Jimmy Eat World Bleed American

Jimmy Eat World 'Bleed American'

By Christopher Gray, Fri., Sept. 6, 2002

Jimmy Eat World Bleed American Songs

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Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the band decided to re-issue the album as Jimmy Eat World out of concern that the title Bleed American might be misinterpreted. Jimmy Eat World is an US alternative rock band from Mesa, Arizona, formed in 1993. Jimmy Eat World is Jim Adkins, Rick Burch, Zach Lind and Tom Linton.

This article is a year overdue.

Last July, an album slipped into record stores so anonymously one would never have guessed it was issued by mega-label DreamWorks. Actually, one would never have guessed the band was even on a major label, considering they'd already recorded two albums for Capitol that had largely gone nowhere.

Through no fault of the band, Mesa, Ariz., four-piece Jimmy Eat World, this latest album nearly went nowhere as well. Jimmy Eat World felt the repercussions of 9/11 more acutely than a lot of bands, and not just because they wound up canceling a slew of tour dates, including a stop at Emo's.

The terrorist attacks, or more accurately, the climate of suspicion and hyper-patriotism brought on by the attacks, effectively pulled the rug out from under the album's lead single. Like 'Tuesday's Gone,' 'Leaving on a Jet Plane,' and thousands of others, the song was deemed inappropriate for America's suddenly sensitive ears. Not because it was a stinging indictment of cultural complacency or even because it might be advocating self-medication both legal and illegal, but because it, like the album, had the spectacularly ill-timed misfortune to be titled 'Bleed American.'

But Jimmy Eat World is hardly the second coming of Rage Against the Machine. Even 'Bleed American' lyrical barbs like 'I'm not crazy 'cause I take the right pills' stem from singer Jim Adkins' experiences with panic disorder while touring in support of the band's previous album, 1999's earth-toned Clarity. None of the other 10 songs on the album, its title adjusted to simply Jimmy Eat World, could be considered ripped from the headlines.

And yet the album continues to hang around the middle of Billboard's charts, and has in fact gone platinum. The reason is as simple as its song structures: this unassuming, tune-filled album has effortlessly plugged into the Zeitgeist in a way few recent recordings have. Earlier this year, reviewing their appearance with Green Day and Blink-182 in Dallas as part of the Pop Disaster tour, SPIN called Jimmy Eat World 'the soundtrack to everyone's after-school special.' There's more truth in that flip statement than the writer probably intended.

Jimmy Eat World's prevailing themes are things people don't like to talk (or even think) about: emotional indifference, missed personal connections, absent friends and loved ones, moral dilemmas, the basic struggle to get through the day without going to pieces. Two representative refrains are 'You'll change your mind come Monday, and take your steps away from me' ('Cautioners') and 'Are you listening? Sing it back' ('Sweetness').

Time and again, Jimmy Eat World relies on music to prevent these serious subjects from becoming heavy-handed. But it's not necessarily just the music they make on their instruments, though their melodic gifts rival those of recent tourmates Weezer. Instead, it's the music they hear in their heads or on the radio, which frequently resurfaces in their songs. 'A Praise Chorus' appropriates parts of Tommy James' 'Crimson & Clover' and Madness' 'Our House' to cast a night on the town as a call to arms: 'I'm on my feet, I'm on the floor, I'm good to go. All I need is just to hear a song I know.'

This is how Adkins answers the questions posed in the song's beginning: 'Are you gonna spend your life wondering, standing in the back, looking around?' Similarly, in 'The Authority Song,' he hopes unlocking the mystery of 'what the jukebox knows' will give him the confidence to ask a girl to dance, all the time wondering, 'I don't seem obvious, do I?'

The band also gets the most out of the timeless pop strategy of masking broken hearts in upbeat tempos. If anything, it works too well: The almost voyeuristic bedroom conversation 'Get It Faster' ('I'm going out, I don't care if you're angry') follows the singer strand by strand to the end of his rope before boiling over into a torrential chorus -- as if he could drown out his tears by rocking hard enough.

The razorlike guitars of Adkins and lead guitarist Tom Linton and unflinching rhythm section of bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind ratchet up the tension in the already fraught 'Sweetness' to code-red levels, while the sunny harmonies of 'If You Don't, Don't' illuminates the tragic confusion felt by lovers who can't seem to stay on the same page. Although it's supposedly a street name for cocaine, a phrase from 'Bleed American' neatly encapsulates this idea of sweet sing-along melodies papering over the hard, sticky truths beneath: 'Sugar on the asphalt.'

But there are times when a sweet melody is just a sweet melody, and there are songs on Jimmy Eat World that don't get any sweeter, i.e., the gossamer elegy 'Hear You Me.' Credited with helping bring the tunefully intense punk-rock offshoot known as 'emo' to fruition with their two Capitol albums, Clarity and 1996's angular Static Prevails, on Jimmy Eat World the band has done something even more impressive: given rock & roll a much-needed shot in the arm, at least as much as better-hyped bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Hives. They've done this by daring to write about something besides bitter breakups and lack of parental affection, and just as importantly, by not overthinking.

Therein lies the secret behind Jimmy Eat World's piéce de resistance, the three minutes of up-with-people overdrive known as 'The Middle.' Songs just don't come any more straightforward than Adkins exhorting his audience to 'live right now' and 'just be yourself.' Even if it's not be the best song on the album (my money's on 'The Authority Song' or 'If You Don't, Don't'), it's the best song on radio this year, climbing all the way to No. 5 on Billboard's R&B-fogged Hot 100 and earning the band a date with Cameron Diaz on Saturday Night Live.

A happy ending for a group too talented to remain in small-club obscurity, certainly, but more than that, a reminder that music doesn't have to be cryptic or difficult or esoteric to have real meaning. Sometimes four chords and a message do just fine.

As you get closer to 30, you start to notice things, especially if you've been in any way involved with the music business. You notice that, although it's lasted this long, the adolescence you thought was never-ending can't last much longer. As much as our culture worships youth and idolizes the young, your time under the incubator lamp is almost up. You wonder how much longer you can keep going to club shows without the 19-year-olds snickering behind your back -- too late -- and how much longer you can keep dodging avatars of responsibility like a mortgage, a family, a retirement plan. It's a scary time.

'I want to be so much more than this,' Adkins sings on Jimmy Eat World's closing track, 'My Sundown.' This time, his tenor is not the plaintive, throbbing-vein howl of 'Bleed American' or 'The Middle' or 'Sweetness.' It's muted, pensive, resigned -- the voice of someone realizing his youthful dreams are just that, dreams, and are likely to stay that way. The song and album end on a fadeout, Adkins' longing to be more than this intertwined with the admonition 'no one cares.'

Since forming just out of high school in 1994 and enduring such major-label indignities as a proposed video shoot in a convenience store parking lot, Jimmy Eat World may have finally realized their dreams. But the jury's still out on the rest of us. That's why we need songs telling us everything will be all right. But even more than that, that's why we need songs that make us turn up the radio as loud as it will go and bang our hand on the steering wheel until it leaves a bruise -- because feeling something, even pain, is better than feeling nothing at all.

19 years ago today, Jimmy Eat World released an album that would not only take the scene but the mainstream by storm. We look back on its successes and how it continues to be as important today as it has ever been.

Albums come in all shapes and sizes. There are big albums and little albums. There are really long albums and there are incredibly short albums. There are albums that arrive with incredible fanfare and there are albums that make an understated and low-key entrance. There are albums that hit you in the gut the first time that you hear them and there are albums that creep up your spine and devour you over a long period of time. Then there are the albums that have such an influence on all those who hear it that they become the stuff of legends.

‘Bleed American’ by Jimmy Eat World is one such album.

Released in the summer of 2001, ‘Bleed American’ would be the 4th record released by the Arizona natives. Following on from ‘99’s now iconic ‘Clarity’, it would become known as the moment that saw Jimmy leapt from emo sweethearts to genuine world-beaters. Much more commercially accessible than their previous output yet still possessing the same intricate level of beautiful songwriting and emotional outpouring that had planted them firmly in the hearts of thousands previously, it would send them to places that they had never been before. Certified platinum in the USA and Canada and silver in the UK, the lines between scene and mainstream acceptance were more blurred than ever before.

Jimmy Eat World Bleed American Vinyl

The album features four singles, each one a modern classic in its own right. First is the deliriously frantic title track with its bludgeoning riff and overpoweringly sultry undertones. Then there's ‘The Middle’, an anthem for every outcast looking for a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Following that is ‘Sweetness’ with a hook that sticks to you like bubblegum in your hair and a dizzying instrumental display that could get even the most stubborn of toes tapping. And finally ‘A Praise Chorus’, a song that manages to demonstrate all the best things about emo, pop-punk and rock music in 3 beautifully considered minutes. All four very different and all four held in the highest regard, they are now considered blueprints of alternative music songwriting. Basically if you're in a band and you're not aiming to emulate the same energy as these tunes, you're doing it wrong.
Then you have the familiar heartbreak of ‘You Hear Me’, the careful pitter patter of ‘Cautioners’, the beautifully tranquil ‘If You Don’t, Don’t’, the jaunty ‘The Authority Song’, the underlying funkiness of ‘My House’ and the tear stained delicacy of closer ‘My Sundown’. Every song serving as a snapshot of a different set of feelings. Every song a 3-chord masterpiece in its own unique way. Every song meaning absolutely everything to somebody somewhere in the world. This is the sort of legacy that can only come with the most incredible level of care, consideration and creativity.
When a band create an album they don’t really know what sort of reaction it is going to get. Nobody can predict how much their art is going to affect the lives of others, no matter how much they try and convince you of the fact. Yet Jimmy Eat World could never have thought just how much ‘Bleed American’ would do for them. Placing them firmly in the hearts and minds of not just those already familiar but the wider world as wel and tapping into corners of the musical landscape that they could only have dreamed of touching previously, you wonder how many bands simply wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the risks that the band took back in 2001. From Neck Deep to State Champs, Seaway to As It Is, there is a little bit of Jimmy Eat World sprinkled in all of their DNA. If you go to a Jimmy Eat World show you will see as many fans of pop-punk and hardcore or you do radio rock and pop. There are as many people who will have heard these songs for the first time blaring out of tannoys at football matches as there are staring lovingly at the artwork as the album spins round on their record player. From every band that has been stood in their garage brainstorming ideas with ‘Sweetness’ playing in the background to every person hearing ‘The Middle’ blasting out of their car radio and being inspired to look deeper into the band and emo’s rich and illustrious back catalogue, ‘Bleed American’ has played a part. The sheer spectrum of admiration that this one record has conjured is more than most bands will garner in their whole career.
Nostalgia has become a big part of how we process music in the modern climate. Remembering the things that helped us become the people we are today and celebrating them is something that we all do on a near daily basis. Yet ‘Bleed American’ is an example of an album that continues to affect people in the exact same way today as it did when it first came out. Despite now being old enough to go and see ‘Midsommar’ on its own at the cinema, the album still has the power to influence, inspire and enamor as it did back when it first the shelves. Every song still as piercing and personal, every note still as fresh as when it was first played, every lyric still poetic, vulnerable and truly human, these 11 songs will forever be timeless and serve as the starting place for people’s musical blossoming until the world stops turning.
Music is at its very best when it can bring us all together and with albums like ‘Bleed American’ that sentiment is a much easier reality.