🎵 How Good Are They Really 🎵 Jimmy Eat World

Jimmy Eat World are not named after the lead singer Jim Adkins

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Why not just like what you like and get over /give a fuck about genres/labels etc :wink:

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I came here to post how very good Surviving is. It was one of my favourite albums of 2019. And actually, lyrically, it’s very 2020/21 relevant!

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i’m not sure i know any tracks by this band. i will check em out though.

Total 5 for me.

Can’t fully explain why this band means so much to me, but they do. First got into them via their MySpace - must have been c2005, when I hated anything emo-based, but they had a cover of Low’s “If You Were Born Today” on there, which I kept going back to. Not sure why I was so sniffy about emo, but the me 16 years ago was a bit of a dick.

From there, I started listening to the “Stay On My Side Tonight” EP, which I think must have been a post-Futures release, and I go back to occasionally - the first track in particular is top.

Then stole a copy of the Bleed American album, which is just a pop joy. So much fun, so many bangers on there, and that run of the first 5-6 tracks is killer. I think I then got Futures, and then Clarity. And for me, Clarity is one of the only examples where my favourite record by a band isn’t the first one I heard. Futures is amazing, but I did honestly forget it existed for a few years. Clarity is a classic, one I go back to regularly, and stands up for me. As others have mentioned, Goodbye Sky Harbour is worth spinning, but For Me This is Heaven is something that goes right through me every time.

I used to do a lot of work in the US, and it involved a lot of driving alone, so I had a copy of Clarity on CD, and used to blast it and sing it at the top of my voice. Must have looked like a right tit, but man that used to make the roads fly by.

Chase This Light is probably the last album of theirs that I got and loved - it’s got some brilliant tunes on, in particular Big Casino and Dizzy. Diminishing returns for me after that, but the title track of Invented is amazing, and worth digging out. I’m glad they’re still going though, and they always look like they’re having a brilliant time playing when they’re on Glasto or Reading mid-afternoon on the telly. They seem like a GBOL, and I do hope that they are.

I’ve only ever seen them once, Brixton Academy when they toured Invented in 2010. Went not really expecting much (not sure why), but was genuinely floored by the amount of joy involved in that gig. The band were loving it, the crowd were singing back every word, they put in all the hits, and generally didn’t fuck around. I go to a lot of gigs and I rarely if ever have been so happy and uplifted after a concert.

So yeah, 5, because they’ve got some total bangers, have made some classic albums, are fab live, and opened the door for me to find a lot of the stuff I listen to most nowadays.

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this playlist is GREAT, followed

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Once in school someone asked me if I could play “the difficult bit” in The Middle on bass and to this day I don’t know if they meant this bit

or maybe this bit

or perhaps

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Back at the turn of the century I was always more into Sunny Day and Mineral which I guess I found more of a lofi savoury to Jimmy’s slightly more polished sweet. But nonetheless there were some great songs on those early albums and I think they’ve been such a massive influence on a whole lotta emo revival bands that I love today, so could never mark them low.

I’ve got to give them a 5. Massive band for me at one stage. They are brilliant live and really know how to write melodic, earworm songs.

Clarity/ Bleed American/ Futures is their pinnacle - three brilliant albums of emo-pop. Clarity was an absolute revelation when I first heard it.

Slight decline in recent years but there are great songs on their later albums too.

Like this one :heart_eyes::

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Also deserve huge praise for making this batshit crazy video:

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Were fun when I was 17, can’t say I’ve thought about them since. 3 for the good times.

Lots of high scores for Jimmy Eat World - could they sneak into that coveted number one slot?

Inevitably going to be in the 3.4 to 3.7 pack.

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Clarity 1000000%

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You should listen to clarity instead it’s so much better

It is interesting to me that emo - which was a largely derided genre for a long time - has undergone something of a cultural and critical re-evaluation in recent years.

Wonder why that is?

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It was never largely derided, it was more that mainstream pop punk bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic, MCR etc were classed as emo and it’s that which received the backlash. Bands which were ‘actually’ emo like Mineral, American Football have always been quite well thought of

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Just put Clarity on, why is Sweetness tagged onto the end?

Yeah lol JEW and ATD-I both came from the Midwest Emo scene (despite both coming from the south) and are the reason it exploded as an entire sub-gebre/culture

Early bonus version, it was written during that era but didn’t find a place for it so it went to the next album. Probably a good call tbf

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