A Sunset in New Jersey That Lasts Longer Than This Blog Title
#72 In 2003 song titles began to be mini absurdist poems and I was hitting puberty, 20 years later both those things have come and gone
This Charming Man
One of my favorite classic songs, and one that is almost always covered well by whoever does the cover.
Faster paced and a little more underground punk sounding. I imagine the live version of this getting a significant turn out in the pit and a lot of singing along. Turns the light body and head nod/bop into a more aggressive jump around and shouting the chorus. It’s also not an energy often seen from Death Cab in later albums. What I would consider their first mainstream album, Transatlanticism, would come out the year later in 2003. Plans, the REALLY BIG one would come out in 2005.
Many of you, if not all, will remember the grip that “I will follow you into the dark” and “Soul Meets Body” had on the world when it came out.
I stumbled across the band Stars. Their rendition is unique but not something I’d say I like that much, it’s kind of relaxing though, as are the few songs by them that I listened to after. However, what caught my eye in exploring who they are was their (now) current bio/album description on Spotify.
“For bandmates…Capelton Hill is a place where things don’t change. The same scrappy chairs sit on the porch year after tear, the same ancient stove haunts the kitchen, and old wood boards grow pale under the sun, but around these things, people grow and age: the years march on, unforgiving, and remind us that like our parents and grandparents, we too will no longer exist here. The impossibly vivid explosions of emotion we feel for these places, which seem like some cosmic, universal force, will disappear. The new record from Stars is about this place, these relationships, the inevitable decay of them all, and the joy and life that happens in between.”
In typing this I found that my left hand carries the main burden in typing. It’s not even close to evenly distributed. However, if that’s the result of poor form or the poor design of the QWERTY system, I do not know.
(I really like their most popular song titled Your Ex-Lover Is Dead… and the album cover. Also, Dead Hearts.
Braid
This version is pretty similar to the original but a little faster paced like the Death Cab one. Braid is a band I remember from exploring the rabbit hole of emo influences in high school.
Looks like they’re still pretty active touring and are playing one of my favorite festivals, “Riot Fest” which I went to a few years back in Chicago. They appear to have re-released their famous album (I think) 25 years ago, it’s called Frame & Canvas. It is mostly better than their This Charming Man cover.
In reviewing their discography I also found that they released a song in 2000 called “Grand Theft Autumn” which I know as a Fall Out Boy song (Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy) that came out in 2003…Curious. They aren’t similar.
Low and behold, the internet already knew this. “The title of the song was taken, without permission, from a Braid song, and subsequently, the name of the record label started by Braid members, Roy Ewing and Todd Bell.”
(This is where the fun really starts)
My last comment here is that I miss the era of overly long song titles that have nothing to do with the song. Roughly 2000-2010, though I think it slowly caught on and really became common around 2003 and then spread in the late 2000s to the next gen bands. Think Panic! At The Disco’s “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out” that used this strategy for almost every single song as they appeared virtually overnight and captured the mood of 2005 with their amazing dance pop something or other. In my opinion, they captured the year brilliantly and then never produced anything really that interesting again though they went on to become enormous so, what do I know…
I spent a good 10 minutes looking for examples before 2003 and I couldn’t find any. (Now I really want to trace down the first major album in this scene that started the trend. Seriously, there are several bands, like Thursday who I thought might be the one to kick it off. 2002 album, serious titles, 2003, boom, a track titled “This Song Brought to You by a Falling Bomb”.
Ok, one main culprit, but more research may find earlier versions. There is one track that fits this trend on the HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL AND APTLY TITLED “I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love”. That album title itself may have done the trick. Anyways, My Chemical Romance, starting their influential run years before Black Parade which turned them into a pop band.
(Aside: This is one of my favorite songs of theirs.)
The other major possibility is Taking Back Sunday’s “Tell All Your Friends” which is also a 2002 album that has a few strange and long titles. Both of these bands and albums would were monumental in the genre and would have inspired kids to come up with their own quirky titles. Though TBS titles are less compelling than My Chemical Romance’s for this argument.
If we dig deep enough, it could be from Saves The Day in 1999.
Anyway it’s pretty clear that this came out of New Jersey (and kind of New York) around 2000. If you’re interested in this time period that really changed the music scene for people my age’s teenage years, I recommend reading this book chronicling the time coming up. Hits the time right before all of my favorite teenage bands were coming up and would have directly impacted them and led them down the paths that they chose.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Brunswick-Jersey-Goodbye-Basements/dp/0967728746
One outlier I did find is from the aforementioned Death Cab for Cutie, dabbled as well but not on too many tracks. But this was 1998 when they had a song title parodying the classic Helen of Troy description.
A random list of some of my favorites, with links, obvio.
You may be familiar with BMTH since they’re now the biggest mainstream hard rock group but they had a decent come up as one of the deathcore darlings.
This one is particularly fun because despite having changed their name to Fear Before, they used to be Fear Before the March of Flames which is a great mouthful of a name.
A lot of these groups were more underground and took a lot of effort to get into since they were much more “post-hardcore” and noisy than the intro-level screamo, pop -punk, and metalcore that was much more melodic and easy to get into. Still, very fun.
Should we add a little about tech too?
This article about Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) was shared amongst my team at work. It’s a good profile and summary of what’s going on these days and a window into the world I am in when I’m not writing to you here.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90931084/satya-nadella-microsoft-ai-frontrunner
“I’m not interested in when [AI] works,” says chief scientist Teevan. “I’m like, ‘Show me when it doesn’t work.’ And Satya is very much in that kind of mindset: ‘Let’s find the cases where it breaks and how we’re learning from that.’”
I think this is broadly applicable to life in general but I don’t want to try and preach to you on how to improve life or anything. I think trying to apply this thinking to something you’re working on would be a useful exercise, even if you come away with completely opposite views. Give it a shot. I think I will reflect on this re: my writing, which I am trying to improve and expand beyond stream of consciousness musings.
Beating the dead horse that is note taking and the art of making aesthetic journals
Simply put, there is nothing elegant about the notes, digital or on paper. I see these artists and writers with highly visual, colorful notebooks, and I can’t even begin to comprehend how they do it. For one I keep my notebooks separate and generally the drawing and writing don’t mix. I’m trying to consolidate, not only to keep up with the aesthetic Joneses, but also to not have to search multiple notebooks to find things when it’s more or less already sorted chronologically in my brain. In the long run it might make it easier to store and reference. I’m working on it.
Additionally, I’ve gotten increasingly impressed and inspired by different home work spaces — desks, dens, warehouses, etc.. I’m not in a position to create anything like this as I am renting and not likely to stay anywhere long-term. Yet, the desire still exists. I’ll get there.
Here are some examples:
This ends my notebook envy….and so it goes.
Have I droned on too long? Oh well, this is how I like to enjoy my birthday morning. Writing for all you while consuming dangerous levels of caffeine. Enjoy your coming year ahead, may the next 365 days be creative and adventurous. Wish to me and to you. January 1st is pretty arbitrary anyways.
Lastly, a note by Chat-GPT: I asked if Chat GPT knew any more than I did re: song titles. I got this response. In case anyone was curious. (unedited)
“The trend of long, verbose song titles, particularly in the emo, post-hardcore, and pop-punk genres, became especially popular in the early to mid-2000s. While it's challenging to pinpoint the exact origin, there are a few notable bands and factors worth mentioning:
Pre-2000 Influences: While it became a notable trend in the 2000s, bands from previous decades sometimes utilized long and descriptive song titles. For example, bands like The Smiths in the 1980s had tracks like "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want."
Saves The Day: As you mentioned, one of the potential earliest popularizers in the scene might be Saves The Day with their late '90s releases. They had a penchant for longer titles, though not always as verbose as later bands.
Dashboard Confessional: Chris Carrabba's project in the early 2000s brought emo to the mainstream. Some of his song titles, like "The Sharp Hint of New Tears" and "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most," might've played a part in setting the trend.
Emo and Pop-Punk Boom: The early 2000s saw a massive surge in popularity for the emo and pop-punk genres, leading to a wave of bands that would adopt and perpetuate the long-title trend. Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and Cute Is What We Aim For all regularly utilized long and sometimes cheeky song titles.
Desire to Stand Out: With the oversaturation of the market, bands might have used long and unique song titles as a method to differentiate themselves from others, especially in a pre-streaming era where song titles on mix CDs or MySpace playlists could immediately catch an eye.
Narrative and Emotion: The long titles often seemed to encapsulate the emotion or story of the song more vividly than a shorter title might, fitting the often raw and narrative-driven lyrics of emo and post-hardcore songs.
Post-Hardcore and Screamo: Bands like At The Drive-In, Fear Before (previously known as Fear Before The March of Flames), and others in the post-hardcore scene also had verbose song titles, which further influenced the trend.
While it's difficult to point to one singular origin, it's clear that a combination of the cultural moment, genre characteristics, and influential bands coming up at the same time led to the proliferation of the long song title trend in the 2000s.”