Is AJR's New Album Good?

January 10th, 2024

By Jude McCormack

After two years of waiting, AJR, an alternative/indie pop band responsible for multiple hits such as World’s Smallest Violin and Bang! all across their eighteen year career, has dropped their newest album titled The Maybe Man. This new release of 12 songs features AJR’s most personal songs yet. This article will take a deep dive into the meaning of multiple songs on the album and see if it is one of AJR’s best albums up-to-date, or if it is one of the worst albums there is. 

This is AJR's singer, Jack, depicted in their new animated music video tiled Maybe Man.

This is AJR's fourth album, OK ORCHESTRA.

This album, like other AJR albums, has an intricate meaning that it explores through different songs. This one follows a story continued after one of their past albums, OK ORCHESTRA. OK ORCHESTRA tells the story of someone coping with issues from the past, and once those issues are solved in the end of the album, it transitions into The Maybe Man they are struggling with finding out what their place in the world is right now. The album has many different songs with their own meaning, but all of them fit within the theme of finding yourself. 

The first song, titled Maybe Man, is essentially a foundation for the songs after it It sets the story of a man finding who he is. Each of the lines of this song have the same sort of formula, saying something that this man wishes he could be, then displaying an upside to his wish, and then displaying an overly negative downside of that same wish. This song was described by the songwriter as a ‘table of contents’, meaning that one or two lines of the song would relate to a different song on the album. For example, the second track of the album titled Touchy Feely Fool is based on the line,

‘I wish I was a stone,

So I couldn’t feel.’

We can confirm this, because the song attaches to the theme of wanting to feel nothing because of how poorly the singer is treated, saying that he wishes he would be better off feeling nothing at all, and would rather be a stick or a stone just so he could escape his life. This whole idea of taking ideas from the first song and turning it into a song of its own is adopted through every single song on the album.

AJR put a lot of work into writing this album for a while. The first part of the album was worked on since the making of OK ORCHESTRA. A demo version of the third track (Yes I'm A Mess) was originally a western-style song that was going to be featured on a deluxe edition of OK ORCHESTRA. In an interview with the brothers, Jack (one of the members of the band) revealed that the reason why the early version was cut (the demo version was named So What) and was not put on the album. The reason why actually was that they actually despised and hated it. Jack said that they originally were passionate about the song, but once showing the song to his girlfriend, she was not as fond as the brothers were about it. They decided to scrap it, and the song’s western-themed song was adopted by the track that would be later known as Yes I’m A Mess. 

Here is a clip of an interview with AJR from the Zach Sang Show showing the early version of Yes I'm A Mess.

This is an image of Gary Metzgar, AJR's dad, giving his sons a standing ovation at one of their concerts.

AJR’s personal life was hard for them at the time of writing the album. Their dad, Gary Metzger, was described by the brothers as “their absolute number-one fan”. Gary was suffering from lung cancer, and the condition of his health got so serious the band had to cancel many concerts to spend more time with Gary. In an interview with AJR, Jack talks about his dad by stating, “It turns out that there was an issue with his lung, which turned into cancer. And basically, the entire time we were writing the album, our father was getting sicker and sicker. And things got so bad so quickly that it became a lot more personal and emotional than we had planned on.” Sadly, in June of 2023, Gary passed away. The brothers posted on their social media page commemorating Gary’s life by stating, “Thank you, Dad. Couldn’t have asked for a better number one fan.” Gary’s death caused the band to release one of their songs that was scheduled to be released with the album early as a single, called God is Really Real. The song starts off with a single acoustic guitar, unlike the band’s normal method of intense sampled sounds, with the first line of the song being simply,

“My dad can’t get out of bed. 

There’s something in his lungs,

 I think that’s what the doctor said.”

In conclusion, AJR’s newest album does not disappoint. It has all of the components of a flawless album; unforgettable melodies, full of emotion, and just an overall feeling of organization. There are a total of 12 tracks, and obviously I didn’t mention them all, but that is for you to listen to and come to your own conclusion on if they are worth listening to or not. However, this album does have explicit lyrics featuring quite a few curse words, but it is worth the emotion-packed songs all within the album. “I think that AJR is a really good band,” says Jackson Wells, a sixth grader attending EJHS. “I used to listen to them when I was younger, and hearing their songs makes me super nostalgic.” Overall, this album is one of AJR’s most lyrically mature and emotional albums ever, and one of, if not their best album up to date.

Author Bio

Jude McCormack is an EJHS Middle Schooler who loves bowling, hanging out with friends, and writing interesting articles for the Colts Chronicles school newspaper!