hossler, and adopted a more polished, luxury-pop visual style tied to the fashion house Chrome Hearts, whose gothic-cross aesthetic directly inspired the single and video treatment for “Chrome Hearted.” He reverted to the jxdn branding and rock sound by mid-2024 with When The Music Stops, re-embracing the rockstar image through merch, tour tees and vinyl sold via his official store. He also carries a matching “3” tattoo he got with then-girlfriend Nessa Barrett during their relationship.

Business: DTA Records, Elektra and Management

Hossler was the first artist signed to Travis Barker’s DTA Records, established as a joint venture with Elektra Records, part of Warner Music Group, in May 2020. Every studio release since, from Tell Me About Tomorrow through When The Music Stops, has carried the DTA/Elektra imprint. His day-to-day management has been handled since March 2020 by Shannon Bayersdorfer, whom he has described as knowing him “better than anyone.” That relationship weathered a serious rupture during his 2023 identity crisis, when Bayersdorfer said she “got in the car, called his mom, and sobbed because I was looking at somebody I did not know.” Barker himself reportedly unfollowed jxdn on social media during that period, before the two reconciled and made When The Music Stops together with producer Andrew Goldstein. Warner/Elektra A&R support has come via Johnny Minardi, who was quoted discussing jxdn’s “pop inclinations” during the 2023 rebrand.

The Chrome Hearted Rebrand

In September and October 2023, Hossler released “Chrome Hearted” under his given name, marking a temporary rebrand and pop pivot. He told Billboard he had “always aspired to be a pop star” but “couldn’t fully embrace that role without first being the rockstar I once was,” and said of the single specifically, “I became fascinated with the luxury brand Chrome Hearts, which inspired me... as soon as I performed it, I knew it would be one of my significant tracks.” Fans speculated the lyrics were aimed at ex-girlfriend Nessa Barrett, which he addressed on social media: “I’d never use my words to hurt anyone anymore but I make real music from multiple real situations in my life, never just one... That’s my freedom. Grateful.”

The rebrand strained his relationship with his label and management, who he later said felt he was running from the truth. He has since called the period “the chrome hearted debacle.” A trip to South America during that stretch became a turning point: fans in Brazil told him the song “Angels & Demons” and his friendship with the late Cooper Noriega had given them purpose, which he has described as triggering a gut-check realization that he had strayed from the identity his fanbase connected with. “What the fuck have I done? I have made such a grave mistake,” he told 10 Magazine Australia. Seeing “Jaden Hossler” displayed on a screen behind him at the When We Were Young Festival in October 2023, rather than his usual stage name, brought the dissonance fully to the surface, he told Uproxx: “I don’t know if I would be here if I hadn’t been embarrassed to look at myself.” He reverted to jxdn by mid-2024, reframing the moniker as something bigger than himself: “Jxdn isn’t me; it’s us.” Streaming data shows “Chrome Hearted” performed reasonably well on its own terms, sitting at roughly 7.2 million total Spotify streams, a healthy mid-pack figure that does not support any narrative that the song was buried commercially.

Separate from the identity-crisis narrative that dominated his own retelling of this period, the single also became the subject of a smaller, fan-circle dispute. After “Chrome Hearted” was released in October 2023, Christian Gates posted publicly about similarities between the song and two tracks of his own, “Liar Liar” and “BLEED,” both of which he had already been performing live and teasing on TikTok for years before their eventual official releases in 2024 and 2025 respectively. A gossip account, since deleted, amplified the episode with a framing unfavorable to Christian Gates. The matter stayed within fan discussion on both sides and never reached mainstream music press.

The Roxy Night and a Fan-Circle Footnote

On February 26, 2022, Hossler attended a headline show by Christian Gates at the Roxy in West Hollywood with then-girlfriend Nessa Barrett. The bill that night also marked the live debut of 18-year-old Landon Barker, who opened with support from Slush Puppy. Mid-set, Landon brought Hossler out as a surprise guest, and Travis Barker sat in behind the drums for his son’s debut, later posting “Proud of you son.” Kourtney Kardashian and Alabama Barker were also in attendance. Hossler and Barrett watched the Christian Gates headline set from the crowd. “Liar Liar,” one of the songs later at the center of the 2023 “Chrome Hearted” discussion described above, was already being performed live by Christian Gates in that period, well before its official November 2024 release.

Personal Life and Mental Health

Hossler has been an unusually consistent public voice on depression, suicidal ideation, grief and substance use throughout his career. His 2020 single “Pray” addressed his own depression and suicidal thoughts directly and doubled as a fundraising vehicle for suicide-prevention causes; he called it, in an E! News interview, “the most genuine and impactful song I’ve created.” He has spoken openly about surviving two suicide attempts during his senior year of high school, and has framed his musical mission around the example of Juice WRLD: “People tell me that my music saved their lives, and I would never be like ‘oh, I bet,’ because Juice WRLD, literally, his music saved my life. That’s my goal, to do that for other people.”

The death of his best friend, Cooper Noriega, in June 2022 was a defining rupture. “I died when he died. I started taking a lot of drugs, and my goal was not to kill myself, but also not to keep myself alive,” he told Uproxx. He released the tribute EP 28 (Songs for Cooper) along with the singles “Beautiful Boy” and “Even in the Dark” on June 28, 2022, what would have been Noriega’s 20th birthday. By May 2023, while on tour in London, he described spiraling into a manic, dissociated state during a show at the Cumberland Hotel, flew home early, and checked into a 21-day treatment program in San Diego. Around the same time he publicly announced he was stepping back to seek mental-health treatment, citing “countless and excruciating lows” and saying, “I need a mental reset. I want to renew my mind.” His mother responded publicly with support, writing that she had “never been prouder” of him.

His substance-use history resurfaced repeatedly across this period. By 2024 he described more than a year of sobriety from “hard drugs, especially big pharma, and opiates, and barbiturates,” while drawing a careful distinction in his own account of the struggle: “I’m not an addict; I just suffer... I was more interested in the escape of it all, but it turned into this weird obsession.” His May 25, 2020 arrest alongside Sway House co-member Bryce Hall in Lee County, Texas, on a second-degree felony drug-possession charge and a marijuana possession charge during a widely publicized cross-country road trip, remains one of the defining scandals of his Sway House era; both were released the next day after posting a combined $11,500 bond.

Relationships

Hossler’s relationship with Nessa Barrett, running from 2021 to 2022, is the most publicly documented romantic chapter of his career. It began with their “La Di Die” collaboration, escalated to a brief secret engagement and cohabitation from January 2022, and ended in a publicly announced split on May 2, 2022 amid cheating accusations tied to their respective exes, Josh Richards and Mads Lewis. Their joint statement said the two “would like to heal privately.” Barrett has separately credited Hossler with supporting her sobriety during a period tied to her eating disorder, a detail she disclosed in a 2022 essay. Mads Lewis, Hossler’s pre-Nessa girlfriend, later publicly claimed he had been unfaithful throughout their relationship, adding another layer of scrutiny to the overlapping Sway House dating web of that era.

Streaming Numbers

Kworb’s Spotify tracking places jxdn’s catalog in the hundreds of millions of combined streams, led by his two biggest crossover hits.

Figures as of October 2025. Notably, “la di die” continues to post the highest daily stream count of his catalog even years after release, likely buoyed by Nessa Barrett’s continued visibility. Beyond the top ten, tracks like “Braindead,” “Lips,” “No Vanity,” “Sober” and the Illenium collaboration “Lifeline” each hold daily numbers in the low thousands, indicating a stable, engaged core fanbase rather than dependency on a single hit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is jxdn the same person as Jaden Hossler?

Yes. jxdn is Jaden Hossler’s stage name. He briefly performed under his given name, Jaden Hossler, from around September 2023 to mid-2024 during a pop-oriented rebrand tied to the single “Chrome Hearted,” then reverted to the jxdn identity with the 2024 album When The Music Stops.

How did Travis Barker discover him?

Hossler self-released his debut single, “Comatose,” in February 2020. Travis Barker reached out the day after it came out, and Barker signed him in May 2020 as the first artist on his new label, DTA Records, a joint venture with Elektra Records.

What is jxdn’s biggest song?

“Angels & Demons” (2020), his RIAA and Music Canada Gold-certified breakout single, remains his most-streamed track with over 202.9 million Spotify streams, closely followed by his feature on Nessa Barrett’s “La Di Die.”

What happened with “Chrome Hearted” and Christian Gates?

After Hossler released “Chrome Hearted” in October 2023, Christian Gates posted publicly about similarities between it and two songs of his own, “Liar Liar” and “BLEED,” both of which he had long been performing live and teasing on TikTok before their official releases. A gossip account, since deleted, amplified the episode unfavorably toward Christian Gates. It stayed within fan discussion and never reached mainstream press.

Was jxdn ever part of Sway House?

Yes. He joined the Sway House content collective in early 2020 after building a large TikTok following, but left in May 2020, the same month he signed with DTA Records, effectively trading the group-content model for a solo music career.

For more on the night Hossler was pulled onstage as a surprise guest, see Landon Barker’s live debut and Christian Gates’s Roxy headline history. His breakout duet partner and former partner Nessa Barrett has her own entry covering the “La Di Die” era and her Warner signing in more detail, and Travis Barker’s wiki covers DTA Records and his broader roster of pop-punk-era signings.