Jack Fabian Peñate was born in Blackheath, a fairly posh London suburb, on September 9, 1984. While still in his teens, Peñate formed a band called Jack's Basement, which also featured his schoolmate Felix White, later lead guitarist for neo-Brit-pop act the Maccabees. When that group broke up as its members went off to different universities, he began a solo career, backed by bassist Joel Porterand drummer Alex Robins. Peñate signed with the Young Turks label and released his debut single, "Second, Minute or Hour”, in the fall of 2006. The single's favorable buzz allowed Peñate to jump to the larger indie XL Recordings for 2007's Matinee and 2009's Be the One.
The South Londoner's music is slick, radio-ready pop, but its heart is rooted a more soulful end of '80s pop, along the lines of the Style Council.
'Have I Been A Fool' is one of Jack’s tracks that cleverly mixes a bittersweet story with lyrics such as "I made a meal of it and stumbled, we both knew that my cookie crumbled / I led you on, leading's wrong" with an impossibly lively melody which can somewhat mislead the listeners to add this song to their shelves of “Happy Songs Compilation” and become unhappy aftrerwards by listening to this and being reminded of a bitter past.
This song was even one of the soundtracks in the movie “500 Days of Summer” of which I can say is really appropriate given the whole romantic/comedy’s plot wherein a boy meets girl but the girl is a cynic and does not want to get into a serious relationship and the boy on the other hand is such a romantic. In the end, their “thing” didn’t work out well as Summer is unable to feel the way Tom feels. Although she is honest in warning Tom that she is not looking for something serious, Tom still tried to disprove her cynicism but to no avail. They had fun during the days they were “together”. They have found solace in each other’s company but Summer does not feel that Tom was the one so they go separate ways leaving Tom depressed and one day, he got invited to Summer’s party: her engagement party to a man who made Summer feel what Tom feels about him. Isn’t that sad? I cried during watching the movie. But putting that aside, I was impressed by the soundtracks used in the film so I looked them up and ta-da! I was hooked to this one.
So listen to this song to mask your bitterness with jaunty melodies when the truth is love has cast a jaundice kind of spell in you and yeah, think from time to time to ask yourself if you have been a fool too.
