The Click

Born and raised in New York City, brothers Adam, Jack and Ryan Met got their start over a decade ago, busking on the street to make money and writing songs in their parents’ living room. They released their first single “I’m Ready” in 2013 and their debut album Living Room in 2015 on a major label. After the initial success of “I’m Ready”, AJR found themselves labeled a “one-hit wonder”: though the song went platinum, no one was coming to their shows. So they set back to work, and created the album that would become The Click. As Jack would share on stage, early feedback before the album was released wasn’t positive: “Before we released The Click, we got a ton of reception from people in the music industry, and every single one of them said, ‘Guys, do not release this. This is too weird, and no one is going to get it.'”

Perhaps weird is exactly what the people want: lead single “Weak” was certified Platinum by the RIAA and “Sober Up” was certified Gold. “Sober Up” also reached number 1 on Billboard‘s Alternative Songs chart. On top of this, several shows on The Click Tour and The Click Tour Part 2, sold out well in advance. Released on their own label AJR Productions, The Click is one of the most interesting pop records in recent years, blending doowop harmonies reminiscent of The Beach Boys with electronic and dubstep effects – yet despite its creative approach, the songs are incredibly catchy and accessible. Lyrically, it sees the band figuring themselves out and experiencing growing pains we all experience, though there’s no angst here: throughout the album, they maintain a positive attitude and excitement about life in general. Even when performing slow and meaningful tracks like “The Good Part”, the brothers had a goofy dance style that you couldn’t help but love; Jack would later at a show note that “We’ve played probably a thousand shows and I used to think I made the weirdest dance moves… now you guys do”, and imitated an even more exaggerated version of his already goofy moves.

Following the successful release of The Click, AJR released a deluxe edition of the album this September. The deluxe edition features four additional tracks, three of which (“Burn The House Down”, “Normal”, and “Pretender”) were written while they were originally making the album, and a fourth, “Role Models”, came more recently. Discussing the choice to release a deluxe edition of the album, Ryan says, “We’re still working on our next album right now, and I think we live in a world where it’s really good to keep fans updated with what we’re doing and our artistry and stuff like that. There were a couple songs that didn’t make the cut for The Click that kind of finished the story and the narrative, and we wanted to get that out, finish the cycle of The Click, and then move on to the next album.”

“Pretender” was originally written for The Click as “kind of an acoustic guitar demo”; a “quasi-EDM” version was then produced, but neither felt quite right for the album. The song sat there for two years before Steve Aoki’s manager reached out to collaborate. “He upped the song to an entirely new level. He put Lil Yachty on it; we heard the final and we were like, ‘Wow, that’s a whole new song – sure,’” Ryan says. An acoustic version of “Pretender” is included on the deluxe edition, and Ryan reflects on the two versions of the song: “It’s funny, in the 60s, when the Beatles were making music, production and songwriting were very intertwined – ‘Love Me Do’ is just ‘Love Me Do’; there isn’t like, the acoustic version and this version, the production is the song. Now we live in this interesting world where a song and the production of a song can exist totally separate from each other.” Adam adds that “People are fans of different genres of music, in this day and age…. Somebody who’s a fan of the Steve Aoki version could also be a fan of the acoustic version or could want to hear what the song sounds like stripped down, so it gives people the opportunity to hear the song in so many different styles.”

Another new track on the album is “Role Models”, which sees Adam, Jack, and Ryan ask whether it’s possible to love the art if you hate the artist – something that, as longtime fans of artists like Kanye West and Louis C.K., they’ve had to personally confront. Ryan admits that “the discussion is hard, because it’s like – as soon as you find out that someone that made incredible art was kind of a shitty person, do you go back in time and look at all these 17th century artists that were also like, pedophiles, and say, ‘We can’t appreciate any of their art anymore?’” AJR don’t have the answers, but “if we can start some kind of discussion, then we’ve done our job.”

Like The Beach Boys – who the Met brothers have often cited as their biggest influence – AJR writes songs that hold up just as well on a single acoustic guitar or piano as they do with their full production. Adam believes that what makes these songs truly great is “the fact that everything, production-wise, can be stripped away and you can have one instrument and melody and lyrics and it still resonates with people.” He says they focus on emotional qualities in songs, and that “we tend to pick uninteresting and unimportant topics and try and turn them in to something that feel really emotional, and if you can do that through production and if you can do it just through melody and lyrics, I think you’ve really accomplished the job that you’ve set out to do.”

With the money they first made street performing, Adam, Jack, and Ryan bought an SM-58 microphone and began recording in their living room, starting with “Pro Tools and a mic and a big idea”, as they sing on Living Room’s “Big Idea”. On stage that evening, Jack would split the crowd in to three groups and lead them in creating the beat for “Bud Like You”; later, for “Burn The House Down”, the band gave the crowd a step-by-step taste of how they build and create their beats. In the years since they bought that first microphone, Ryan tells Substream the recording process has barely changed: “Honestly, I would say the only change is now we don’t record the vocals in the living room – we record it in a closet – so that’s our vocal booth now.”

For the most part, they use the same equipment they always have. So, what has changed? “The only thing that’s upgraded is our ideas; we’ve just become more excited about taking risks and trying to put trumpets where you don’t expect and violins – it’s like all the ABCs of music, but flipping them around and trying different things.” In “Come Hang Out”, AJR asks themselves, “Should I go for more clicks this year / or should I follow the click in my ear?”. It’s a question we all find ourselves facing: should we do what will be popular, or should we do what our heart tells us? But it’s exactly this experimenting and following what they believe to be true that’s allowed them to get where they are today.

With a crowd of people watching, AJR may not be able to sing “I’m Not Famous” much longer. Adam, Jack, and Ryan Met are normal, if not somewhat nerdy, guys from New York, and they’re figuring themselves out just like we all are. They may not have the answers, and in their own words, they’re “still turning out” – but that’s okay. If the past year and a half of their career is any clue, they’ll turn out fine.

The Click is the second studio album by AJR. It was released on June 9, 2017, by the band's label AJR Productions. The album was preceded by the five-track EP What Everyone's Thinking in September 2016, which was composed of songs that all appear on The Click. The album charted in the United States and Belgium.

The album has spawned three singles and two promotional singles. "Call My Dad" was released as the first promotional single in 2015, "I'm Not Famous" was released as the second promotional single in 2016, "Weak" was released as the first official single on October 20, 2016, "Drama" was released as the second single on May 11, 2017, and "Sober Up" was sent to Contemporary hit radio on March 20, 2018 as the album's third single.

Weak was the number one song from the album.

"I feel like there’s never been a moment in our career where something suddenly starts working. Everything we’ve ever done has been a very, very slow process. And "Weak" was a very random song, which just kind of just took off. We had this EP called What Everyone Is Thinking, and "Weak" was just one of five songs. Spotify gave [us] a shot, and it just slowly started to work like, 'Oh it went a thousand more. Oh, two thousand more.'" -Jack

"It's a scary thing to be really honest with people. It's terrifying to not put up a front and not act cool and the way society wants you to act," Ryan shares with Popdust over a recent phone call.

"It's been working for us. We've had a really great year. I would attribute that to...we stopped caring what people thought of us. We became exactly ourselves," he continues. "If you want to be a little kid while you're an adult, be a little kid. If you want to admit that you're weak, admit that. If you want to look back at yourself in a reflective way and find these TV shows that made you who you are, do that. Be exactly who you are."

The Click is saturated with looking back, being OK with not being OK and longing for the days of childhood, when the world seemed much larger and far less intimidating than it actually is. "Let's take it back and take in every moment. Who am I to tell me who I am?" they send up a rallying cry on "Netflix Trip," an unlikely emotional wallop. "Now, the finale is done, and I'm alone. I'm on a Netflix trip here on my phone, but who I am is in these episodes. So, don't you tell me it's just a show," they then surmise, a poignant and indispensable morsel. Then, they pay homage to blustering summer camps, crackling fires and camaraderie with "Bud Like You," a hip-hop-intoned, drunken flicker which pushes the envelope of their maturity and transition into full-on adulthood. "It's been two years from the first song we wrote on this album to the last. It's funny to think about the roller coaster that we've gone through," says Ryan. "The whole idea behind the album is we wanted to really work on lyrics."

While Living Room served as a testing ground to present their funky and fresh production style, the click aims for far more depth. "We thought about lyrics and how to write the most personal, honest, blatant, almost unpoetic lyric we could possible write. I remember when we heard 'I Took a Pill in Ibiza' by Mike Posner, we though 'oh my god, what an amazing lyric.' In the most unpoetic way possible, he is saying exactly what happened and exactly what he felt. He doesn't disguise anything to make it politically correct or poetic. We thought 'let's just make an album of that, let's go even further than him and make something that is really risky and include a lot of topics no one talks about,'" Ryan details.

How did your vision (sound, feel, stories) evolve as you worked on this album?

Adam: Some of our favorite bands, like fun., when they start an album, they know exactly what the concept is going to be and know "hey, this is going to be track one and I know how track seven fits into the story." That wasn't really our process at all. We just started by writing a lot of honest songs. We weren't really sure what we wanted to say. It took those two years of writing in order to figure out what that was. It ended up being a lot of songs about growing up and being in your 20s and being in college and trying to figure out when is the right time to grow up--how can we stay young in this world where we're surrounded by adults who want us to grow up and get real jobs. How can we stay doing what we love?

That was a major theme we realized that with every song we wrote had hints of. That is best exemplified in "Come Hang Out," and it has the lyric "should I go for more clicks this year or should I follow the click in my ear." As soon as we wrote that, it really resonated with us and the fans in a really profound way. The idea behind that line is "should I go for more YouTube clicks and get instantly famous or should I do what I really want to do and be who I am." We realized "yeah, the album has to be called 'The Click' and we need to surround the album with metronome and the idea of following your own path."

What did you learn about yourself in this process?

Jack: As we write more songs about growing up, I feel like one of the best highs you can get in life is being brought back to the place you were as a little kid. We were walking past the old playground the other day that we used to go to. That moment, of "oh my god, I want to go back there," is the greatest feeling in the world. If we can communicate that through music, it would have been such a feat for us. We just learned we really want to stay young and keep a young mindset.

Which song do you connect to the most?

Jack: I think I connect with "Come Hang Out" the most. It's definitely the most personal song. It's directly about our story. There's a line in there, "I can't complain, I won't be mourning 'cause I skipped on prom for Elvis Duran in the Morning." He's the biggest DJ in New York City, and I actually skipped prom because we had to go to an event with him. It's that kind of song that's very specific to a time in our life--we gave up having a real childhood and real college years, for the music.

Ryan: "Netflix Trip" is the one I connect to the most. It's a song about 'The Office,' the TV show. That was the first song we wrote for this album, actually, two years ago. We name checked a lot of things and tried to go places with the music that hadn't been done. We're enormous fans of the show and have been for like 10 years. The song is basically tracing different moments in my life--like my eighth grade graduation and when my grandpa died--and equating what season I was on in that moment in my life and how the show molded me.

Adam: The song, for me, is "Three-Thirty." The generation we are growing up in is so schizophrenic in its likes and dislikes, with social media and having content thrown in our face so much. Even music, people are constantly putting out music. We have so many things we can listen to. The song is called "Three-Thirty," first because it's three minutes and 30 seconds long, and that's the optimal time that radio wants you to have a song. But also, the song changes so many times throughout. It wants to keep up with that schizophrenic idea of this generation. It goes from saying something very specific to a very general chorus to an EDM-style drop and untraditional, non-chorus at the end, talking about Ed Sheeran writing our songs, and if he writes our songs, will we finally top the charts? The goal was to throw as many different concepts into that song to replicate that idea.