I’ve been resisting the impulse to join the fray of year’s end postings: favorite this, worst that-lists from the past year. So I’ve settled on a single contribution.
2014 has been a year of serious pain for me and those closest to me. My baby sister has breast cancer. She’s been through surgery and is currently in the throes of chemotherapy. Two weeks ago I baptized the still born baby of some dear friends. I’m watching several other friends and loved ones wade through hell right now. 2014 has been one of the most difficult seasons of life I’ve known. Over the course of the past year I have taken my consolation and inspiration anywhere I could find it. There were days that I really needed a song like this, and the chance for me to sing (often w/my whole family), “I Wanna Get Better,” at the top of our lungs.
Jack Antonoff, guitar player and part of the creative force behind the band fun. wrote “I Wanna Get Better” for his part-time gig, fronting the band Bleachers. Antonoff is one of those rare pop stars that you want to root for, a nerdy-cool, quirky artist who despite his rare success, seems to stay somewhat grounded. In a 2014 interview for Vulture, Antonoff took the reporter to his childhood home in Jersey, which was brave, considering they were immediately wading through Star Wars memorabilia (Antonoff had a Star Wars-themed bar mitzvah), that was displayed with more care than the gold/platinum records that were littering the floor of his childhood bedroom. Antonoff admitted that he had not technically moved out of his parents house until a little over a year ago. “I don’t know where to put this shit,” he said.
His band, fun., had already won a Grammy Award for “We Are Young” (song of the year), and sold over 5 million copies by the time the 28 year old musician found a place of his own. His first move was into an Upper West Side apartment with his sister (a talented New York fashion designer). A short time later he moved into a place in Brooklyn Heights with his girlfriend (Girls creator Lena Dunham). The Star Wars gear and concert memorabilia remained in place at his parents’ house along with the posters on the wall dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, and the concert tickets taped to the windows.
Antonoff’s family says this is all evidence of the musician’s desire to keep things the same despite the fact he’s now part of not one, but two incredibly successful bands. “He has this thing he does” his sister says, “‘I didn’t bring my wallet’ …I think he just values things staying the same. He’s not cheap; he’s actually very generous. He’ll take you somewhere and fly you first class. But he’ll still never pay for the bagels.”
With co-writes on fun.’s biggest hits, several Taylor Swift songs, Sara Bareilles’s “Brave,” and more in the works, it seems unlikely that his first release with his own band could buck the odds to climb to #1 (Billboard Hot 100), but it did. I mention this not because I’m enamored with his success. I’m enamored with his humility. Even the fact that he named the band Bleachers, and not The Jack Antonoff Experience is pretty amazing to me.
“I Wanna Get Better” is a career song for an artists with more than a few career songs already to his credit. In an interview with USA Today Antonoff talked about the song’s theme: “There was 9/11, my sister died (of brain cancer in 2002 at age 13) and my cousin died in the Iraq War (in 2003)… So a lot happened in a short span of time. It was an end to an age of innocence. I had PTSD and rarely left the house, and I disassociated from everyone for a long time. This album is about that and finding a way to move on, without leaving it behind.”
Maybe it’s his personality. Maybe it’s the fact that he wrote much of the album in his sister’s old bedroom, often sleeping on the floor, or that he says the album was inspired by 80’s John Hughes films and the epic songs that accompanied them, but for some reason the song speaks to me. My hunch is that I’m rooting as much for the artist as the song.
In a punk-rock move, Antonoff posted the above video on youtube in which he walks his people (artists & musicians), step by step through the writing and recording of the track, revealing his samples one by one, giving the narrative behind each of them. One stem was gleaned from a voicemail left on his phone by a friend while he was in Malaysia. “I won’t tell you who it is, because she doesn’t even know.” At the end of the explanation (which is fascinating by the way; I produced somewhere around 25 full length albums in my time, and Antonoff’s creative process is as random and ingenious as I’ve witnessed), he says, “What would make me happy is if you guys could take all these stems (sounds)… and just f-it up and make your own version of the song.”
The music video for “I Wanna Get Better” is directed by Lena Dunham, and it’s semi-innappropriate at times, but then so is cancer, divorce, depression, death, addiction, and the rest of the bull-crap the people I love are sifting through right now. So you can watch it at the link below. Cheers to Jack Antonoff. Here’s hoping we all can get a little bit better in 2015.
I Wanna Get Better Lyrics:
VERSE ONE: Hey I hear a voice of the preacher from the back room / Calling my name and I follow just to find you / I trace the faith to a broken down television / And put on the weather / And I’ve trained myself to give up on the past ‘Cause / I froze in time between hearses and caskets / Lost control when I panicked at the acid test / I wanna get better / While my friends were getting high And chasing girls / down parkway lines I was losing my mind / Because the love, the love, the love, the love The love that I gave / wasted on a nice face / In a blaze of fear I put a helmet on helmet / Counting seconds through the night And got carried away / So now I’m standing on the overpass Screaming at the cars hey! CHORUS I wanna get better (I didn’t know I was lonely ‘Till I saw your face) I wanna get better, better, better, better / I wanna get better (I didn’t know I was broken ‘Till I wanted to change) I wanna get better, better, better, better I wanna get better VERSE TWO: I go up to my room and there’s girls on the ceiling / Cut out their pictures, and I chase that feeling / of 18 year old Who didn’t know what loss was Now I’m a stranger / And I miss the days of a life still permanent / Mourn the years before I got carried away / So now I’m staring at the interstate screaming at myself, Hey! CHORUS / BRIDGE: ‘Cause I’m sleeping in the back of a taxi / I’m screaming from my bedroom window / Even if it’s gon’ kill me! / VERSE THREE: Woke up this morning early, before my family / From this dream where she was trying to show me / How a life can move from the darkness / She said to get better So, I put a bullet where I should’ve put a helmet And I / crash my car ’cause I wanna get Carried away / That’s why I’m standing on the overpass, Screaming at myself hey! I wanna get better!
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