Category: News

Elon Musk is becoming quite the Clubhouse power user, and he might have just scored his biggest “interview” yet. The Tesla CEO reached out to Vladimir Putin to invite the Russian president to chat on the burgeoning video chat app, and Musk surprisingly got an official response from the Kremlin. Even more surprising, the answer wasn’t “no.” According to Reuters, the Kremlin is intrigued by Musk’s offer, but they have to look into it first because, unlike his close friend Donald Trump, Putin doesn’t do social media.

“In general, this is of course a very interesting proposal, but we need to understand what is meant, what is being proposed… first we need to check, then we will react,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. “We want to figure it out first. President Putin does not personally use social networks directly, he doesn’t have them.”

Musk got the ball rolling on Saturday when he tweeted to whoever controls Putin’s Twitter account, “Would you like [to] join me for a conversation on Clubhouse?” He then added in Russian. “It would be a great honor to speak with you.”

If Musk scores a chat with Putin, it will be his most high profile conversation on Clubhouse yet. In the meantime, Musk claims he’s locked down a chat with Kanye West, which should prove interesting given the two men’s eccentric personalities and growing rumors of West’s pending divorce from Kim Kardashian.

In a way, it almost feels like Musk is positioning himself to be the Joe Rogan of Clubhouse. The Tesla CEO is a noted fan of Rogan and was just on his podcast last week where he revealed his ambitious plans to make his next batch of cars hover. “Maybe it can hover like a meter above the ground, or something like that,” Musk told Rogan. “If you plummet it’ll blow out the suspension but you’re not gonna die.”

(Via Reuters)

Rifle-toting Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert (representing Colorado) has been stirring up a ruckus on Capitol Hill, first by vowing to carry her Glock in the halls of Congress before throwing a hissy fit following the beefing up of metal detector presence after the failed MAGA coup. She was already a controversial figure in her home state, in which she owns a diner called Shooters Grill (actually located in Rifle, Colorado) and has been accused of providing a firearm to a minor staff member. And she’s got a handful of arrests under her belt, according to the Denver Post. And now, Sarah Palin 2.0 believes that she knows who to blame for the rolling blackouts affecting much of the U.S. during this historic ice and snow storm.

The freshman Congresswoman is pointing her trigger pullers at the Green New Deal, a general set of goals that hope to move the globe to net-zero emissions within decades. The “deal” also calls for affordable housing and universal health care, and so much more, like building out smarter power grids, improving transportation emissions in the U.S., and obviously, a whole ton of the deal has yet to be put into effect. Still, Boebert (along with Tucker Carlson, who ranted about the deal) is making it her mission to blame the Left for what’s happening in Texas and beyond.

Boebert isn’t here for the deal and is taking aim at Biden, who hasn’t wholly embraced the New Green Deal and has presented his own plan instead. “Rolling blackouts from ND to TX have turned into lengthy power outages in freezing conditions,” she tweeted. “Biden needs to lift his oil & gas ban as we need reliable energy sources. The Green New Deal was just proven unsustainable as renewables are clearly unreliable.”

She wasn’t done yet. “You know how you unfreeze frozen windmills?” she sarcastically inquired. “By sending up a helicopter that shoots out chemicals onto the blades. You need fuel for the helicopter. Keep that in mind when thinking how ‘green’ windmills are.”

Well, people are throwing this right back at Boebert, especially since Biden’s Interior Secretary hasn’t even been confirmed yet, so perhaps she should be asking what happened during the Trump administration. Also, there’s the issue of how nothing (not even all the fossil fuels in the world, since many power stations are down and/or frozen, despite the presence of oil and gas leases) can stop ice from forming on power lines.

Well, this debate isn’t going to be settled anytime soon, but one user posted an apparent list of Boebert’s arrests and called that the real “rolling blackout.” Yikes.

One year ago today, myself and a number of other folks gathered (remember doing this?) in an arena (this too?) to watch the 2020 NBA All-Star Game. It was a fun weekend! Derrick Jones Jr. controversially beat Aaron Gordon in the dunk contest, there were really moving tributes to the recently-departed Kobe Bryant and David Stern, the game itself was fantastic thanks to a new format centered around the Elam Ending, I ate these nachos, it was real good.

The weekend took place at the United Center in Chicago, and the league decided to use the event as a chance to celebrate the Windy City. All the stuff you’d expect was involved — tributes to Michael Jordan and his Bulls, a video honoring the city that included a cameo from Barack Obama, etc. One of the many Chicago institutions that was part of the entire ceremony was Common, who as part of his role as pregame master of ceremonies became a meme for his myriad of rhymes about those participating in the game.

With it being the one-year anniversary of that night in Chicago, I have taken it upon myself to look back on these rhymes and rank them. The ranking is based on nothing more than how I felt as they re-entered my brain after one year of not hearing them. Now I’ll do you all a favor, and quell your suspenses, but before we do that, some honorable mentions:

HONORABLE MENTIONS: THE COACHES

HM1: The head coach for Team Giannis, in the All-Stars this is his first, from the defending champion Toronto Raptors, Nick Nurse

HM2: Making his second All-Star appearance, he runs the team like a mogul, from the Los Angeles Lakers, the coach, Frank Vogel

Hard to get too riled up about either of these. Both are fine. The Vogel one is way better. Onward.

COMMON JUST DID THESE TO MOVE ONTO OTHER THINGS

25. A big man with big skills, yes indeed, from the Philadelphia 76ers, Joel Embiid

24. We knew he’d be an All-Star from everything he’s shown us, from the Indiana Pacers, Domantas Sabonis

Common is an icon but how are you going with “yes indeed” for the Embiid one? Read, feed, need, plenty of things rhyme with “-iid.” Also, I have faith Common has watched Sabonis because he is a well-documented basketball fan, but if I were making a poem about Domantas Sabonis and I never watched him play basketball, I would vaguely mention how he’s shown us a lot of stuff.

FINE

23. He’s a two-time All-Star, so you know he’ll get it done, from the Milwaukee Bucks, give it up for Khris Middleton

22. From the land down under, he’s always all about winnin’, from the Philadelphia 76ers, y’all give it up for Ben Simmons

21. A 10-time All-Star, he’s a general with the ball, from the Oklahoma City Thunder, the great Chris Paul

20. Here from the champion Toronto Raptors, and you know they did it proudly, six-time All-Star and floor commander, Kyle Lowry

19. This All-Star’s the truth, keeping the defense honest, the reigning Rookie of the Year from the Dallas Mavericks, Luka Doncic

18. 2019 All-Rookie first-team, and he’s only just begun, from the Atlanta Hawks, they call him Ice, we also know him as Trae Young

Some poetic license are taken with some of these, some are merely just fine. I do like to imagine that somewhere, Paul Pierce heard Common call Luka Doncic “the truth” and he filed a complaint with someone. And while the Trae Young one is a bit cumbersome, I like the idea. Generally, again, these are fine.

LEGITIMATELY PRETTY GOOD!

17. A seven-time All-Star, one of the generation’s greatest, from the south side of Chicago and the Los Angeles Lakers, Anthony Davis

16. He got crazy skills, that you can’t overstate ‘em, from the Boston Celtics, first-time All-Star, Jayson Tatum

15. He’s Kia’s Most Improved Player, and tonight he’s ready to rock ‘em, here from the world champion Toronto Raptors, give it up for Pascal Siakam

14. Known for his passin’, but his triple-doubles are his best look, from the Houston Rockets, give it up for Russell Westbrook

13. When he heats up from outside, it’s like a pressure cooker, first-time All-Star from the Phoenix Suns, Devin Booker

12. Like a protest on the court, he’s an all-time disruptor, from the Miami Heat, y’all give it up for Jimmy Butler

11. A league MVP who breaks ankles with no pardon, from the Houston Rockets, the league’s leading scorer, James Harden

10. In his breakout season, representin’ the Bayou Kingdom, first-time All-Star from the New Orleans Pelicans, Brandon Ingram

9. Sixteen-time All-Star, three-time NBA champion, we continue to witness his reign, one of the greatest to play the game, from the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James

I love that we have an internal rhyme in the LeBron one (reign/game/James), which puts it atop this list. “Bayou Kingdom” and “Brandon Ingram” is terrific, as are pardon/Harden and disruptor/Butler, particularly that last one, because [gestures at Jimmy Butler’s time with the Minnesota Timberwolves, which he joined from the Chicago Bulls, whose fans cheered him when he was introduced]. Rest of them are all pretty solid, shout out to Kia for getting a mention in there. I hope Common was given a very nice Sorento for that.

COMMON REALLY DID A JOB MAKING THESE RHYMES WORK AND I APPRECIATE THAT

8. Unable to play due to the injury, but anywhere on the court he can kill it, from the Portland Trail Blazers, give it up for my man Damian Lillard

7. Representin’ the three-point range from the lane, he’ll give you a dosage, from the Denver Nuggets, two-time All-Star, the Joker, Nikola Jokic

6. The reigning MVP, can drive the lane with no refusal, from the Milwaukee Bucks, the captain of the team, Giannis Antetokounmpo

5. From inside or outside, either way he’ll get you, first-time All-Star, from the Utah Jazz, Donovan “Spida” Mitchell

4. He may not talk a lot, but on the court, he gives a clinic, a four-time All-Star from the LA Clippers, Kawhi Leonard

3. Makin’ his All-Star debut, goin’ hard in the paint is his sty-o, from the Miami Heat, Bam Adebayo

Looking back, I was surprised by how much joy I got out of the various ones in which Common took major poetic license to make the rhyme work. These range from “alright I get it, he had to be a little flexible, although he could have done ‘killer’ instead of ‘kill it,’ ya know?” to “Common took the word ‘style’ and change it to ‘sty-o’ because he had to make something rhyme with Adebayo.”

AFTER I DIE, I WILL BE AT THE GATES OF HEAVEN, AND ST. PETER WILL ASK WHY I DESERVE ENTRY, AND I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GIVE AN ANSWER, BECAUSE I WILL STILL BE THINKING OF THESE TWO RHYMES COMMON MADE AT THE 2020 NBA ALL-STAR GAME

2. A four-time All-Star, he handles the rock like Gibraltar, from the Boston Celtics, give it up for Kemba Walker

1. Think you can shake this first-time All-Star? Au contrarie, mon frère, from the Utah Jazz, the Stifle Tower, Rudy Gobert

Rhyming “Walker” and “Gibraltar” is inspired work. I am legitimately in awe of the fact that Common did this, one year later. Yes, there is a quibble with the fact that “handles the rock like Gibraltar” doesn’t quite work, factually, because no one really handles the Rock of Gibraltar and it’s, you know, kind of just there, surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. Unless Common’s implication is that Kemba Walker is the Mediterranean Sea of basketball players, which I will need to marinade on some more before making a ruling.

And then, there is his masterpiece. Ok, well, Be has a much better case for being his masterpiece, but this sits right at the intersection of “really good,” “really clever,” “really funny,” and “really applicable for the player.” Also, it called upon Common to speak French, which makes sense considering, uh, Rudy Gobert is French, but is also just terrific. Just fantastic stuff.

Nirvana was one of the defining bands of its era, and that came off the strength of only about a half-decade of mainstream success before Kurt Cobain’s tragic death. While the band left fans with legendary music, there was still loads of unfilled potential with the group, a thought that still saddens Dave Grohl.

On a recent episode of Apple Music’s Medicine At Midnight Radio, Grohl spoke about the success of the band towards the end of its run and how he wishes Cobain was still making music today. He said:

“The shows were getting bigger. The crowds were getting bigger. The crowds outside of the shows were bigger than the crowds inside the shows. We could see that something was happening, but we really never expected that it would turn out to be as big as it was. I don’t think any of us expected that. […]

Of course, [Cobain’s death] was an incredibly challenging experience, and ultimately one of the greatest heartbreaks of my life that Nirvana isn’t still here today making music, whether it would be called Nirvana or something else. It is one of my life’s greatest heartbreaks that Kurt isn’t still here to write more amazing songs because it’s pretty clear that he was blessed with a gift. I think it’s safe to say that he was the greatest songwriter of our generation. I’m very proud to say that I got to be his drummer and play those songs every night.”

Meanwhile, Pat Smear, Grohl’s Foo Fighters bandmate and a former touring member of Nirvana, recently revealed that surviving Nirvana members still jam together sometimes.

There was a moment, for four or five days of my life, when my only goal was to see Die Hard 2. (Which, then, most people I knew referred to the movie as Die Harder, but that version of the title has seemed to have dissipated over the years.) A month before the release of Die Hard 2 I had gotten my driver’s license. But to see Die Hard 2 I had to be 17, which I was not. It’s a weird no man’s land of an age, where a human being is old enough to operate a moving vehicle on an interstate highway, but not old enough to hear the word “fuck” more than once during the course of a motion picture. Seeing Die Hard 2 in a movie theater was proving to be a challenge.

(I do find myself getting irrationally annoyed when people tell stories about how they saw all these “hard R” horror films in theaters with their buddies when they were 12, or whatever. How did everyone live near theaters with such lax rules except for me? I had a terrible time seeing rated R movies before I was 17. My first date ever, we were supposed to see Pretty Woman. Wouldn’t that have been a nice story? Well, they wouldn’t let us in to see Pretty Woman because it was rated R, so we saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead. To this day I have misplaced hatred towards Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for this very reason.)

At the time, just outside of Kansas City, somewhat near Arrowhead Stadium, there was a somewhat decrepit movie theater at a somewhat decrepit shopping center called the Blue Ridge Mall. (This mall was finally demolished a few years ago.) Now, my parents didn’t live particularly close to the Blue Ridge Mall, but, after a few failed attempts at other theaters, this was the first theater where, by chance, whoever was working that night, didn’t seem to care I wasn’t old enough to see Die Hard 2. (This theater would become my “rated R” theater until I turned 17. I had, probably, around a 50 percent success rate. But this was much better than my rate at other theaters, which was “zero.” But I remember I did, eventually, also get in to see Total Recall and Darkman. I was denied entry to The Two Jakes, a movie I didn’t wind up seeing until 2020.) And, let me tell you, when I finally got to see these movies, it was exhilarating. But not because I was watching something even close to “dirty” or “sinister.” I was watching movies where people kind of acted and talked like they did in real life.

I’ve been thinking about this past incarnation of rated R movies a lot lately. Mostly due to having not much to do socially these days, I’ve been rewatching a lot of rated R movies from that era. And, frankly, they are awesome. A friend of mine, before the pandemic, had a huge blindspot when it came to action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s. He had just assumed he wouldn’t like them because he doesn’t really like today’s versions of action movies. Well, he’s all caught up. And not only does he like these older rated R action movies starring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, he loves them. And the reason being is they literally don’t make these movies anymore. Because, while watching, they kind of, sort of feel like PG-13 action movies of today, in that they are intended for a younger audience. Then, out of the blue, there’s a bunch of profanity, or someone gets killed and there’s a lot of blood and a funny punchline. This kind of movie is so rare today, these moments all feel like real shocks to the system.

Today, if an action movie is rated R, that’s basically the selling point. And the movie has to be “dark” and “earn its R.” Back then none of these movies were trying to earn an R. They were just barely R, but that’s what makes them unique now, because no studio is going to let a “barely R” movie see the light of day. Today, it either has to be PG-13 or full-on, all the way, R. There’s no Die Hard 2, middle-of-the-road R-rated action movies anymore. And I didn’t realize how much I missed them until now.

I asked ‘80s and ‘90s film historian Kumail Nanjiani (oh, and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter) – who has also been re-watching a lot of action movies from that era over the last few months – if he’s also noticed this.

“Yes,” agrees Nanjiani. “I think R- rated movies then were more fun and more varied. I think the difference in R-rated movies in the past compared to R-rated movies now seems to be that R-rated could be ‘casually’ R. They could be fun movies. Whereas, now, every R feels like a decision.”

Nanjiani’s use of the word “casually” is interesting here, because that’s a pretty good way to sum it up. Here’s an example: Deadpool and Logan are two famously R-rated superhero movies. And there’s nothing “casual” about either of their R ratings. It almost felt like a studio note was, “If we are going to let you make this rated R, you’d better use the word “fuck” in literally every sentence.” (For the record, I like Logan quite a bit.) We can even see this with The Snyder Cut of Justice League. One of its promotional tools is that its “rated R.” That never used to be a thing: “Come see Commando, it’s rated R!”

Now, compare all this to a movie like Planes, Trains and Automobiles. There is absolutely no way possible this movie would be rated R today. It’s barely even rated R then, save for one scene in which Steve Martin unloads the word “fuck” 18 times. Which is a classic scene we’d, again, never get today. Could you even imagine the conversation in the corporate offices, “So, wait, you’re telling me we are going to make this nice family holiday movie rated R because of one 90-second scene? Forget it! You’re fired! Now find me Spider-Man!” (For some reason I picture J. Jonah Jameson as the head of Paramount Pictures in 1987.)

Honestly, I think what makes these “casual” rated R movies so appealing is our normal lives are “causally R.” No, most of us aren’t dealing with explosions on a regular basis, but we do hear some casual expletives often during our day. But not “let’s make this a rated R movie in 2021” often. There’s something strangely realistic in the way people talk in these action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s that we don’t get today.

And they are shockingly fun. As I mentioned before, when they do use an expletive, it’s usually at an opportune time that really hits. Nanjiani adds, “Movies for adults are generally R now, or hyper-violent thrillers.” Looking back at a few of the movies that fit in this category I’ve re-watched over the last few months (and that I had a great time re-watching. Like, an actual good time): Die Hard 2, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Passenger 57, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Young Guns, Total Recall, Predator, Commando, The Running Man, Under Siege, Eraser, Tango & Cash, Con Air – or even comedies like Major League and, yes, Planes Trains and Automobiles … all of these movies are rated R and I’d have a difficult time believing any of them would be released with an R rating today. And none of them are really aimed at adults or are hyper-violent thrillers. And even when they do release them as R today, like say 2018’s The Predator, the somewhat fun spirit of the original is long gone and it leans into the fact it’s an “R movie.” These movies all work because they are “casually R.”

People often lament that studios don’t make mid-range budget movies anymore. And that’s true. And some of the movies above would fit into that category. And, boy, this past year sure would have been a good time for some new “casually R” movies. But the “casually R” movie is now extinct as that theater at the Blue Ridge Mall where I got to see them in the first place.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Fox News blowhard Tucker Carlson was a contestant on a 2004 episode of Jeopardy! He narrowly finished in first place over columnist Peggy Noonan (the Final Jeopardy prompt: “If a president is impeached, this official presides over the trial in the Senate,” which is almost too perfect), but it would have been a blowout if the game had been focused on Carlson’s specialty: “vile and vicious” attacks. Monday’s episode of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah had Carlson responding to his oft-racist, sexist, and white nationalist comments over the years with Jeopardy!-style buzz ins. For instance:

“We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier” “What is hate speech?”

“All cultures are equal, except they are not all equal” “What is a white supremacist?”

“Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys” “Who’s the racist here?”

“Well, I’m, like, extraordinarily loaded just from, like, money I, you know, inherited… I’ve never needed to work” “What is precisely is privilege?”

And most recently: “There was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop” “What exactly is this disinformation?”

Watch the clip above.

Katee Sackhoff has been working steadily in the industry for well over twenty years, from Battlestar Gallactica to 24 to her Netflix series, Another Life, to Longmire, where getting chewed out by a co-star changed her career. She’s also been featured in a few movies — most notably Riddick — but Sackhoff has never broken out in a huge way.

However, since she was a little kid, Sackhoff has always wanted to be part of the Star Wars universe. “I always joked,” she told Michael Rosenbaum on his Inside of You podcast, “that there’s one thing I will always do. If they call me to be a rock in a Star Wars movie, just say yes. I’ll be a rock just to be in this world.”

That’s exactly what Sackhoff did more than ten years ago when director Dave Filioni asked her to voice the role of Bo-Katan in the animated Star Wars series, The Clone Wars. “I didn’t even have to think twice. A female Mandalorian warrior? Hello! Of course!”

Though it was just an animated character, Sackhoff still often joked with Filoni about being cast as a live-action version of Bo-Katan. “You know, one day, if this happens, you know she could exist in these worlds!” Sackhoff said that she “kept saying tongue in cheek things like that because I was honestly just taking the piss.” She never expected it would actually happen.

“I have had such a beautiful career,” Sackhoff continued, “but I have seen people around me get that huge, massive thing… but it’s never happened to me. This huge thing had never happened, so I always joked with [Filoni] just thinking, ‘Of course, they’ll probably recast her. They’ll probably cast Scarlett Johansson.”

“But when The Mandalorian came out,” Sackhoff said, “I made a joke again to [Filoni]. ‘I’ve been playing characters like this for 15 years, buddy!’ And I never thought it would happen. I was just sort of joking.”

In the end, however, Sackhoff didn’t even have to audition. Jon Favreau — the showrunner on The Mandalorian — thought “outside the box” by hiring the actual person who was voicing the animated character, which “never happens.” In fact, when she sat down for a meeting with Favreau, “it wasn’t until halfway through the meeting before I realized he was talking about me. It was a total out of body experience. I kept thinking while he was walking, ‘Those are pictures of me on the wall. What is happening?!’”

“I’m still pinching myself. My mind is blown that not only did they have the thought to do [hire the person who voiced the character], they believed that I could play the role, and that they ultimately let me.”

Source: Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum

The Haim sisters have been friendly with Taylor Swift for years; They opened for her on the 1989 tour in 2015. Now, it appears the trio is teasing a new collaboration with Swift thanks to what fans have perceived as a subtle clue.

Yesterday, the group took to social media to share a photo of themselves and captioned in, “one gasoline pump.” The photo is of the sisters outside of a gas station, which suggests that they may be releasing the Women In Music Pt. III highlight “Gasoline” as a single (the song previously charted on the Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart last year despite not being an official single). Fans were quick to point out that the number of the gas pump their car is at in the photo is 13, which has been widely interpreted as a hint that Haim is prepping a remix of the song featuring Taylor Swift.

If a Swift-featuring version of “Gasoline” ends up coming to fruition, it will be the second collaboration between the artists in the past few months, as Haim found their way onto Swift’s December album Evermore by featuring on “No Body, No Crime,” a country murder ballad that earned the approval of The Chicks.

This past Friday, Jimmy Eat World aired the third and final “Phoenix Session” — a series of exquisitely shot and recorded live performances of their most recent LP (2019’s Surviving), their second best-selling album (2004’s Futures) and Clarity, their 1999 masterpiece whose original commercial performance got them dropped by Capitol. I admit I’m a little biased since Clarity is my favorite album of all time, but I’d submit the Phoenix Sessions as damning evidence against the claim of my Indiecast co-host that livestreams are inherently dull. Most are, because they’re attempts to recreate the sounds and sights of a club gig without the social camaraderie; which negates pretty much the entire point.

Conversely, the Phoenix Sessions recast entire albums as a new audio-visual experience, one that was exponentially enhanced by the quality of your television or computer. Having seen the 10-year anniversary performance of Futures in 2014, I can say that there was no added value in watching Jimmy Eat World run through “Drugs Or Me” packed shoulder-to-sweaty shoulder with someone who might be waiting an hour just to hear “The Middle” during the encore. The Phoenix Sessions provided hardcore Jimmy Eat World fans an enhanced version of the way they’ve likely experienced Futures and Clarity for years — headphones on, in isolation, to paraphrase “A Praise Chorus,” feeling like a part of it was yours and yours alone.

This quality has remained in Jimmy Eat World’s music as they’ve held nearly every conceivable status in the 25 years since 1996’s Static Prevails became arguably the first major-label emo album ever released — they’ve been wildly underappreciated and utterly inescapable, critically scorned and later canonized (often with the same album), beset by a slow, steady drift into mid-life crises, lumped onto tours with alt-rock has-beens and then rejuvenated as elder statesmen of an entire genre. Try to think of how many major-label bands have been as consistent and consistently rewarding as Jimmy Eat World over the past three decades — Radiohead and Deftones come to mind and that’s really about it, but I don’t think their public reputation will ever be reduced to a single song, like, “Creep” or “Change (In the House of Flies)” (don’t worry, “The Middle” is on this list). But whether you’re a hardcore fan looking to quibble with the rankings, a “Clarity-through-Futures only” essentialist or someone who really hasn’t heard a Jimmy Eat World song besides “The Middle,” trust that it was hard to limit this list to only 30 songs. You can’t not still feel the butterflies.

30. “Closer” (Stay On My Side Tonight, 2005)

There’s no real shadow history of Jimmy Eat World’s non-album tracks – most of them end up as B-sides or bonus cuts on deluxe reissues. But Stay On My Side Tonight stands as their only official collection of non-album originals (along with a Heatmiser cover and an inessential “Drugs Or Me” remix), a way of honoring the choicest cuts from the Futures writing sessions that couldn’t find a proper place on their first album subject to legitimate commercial expectations. Despite Jimmy Eat World’s intention to present Stay On My Side Tonight as a discrete entity, it can’t help but be seen as kind of a patch to Futures — all but the most diehard listeners can instantly think of at least two tracks they’d swap out to find room for SOMST’s originals. It’s not even that “Closer” is simply better than, say, the monumentally hokey PSA “Drugs Or Me” or misguided horniness on main (“Night Drive”), it challenges the assumption that these wouldn’t have fit on Futures. “Closer” is virtually the exact midpoint between the bittersweet “The World You Love” and the sourball skate-punk of “Pain,” a rare instance of Jimmy Eat World stretching out for groove and texture rather than a preconceived notion of “epic.” You can believe Apple Music — Clarity and Bleed American are their truly essential works for casual listeners, but attach “Closer” to Futures and… well, it’s a lot closer.

29. “Mixtape”
28. “Invented” (Invented, 2010)

Critic Andrew Unterberger recently asked whether The Human League’s Dare was the only example of a classic album that backloaded its three best songs at the very end. There were a couple of common responses — Celebration Rock, Purple Rain, several for Automatic For the People. I’d nominate Invented, even if it has only reached the status of “aged surprisingly well” as opposed to “classic.” As they typically do after their streamlined pop-rock albums, Jimmy Eat World tried a little bit of everything on Invented — a reunion with Mark Trombino, the first Tom Linton lead vocal since Clarity, acoustic strummers with strings, songs written from the perspective of Cindy Sherman photos — and the results were predictably scattered. The one throughline was Adkins’ focus on storytelling and he hits a peak on Invented’s penultimate title track. He’s occupied this kind of space before on “Ten,” “If You Don’t, Don’t,” “Disintegration,” and “Kill,” just to name a few — a drunk who can keep things together just enough to clearly see everything around him fall apart. They’ve also made compelling use of female vocals from the likes of Rachel Haden and Liz Phair, but whereas they mostly provided harmony, the presence of future alt-country darling Courtney Marie Andrews makes “Invented” feel like a conversation — establishing an intimacy that holds even as “Invented” explodes at its Aqua Net-glossed bridge (I mean “explodes” quite literally, to the point where it sounds like a mastering error). It’s the kind of song that would typically require a comedown immediately after and instead, it’s followed by the equally massive “Mixtape,” which fortified Adkins’ heartsick solo version with strings and cranked drums. “Where went all the takers baby/do you still have what they want?” Adkins asks, a poignant question for a band whom critics were judging mostly on commercial performance rather than artistic growth. Ten years later, “Mixtape” and “Invented” can be seen for what they really are, the backbone of Jimmy Eat World’s most underappreciated album.

27. “555” (Surviving, 2019)

Jimmy Eat World have made dozens of pop songs, but all of them would be primarily classified as “rock.” That’s their thing — even if their biggest hits put them in the company of Taylor Swift and Nickelback and the cast of Saturday Night Live, none of it cuts against a humble image of the same four guys from Mesa, Arizona hanging tight for over 25 years. That’s probably why they’ve never been put in a situation where Greg Kurstin or Ryan Tedder is brought in to punch up their hooks or modernize the production — you know, dial up some synth presents, swap out Zach Lind for some trap beats, put some glassy harmonies in the chorus. Funny thing is, that all happened on “555,” the outlier and standout track on 2019’s Surviving, a strong album that nonetheless played things a bit too safe after the reinvigorated Integrity Blues. The sound of “555” itself was as jarring as the sight of Adkins playing an extraterrestrial despot buried in pancake makeup and a white wig in the video, and both worked fantastically — even if Adkins admits he had to stifle laughter throughout the whole shoot. We’re probably fortunate that Jimmy Eat World were never expected to play the same game as Fall Out Boy or Panic! At The Disco, but even if they did, “555” proves they’d survive that, too.

26. “Integrity Blues” (Integrity Blues, 2016)

Spoiler alert: 2013’s Damage was completely shut out on this list, and I don’t foresee this being a controversial outcome. After their weakest-selling and most artistically inert album, Jimmy Eat World took their first extended break in two decades, with Adkins asking himself a question that never seemed to faze peers like Dave Grohl or Rivers Cuomo or Billy Corgan — does the world really need a new Jimmy Eat World album? The crowds who showed up to watch Adkins play solo gigs at bars and small theaters in places like Maquoketa, Iowa and Billings, Montana bore witness to an unusually candid song he wrote about that very thing. “It’s all what you do when no one’s there / it’s all what you do when no one cares,” Adkins sang plaintively over his acoustic guitar, an elaboration on its title: “Integrity Blues.” By the time it became the title track on their best album in over a decade, they couldn’t help layering on the strings and reverb until it could pass for something Justin Meldal-Johnsen smuggled out of his Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming sessions. But Adkins’ voice is unadorned, as if he’s singing “I’ve got work to do” alone in the bathroom mirror. It might not scan as emo, but Adkins has never been more raw and vulnerable than he is on “Integrity Blues.”

25. “Roller Queen” (Jimmy Eat World EP, 1998)

Both of Jimmy Eat World’s releases that were intentionally self-titled are nowhere to be found on streaming and pretty hard to find in general — in the case of 1994’s Jimmy Eat World, likely because they’re sorta embarrassed by it. I imagine 1998’s Jimmy Eat World EP is caught up some legal or publishing rigamarole — released on an imprint then best known for being run by a guy from Less Than Jake, Jimmy Eat World mostly existed to give “Lucky Denver Mint” a trial run and once it got some spins on KROQ, the release did enough numbers to allow Fueled By Ramen a bigger office space in Jacksonville. Nowadays, Jimmy Eat World is worth seeking out solely for “Roller Queen,” a slow-motion space race with no real equivalent in Jimmy Eat World’s catalog. They’d dabbled in lengthier songs on Static Prevails, with “Anderson Mesa” playing the role of “epic closer” and “Digits” more of a prog-like suite. But with “Roller Queen,” there’s no real hook, no real structure aside from a slow, steady crescendo interrupted by bit-crushing production tricks — imagine if they made their Low Level Owl instead of Clarity, or veered off into becoming a digital post-rock act on Morr Music. Nothing in Jimmy Eat World’s catalog conjures as much fascinating alternate history as the least-heard song on this list.

24. “Blister” (Clarity, 1999)

This one could have easily been a B-side. Clarity is already over an hour long without it, the apocalyptic doomsaying isn’t an obvious fit anywhere on the album, let alone immediately after “Just Watch The Fireworks” and “For Me This Is Heaven.” And to top it off, this is a Tom song, which were already having trouble finding their place in Jimmy Eat World’s studio releases. Maybe they felt compelled to have one true Tom song on Clarity, or maybe when you have a song as infectious as “Blister,” you find a place for it. It might not have the most radio-ready chorus they’ve ever done, but it features their most compelling imagery — “the West Coast has been traumatized,” Tom Linton sings as a Cormac McCarthy character, the last man alive walking across the United States all alone. I think we can admit that Clarity is an album that takes its every fleeting emotion very, very seriously and can allow itself some comic relief — after so many times of feeling like your world is caving in, imagine how funny it would be if Earth actually collapsed on itself.

23. “Cautioners” (Bleed American, 2001)

While it lacks the “experimental” reputation of its predecessor, in many ways, Bleed American refined the advancements of Clarity for use in form-fitting pop structure. Isn’t the palm-muted riff of “The Middle” really just a major-thirds take on the palm-muted riff of “Your New Aesthetic,” which itself was a tighter version of the one on “Rockstar”? There was still room for their spacier, more sentimental ideas, which were now shaped into show-stopping ballads, every bit as purposeful as the singles. And I’ve often wondered whether Jimmy Eat World were so enamored with the infinity loops of “Ten” that they just imported them verbatim onto “Cautioners.” This is the “weird one” on Bleed American, sandwiched between their overt homages to Cheap Trick and John Cougar Mellencamp, at once immaculate and 8-bit — regal cymbal washes misting over Lind’s mechanical drums, guitars nicked from The Joshua Tree and a bassline on loan from the underground of Super Mario Bros 2. All the more fitting for a song about trying to stay firm and resolute as your insides turn to mush: “I’m making my peace, I’m making it with distance / Maybe that’s a big mistake, you know I’m thinking of you,” Adkins admits. As the curtain falls on the final chorus, the guitar loop just keeps ringing — it could go on for twice as long as “Goodbye Sky Harbor” and I’d allow it, after all, what is “Cautioners” but endlessly watching the one you love slowly walk away without ever really leaving.

22. “Firefight” (Chase This Light, 2007)

If I had to choose my favorite Jimmy Eat World sequencing trope, I’ll go with the “B-side banger.” See: “nothingwrong,” “Get It Faster,” “Through,” “Clarity,” “Action Needs an Audience,” “Robot Factory,” songs that break up the typically slower, somber second halves and are unafraid to be inessential. Some are absolute keepers anyways, very few would make lists like these, but “Firefight” stands as the one song in this category that fundamentally alters its parent album. On the whole, Chase This Light overcorrected towards genial hooks and cloying sentimentality, an understandable impulse after Futures failed to connect with pop audiences like its predecessor. But did their strengths really lie in “Feeling Lucky” or “Carry You” or a song like “Firefight,” every bit as melodically powerful as the obvious singles and maintaining the jagged edge of Bleed American’s singles that weren’t “The Middle.” While it features some of Adkins’ most impressionistic writing (“they’re spitting spite all through my blood,” “love is quartz and breath the second hand”), “you can be anything, just be anything with me” leaves nothing to interpretation on the bridge — win or lose, he’s going out in a blaze of glory.

21. “Futures” (Futures, 2004)

I spent most of 2004 buried under Criminal Procedure readings, crumbled Arby’s wrappers, and empty cans of Sparks Ultra, so I’m probably not the most reliable historian of that era. Still, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that there wasn’t the same “all hands on deck” call to action from musicians the last time one of the bad guys was up for reelection. Maybe people were resigned to seeing no realistic path towards victory for John Kerry or maybe there was an equal amount of urgency as 2020, just without social media to serve as amplification. But compared to a time where we are intimately aware of nearly every celebrity’s political leanings, I was legitimately startled when Jimmy Eat World kicked off their highly-anticipated follow-up to Bleed American with a call to rock the vote. How many other political rock songs from popular bands do you remember from that time, keeping in mind that even Conor Oberst thinks “When the President Talks To God” is kind of lame and “Mr. November” came out in 2005 (also, The National weren’t popular yet). “I always believed in futures / I hope for better in November,” Adkins shouts, November 2 about two weeks away — by that point, it was pretty clear that better would not happen, but “Futures” was retained enough of Bleed American’s broad uplift to make it retroactively applicable to a promising first date or the Red Sox finally winning the World Series.

20. “You With Me”
19. “Sure And Certain” (Integrity Blues, 2016)

Jimmy Eat World is my favorite band and I also kinda dreaded hitting play on my promo copy of Integrity Blues — your therapist would probably call that a dialectic. Their previous three albums had inspired moments, but mostly sounded like Jimmy Eat World trying too hard to be themselves. Or maybe I was just hitting an age where Jimmy Eat World’s music is supposed to hit different, or not hit at all. And while I’ve come to appreciate it as Integrity Blues’ thesis statement, “Get Right” was a terribly uninspiring lead single, plodding and lacking any real strong hook. It provided no indication of Justin Meldal-Johnsen’s involvement or why Jimmy Eat World wanted to work with the guy in the first place. But the actual introduction of Integrity Blues… the first guitar strums sound like a triple-tracked harp. There is no way any actual human beings could have been involved in the recording of those choral harmonies. Rick Burch’s bass is alchemized into an electrical current. The drums are treated with the same man/machine textures that defined “Lucky Denver Mint” and “Cautioners.” Judging from just the first minute of “You With Me,” Jimmy Eat World heard Meldal-Johnsen’s work with M83 and said, “yeah, give us all of that.” For an album intended as a bold reinvention of Jimmy Eat World’s sound, “You With Me” shows a remarkable amount of patience and stamina throughout its five minutes, surging through its subtly witty chorus and allowing themselves as much time as they need to luxuriate in the production. Jimmy Eat World sounded fantastic on “You With Me,” and on the next song, they were truly back. You just knew when the sweeping chorus of “Sure And Certain” hit for the first time; I remember someone saying that it sounded like it belonged on a bank commercial and I just take that to mean that it’s the first Jimmy Eat World single in ages that sounded like it could be everywhere, its steady tom-drum beat and glistening synths sounding in dialog with avowed fans like Paramore and CHVRCHES without sounding like they’re trying to hop on the bandwagon. I distinctly remember emailing lapsed Jimmy Eat World fans about ten minutes into my first listen of Integrity Blues — “this is real good.” Not the “actual good” that comes as a sigh of relief when your favorite band doesn’t embarrass themselves. But the kind where you can say they’ve now made essential albums in three consecutive decades.

18. “Big Casino” (Chase This Light, 2007)

Britty Drake of the dearly departed Pity Sex recently tweeted that “Futures is the In Reverie of Jimmy Eat World,” and for everyone not versed in “30-something emo Twitter Bat-signals,” I’ll try to explain: there isn’t much superficial similarity between Futures, a logically darker and denser follow-up to a platinum blockbuster and Saves The Day’s sole major label album, a foray into florid, day-glow psych-pop. Likewise, Futures was generally well-received by Jimmy Eat World fans and had a respectable showing on the charts (it sits at about 600k sold), whereas In Reverie was mostly despised by Saves The Day fans. And, unlike Jimmy Eat World, Saves The Day were drummed out of the major label system once DreamWorks was sold to Universal. Nonetheless, Drake’s point sorta stands: both followed two certified scene classics to a relatively muted response and spooked each band into an immediate course correction. Lind admits that Jimmy Eat World intended for 2007’s Chase This Light to have a similar impact to Bleed American and they called on megaproducer Butch Vig to gloss up a batch of songs that tried very, very hard to match “The Middle.” Jimmy Eat World gloriously overshot the mark on “Big Casino,” which drew equally on Bleed American as it did Sam’s Town, proudly ostentatious Boss fanfic that steamrolls over any criticism one might have about Arizona guys playacting as a “New Jersey success story.”

17. “Episode IV” (Static Prevails, 1996)

After taking the lead for most of Jimmy Eat World’s rudimentary skate-punk, Tom Linton gradually, graciously and, by Bleed American, all but entirely ceded the frontman role to Jim Adkins. He never ended up playing the typical “hypeman” role you see in emo bands with alternating vocalists — the scream-y guy, the more nasal guy, the guy allotted one hardcore throwback or two per album. But most of his leads from Static Prevails going forward were bangers, all of which makes “Episode IV” the most emphatic argument against his marginalization — his sole ballad proves how well-suited his lower register was for Jimmy Eat World’s dreamier material. If not in sound, “Episode IV” is Static Prevails most overt lyrically emo song — dancing awkwardly, singing off-key, projecting spiritual salvation onto someone — the sort of things that make introverts feel seen the first time they hear them and would eventually become cliche thanks to bands that soon walked through a door that Bleed American kicked off the hinges. But Linton’s steady, solemn voice sells all of it, largely by not trying to sell it — “and you know I almost lost my will to live” should sound like exhausted relief, not a celebration for having narrowly escaped. Jimmy Eat World could keep going for 30 more years and still not include “Episode IV” in their setlists a single time, but it’s just as well — something this underplayed and restrained deserves to remain one of the band’s best kept secrets.

16. “Kill” (Futures, 2004)

By a quite comfortable margin, Futures stands as Jimmy Eat World’s angriest album — its sharp edges owing as much to Gil Norton’s diamond-cut production as its terse song titles, where both ellipsis (“Just Tonight…”) and compaction (“nothingwrong”) manage to uphold the lurking, unknown menace. “Kill” is where Adkins’ internal seething finally finds a release valve, a hotel bar lament by turns accusatory, embarrassed, emasculated, enraged and, in one perfect line, completely in earnest — he who has not used “SORRY BUT I JUST CAN’T TURN OFF HOW I FEEL” as a LiveJournal status, cast the first stone (cause of death: pelted with stones). “Kill” serves its subject by mirroring the way drunken emails or texts to the one who got away typically go — painstakingly rehearsed before it all comes spilling out, a rare Jimmy Eat World song where there’s still a verse-chorus-bridge structure, but none of the lyrics repeat. Except for one — “I know what I should do but I just can’t walk away,” Adkins sighs as “Kill” fades out, resigned to the inevitability of being in the crosshairs once again.

15. “If You Don’t, Don’t” (Bleed American, 2001)

“Bleed American” immediately blew my shit back when I first heard it at the alt-rock station in Charlottesville and when I finally got a hold of the promo CD, I played it in my car and got pulled over for speeding by “Your House.” And yet, it wasn’t the untouchable side-A run of future singles or even the show-stopping Track Six BalladTM where Bleed American really clicked for me. While it initially appeared that Jimmy Eat World had set aside the attentive soundscaping of Clarity for radio-ready hooks, there’s a point on “If You Don’t, Don’t” where Adkins and Linton seemingly hit six different tremolo pedals in case you somehow missed the point of a prior lyric — “we once walked out on the beach and once I almost touched your hand.” That almost is doing all the work in that sentence, a reminder of every time you got so close to acting on the thing you wanted more than anything else in the world but were left with feeling like your organs were suspended in seafoam. “I’m sorry that I’m such a mess, I drank all my money could get,” Adkins admits towards the end and yeah… we’ve been there. The dominant emotion here isn’t love or even lust, but fear — a fear that this won’t happen or even worse, it will and mean everything to you and nothing to the other person.

14. “Ten” (Clarity, 1999)

Albums as revered as Clarity shouldn’t really have songs that are called “underappreciated” after 22 years — even obvious curveballs like “12.23.95” and “Goodbye Sky Harbor” have factions who will preemptively shoot down any suggestion of skipping through Jimmy Eat World’s IDM curiosities. And yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if the general reputation of “Ten” remains “the one before ‘Just Watch the Fireworks’ and ‘For Me This Is Heaven,’” the two-song run that really makes Clarity, y’know, Clarity. And that makes sense, since the latter are some of the most impossibly lucid emo teen dreams ever written while “Ten” is bathed in fake yellow light, rooted in reality and resigned to fleeting and illicit thrills. “Our weakness is the same, we need poison sometimes,” Adkins mutters to his accomplice, while Lind’s pounding, stutter-step beat and the endlessly chiming guitar loops combining to replicate that physically burdened and mentally weightless feeling of a drunk pushing himself to the next bar, a buzz that’s about to spiral out of control. “Nowhere and then nowhere, trapped in the chase,” as Adkins aptly puts it, trying to get that mixture just right until you believe songs like “For Me This Is Heaven” can actually come true.

13. “Polaris” (Futures, 2004)

In a just world, the title track of Def Leppard’s Hysteria exists on the same plane as “I’m On Fire” — a relatively subdued, amorous, and not inescapable single reincarnated as an indie favorite with dozens upon dozens of covers from cred-conscious bands who want to claim the hidden gem in an otherwise overplayed-to-death 1980s rock radio institution. But that is not the world we inhabit, so let’s just appreciate “Polaris” for honoring one of Jimmy Eat World’s latent, formative influences. Adkins once claimed “Photograph” inspired him to pick up a guitar for the first time and while that song’s imprint is all over Bleed American’s pop-rock of ages, the incandescent center of Futures takes after Def Leppard’s most emo power ballad. “You say that love goes anywhere / in your darkest time it’s just enough to know it’s there,” Adkins yelps, and as the bard once said, when you get that feeling, better start believing. In this instance, the magical mysteria is all in the crystalline guitars, trying in vain to sprinkle stardust on a relationship slowly fading to black.

12. “Claire” (Static Prevails, 1996)

Long before Jimmy Eat World defined the sound of major-label emo, they were simply the first emo band on a major label. And “Claire” does indeed sound like a more polished version of what was happening throughout Texas and the Midwest at the time, a sweeter, slighter take on Sunny Day Real Estate — well-thought out twinkles commingling with distorted octave chords, unabashedly plaintive vocals straining to sell lyrics about faith and girls and faith in girls into poetic abstractions. “One way trip can work both ways / loose ends kept untied make better friends,” Adkins sings before the priceless coda — I don’t know exactly what he means by “CAN YOU SAY FULL RIDE,” but it was probably about long-distance relationships in college, at least that’s what I assumed while I was in a long-distance (like, an hour away) relationship in college. Coming after a song literally titled “Rockstar,” “Claire” confirms not just where Jimmy Eat World were at in 1996, but where they’d go soon after — it’s Jimmy Eat World’s first arena-rock moment and the last time they sounded even remotely hesitant about embracing such things.

11. “The World You Love” (Futures, 2004)

For a quintessential band in a genre synonymous with bombastic oversharing, Jimmy Eat World are granted an unusual amount of authorial distance; credit their modest public profile or his tendency to write in broad strokes, but unlike with, say, Bright Eyes or Taking Back Sunday or Say Anything, the enjoyment of Jimmy Eat World’s music is not at all contingent upon believing that Adkins is actually the main character in his songs. “We’re only just as happy as everyone else seems to think we are,” Adkins sings on “The World You Love,” and judging from the Futures cuts that immediately surround it — “Work,” “Kill,” “Pain” — it stands to reason that people don’t know the half. It’s easy enough to hear “The World We Love” as strictly about a relationship trying to survive physical and emotional distance, albeit more satisfying to interpret “I’m just looking for a nice way to say ‘I’m out’ / I WANT OUT” as bringing the subtext of Futures to the surface — that the darker follow-up to their blockbuster breakthrough is darker because of everything that comes with making a blockbuster breakthrough.

10. “You Are Free” (Integrity Blues, 2016)

I don’t know if Jim Adkins ever gets tired of singing “The Middle” at every single show they have played since 2001. But by 2016’s Integrity Blues, he had to ask — who is he to say that everything’s gonna be alright? Everything might not be alright, just look at what happened a few weeks after Integrity Blues’ October 21st release date. Or maybe everything will be alright, maybe not terrible, not great, just… kinda life on life’s terms. This was also the message of “Get Right,” but its attempt at real talk wasn’t anywhere near as convincing as “You Are Free” — those harmonies on the chorus, that’s why you get in the studio with Justin Meldal-Johnsen. The affirmations of Bleed American had evolved into a more resonant tough love on Integrity Blues, which makes “You Are Free” kind of a spiritual sequel to “The Middle” — an anthem for the simultaneously thrilling and frightening realization that if everything is gonna be alright, it’s completely up to you.

9. “The Middle” (Bleed American, 2001)

There are likely people who absolutely despise “The Middle” and never want to hear it again. There are likely people who enjoy “The Middle” but feel like they never need to hear it again — that chorus really does commit itself to memory after five seconds, after all. And then there are Jimmy Eat World diehards who appreciate or at least tolerate its existence; it’s kind of a bummer that one of the greatest American bands of the past 30 years has been reduced to “I used to listen to this in middle school!” but countless people (myself included) wouldn’t have discovered Clarity or Futures without it. It’s also why they’ll be given the freedom to make an album like Integrity Blues on a major label’s dime.

By the time “The Middle” officially dropped as a single in November 2001, Bleed American had already been renamed Jimmy Eat World and there was a seemingly insatiable demand for the reaffirmation of rock music, whether it came from U2 or The Strokes. And here was a song about keeping the faith in yourself, from a band that had been written off and looked down on. And even if they looked a bit square in comparison to the New Rock Revolution, the video brilliantly turned Jimmy Eat World’s modest, everyguy anti-image into an asset (although surely many teens watched it on mute). Sometimes, the magic of pop music is simply an artist being prepared for their moment, but let’s not get it f*cked up — “The Middle” is one of the most brilliantly crafted pieces of pop-rock of the 21st century and any list of Jimmy Eat World’s best songs that doesn’t include “The Middle” is trying way too hard.

8. “Just Watch The Fireworks” (Clarity, 1999)

Jimmy Eat World’s best records can be treated like seasonal flavors — Bleed American, released in July, full of shout-out-loud hooks and bang-on-your-steering wheel drums, definitely a summer record. Justin Medal-Johnsen’s production wrapped Integrity Blues in icicle lights, Futures begins on Election Day and is permeated by a late autumn chill. I’ve had debates about where Clarity fits into this — “12.23.95” makes an obvious case for “winter,” as do the frosty bells and glacial pace of “Table For Glasses” and “Goodbye Sky Harbor.” So… what about “Just Watch The Fireworks”? Ah, but here’s the thing about Jimmy Eat World’s most googly-eyed, unabashedly romantic song — there’s not a single mention of actual fireworks in the lyrics, a rare if not unprecedented example in the deep, deep canon of fireworks songs. And who stays up as late as they can to watch 4th of July fireworks, those begin at like 8 PM. As “Just Watch the Fireworks” hits its final, “I can’t go on… I must go on” surge, its message becomes clear: the most breathtaking, awe-inspiring moments of your life are bound to happen if you can get out of your own way and just let them happen (this might explain why the song actually titled “Let It Happen” doesn’t hit quite as hard). Doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas Eve, prom, graduation, a first date going curiously too well, or just a desire to remember what it felt like to stay up as late as possible because you didn’t want the night to end — “Just Watch the Fireworks” is for all seasons.

7. “Bleed American” (Bleed American, 2001)

Bleed American’s origin story is a classic tale of short-sighted label execs, DIY pluck and redemption by the will of the people. But here’s the thing that often gets overlooked: yes, Jimmy Eat World may have recorded Bleed American on their own dime and Mark Trombino offered his services on spec, but once the album was finished, this was no underdog. Lind claimed that it was the subject of a bidding war that involved just about every major label except for Interscope, who eventually oversaw Futures after DreamWorks was absorbed by Universal. This probably explains why they could hold back on obvious singles like “The Middle” and “Sweetness” and reintroduce themselves with “Bleed American,” the hardest, meanest thing they’ve ever done; listen to the way the rhythm section locks in during the final minute, it’s essentially a Helmet song. I don’t think anyone was questioning Jimmy Eat World’s punk credentials after Clarity — it’s hard to be called a sell-out for making an album that got you dropped and their aggression never felt entirely convincing even on “Your New Aesthetic” — but “Bleed American” is a multilayered statement of intent, a band no longer content to be coal for someone else’s machinery, a celebration and a protest suitable for a picket line or a parade. Bleed American’s swift name change after 9/11 left it as the band’s third self-titled release, and it strangely feels appropriate. Whether you call it “Bleed American” or “Salt Sweat Sugar,” from the first seconds, the point could not be more clear — Jimmy Eat World have truly arrived.

6. “Disintegration” (Stay On My Side Tonight, 2005)

Jimmy Eat World have never felt the need to mask their influences and when it came time for them to make a 7-minute dirge of turbid guitars and synthesized strings, they paid direct homage to the great, grim grandfathers of Gothic grandeur. A holdover from the Futures sessions, I’ll let the Wiki entry for “Disintegration” explain why it didn’t make the cut — “the song features uncharacteristically negative lyrics,” and true enough, “do what you want, but I’m drinking” applies a poison pen to what is otherwise one of Adkins’ most familiar writing tropes. “Disintegration” also uncharacteristically intensified just about everything else about Futures, and the result was so compelling that it alone warranted the release of 2005’s Stay On My Side Tonight. Lind’s drums were freed from basic timekeeping and cranked louder than the guitars, the band’s usually angelic harmonies were lent to a demonic cheerleading cadence and Trombino’s electronic production touches surrounded everything like the crackle of a high-voltage fence — title aside, Jimmy Eat World weren’t drowning in their sorrows on “Disintegration,” they were thrashing for their lives.

5. “A Praise Chorus” (Bleed American, 2001)

Did anyone besides Clear Channel really think “Bleed American” was condoning domestic terrorism? Bleed American was clearly intended as a pledge of cultural allegiance, an album that paid tribute to the life-altering power of heartland rock radio by adding to it. I mean, the cover is a damn jukebox and there’s a John Mellencamp homage that isn’t even the most referential song. That would be “A Praise Chorus,” wherein the power of pop music isn’t framed in spiritual terms, but something closer to a narcotic — something that can create a fleeting, but very real sense of belonging, a piece of the world that truly feels like your own. It’s powerful shit, something that can inspire ordinary people to do extraordinary things, to dedicate their entire lives to chasing that high either as a fan or as a musician themselves. But even as Adkins and Davey Von Bohlen sound irrepressibly joyful in aligning They Might Be Giants, Poison, Tommy James, and The Promise Ring like the bowling trophies on Bleed American’s cover, there’s a warning encoded in “A Praise Chorus” about the insidious downside of your formative years. “Stick around, nostalgia won’t let you down,” Adkins sings, but it won’t lift you up. As much as it tells, “A Praise Chorus” shows — how can you hear Lind’s pounding drum intro and not be on your feet, on the floor, good to go and ready to fall in love tonight. It might not happen, and it probably won’t, but “A Praise Chorus” wants to be that song you hear that makes anything feel possible.

4. “Lucky Denver Mint” (Clarity, 1999)

A lot was riding on the first single from Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity — “Lucky Denver Mint” was given a soft launch on a teaser EP released by an unheralded Florida label called Fueled By Ramen and later, a plum spot on the Never Been Kissed soundtrack. Whereas they were dilettantes in both electronics and pop melody on Static Prevails, their new sound was bold and bionic, outfitted with state-of-the-art drum loops and a hook that was insistent rather than suggestive. Capitol also financed a clip that probably seemed in line with the self-deprecating, loudly ironic Jack Black-ish physical comedy that defined alt-rock videomaking at the time, but I refuse to link out of respect for the band. This song was supposed to accomplish everything “The Middle” did two years later and perhaps its failure to launch was encoded in its downbeat chorus — “you’re not bigger than this, not better, why can’t you learn?” You know, maybe you should write yourself off. Inspired by a terrible night gambling in Vegas, “Lucky Denver Mint” doesn’t explode like the Bleed American singles, it just surges forward like a racing dog after a mechanized rabbit it won’t ever catch or an addict impulsively acting on the belief that it’ll hit different this time. “Lucky Denver Mint” was self-fulfilling prophecy in that way — Jimmy Eat World were a major-label band on borrowed time, at the mercy of disinterested Capitol execs, short-sighted radio DJs and the fickle tastes of music consumers in a time of teen-pop and nu-metal. But contrary to what Adkins claims on “Lucky Denver Mint,” they did learn from the experience and we wouldn’t have gotten Bleed American without it — the next time, they bet on themselves and hit the jackpot.

3. “For Me This Is Heaven” (Clarity, 1999)

Do you really expect me to justify this song’s placement by talking about… I dunno, how that piano part perfectly weaves its way into that dual-guitar lattice that sorta kinda predicted American Football’s “The Summer Ends”? Or that final harmony? Or how the off-kilter drums keep everything from floating too far into the clouds? Come on, y’all — if four grown-ass men can make a song titled “For Me This Is Heaven” with a chorus of “can you still feel the butterflies” without totally embarrassing themselves, that would be enough. That it serves as the lyrical centerpiece of one of the greatest emo albums ever made justifies every bit of success they achieved in perpetuity.

2. “Sweetness” (Bleed American, 2001)

I don’t want to give Capitol too much credit here, but… if they were the ones who decided “Sweetness” wasn’t a good fit for Clarity, they made the right call. At least that’s the case with the version that’s been retroactively appended to its deluxe reissue, a scrappier take more in line with the “Sweetness” that was appearing in their live sets alongside “Lucky Denver Mint” and “Crush.” There’s an argument that it’s thematically aligned with, say, “Believe In What You Want,” “Blister” or anything else on an album rife with unrequited affection, especially given Jimmy Eat World’s relationship with a label that was mostly fixated on reissuing Beatles and Frank Sinatra records at the time (“Capitol didn’t give a shit about us,” Adkins later joked). But the demo version of “Sweetness” sits in a liminal state between the formative pop-punk of their earliest days and the Jimmy Eat World striving to make “disgustingly catchy and straight ahead” radio hits on Bleed American. The first part is certainly true — Adkins’ a cappella “are you listening? WHOA-OH-OH-OH-OH-OH” is one of the greatest opening lines of the 21st century and now that I think about it, the demo version of “Sweetness” is basically a Post-Nothing track. But “straight ahead,” not so much here. Sure, the ubiquity of “The Middle” has likely driven many to ride on the behalf of “Sweetness,” but to these ears, it’s also a better representation of what it meant for emo to go mainstream. The post-hardcore and second-wave influences are plainly obvious, Lind’s churning drums and the stop-start dynamics as vicious as anything Trombino’s old band put to tape, a historical fiction where Yank Crime justifies its existence to Interscope accountants. Even if its lyrics are pretty much the exact opposite of those on “The Middle,” the existence and success of “Sweetness” is just as life-affirming — if you’re gonna ask “are you listening,” say it with your whole chest.

1. “23” (Futures, 2004)

Teenagers are mythical beings in pop music, living, loving, and losing with a raw vulnerability that makes them both invincible and ultimately blameless. It’s much harder to romanticize someone’s early 20’s — Jimmy Eat World’s most famous advocate described being 22 as “miserable and magical” and their second-most famous advocates wrote a song called “What’s My Age Again?” that concluded “nobody likes you when you’re 23.” Because at that age, you’re supposed to discover that “ADD” really meant “being bored in school” now that the world has more to offer than television and prank phone calls, and the obligations of adulthood are now coming into focus: your parents might have been married and actual parents at 23, or at least college graduates or at least no longer living with their parents. It appeared that the culture at large was beginning to soften their expectations towards people in this demographic as the long tail of the Great Recession segued into the 2020 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually any easier to experience being 23.

I firmly believe that Jimmy Eat World is at their best writing about this specific age range — there isn’t exactly a desire to relive one’s teens, but to reassess those formative experiences now that you have the lived experience to fully appreciate them. It’s easy enough to say “I wanna fall in love tonight” in high school when kids fall in love three times a week; it means something different when you’re ready to fall in love for the last time. And so it’s only right that a song called “23” is their magnum opus. It’s obvious that Jimmy Eat World were heavy into The Cure during the making of Futures — another band who has spent decades successfully speaking to listener’s teenage conception of themselves — and when it comes to giving the majestic sprawl of “Pictures Of You” a hi-def, emo-pop reshoot, “23” out-Disintegration’s Jimmy Eat World’s own “Disintegration” (imagine if they switched out “Night Drive” and had those two back-to-back on Futures).

During the second verse, Adkins’ perspective switches to someone who’s about to turn 23 and sees it as a final emotional destination; “I won’t always want what I’ll never have / I won’t always live in my regrets.” It’s the kind of thing a teenager sometimes has to believe to survive high school, and I wouldn’t want that experience to be lost on anyone. But those feelings don’t end when you turn 23; they probably get worse. And this is how the chorus of “23” really generates its power — it’s Adkins in the mode where he works best, an older brother figure, someone who can alternately provide comfort, support, and tough love, who’s been there maybe just a few years earlier. 95% of the time, he’ll tell you to learn from his mistakes — make a move or you’ll miss out; disguised as patience, time gets wasted; you are free, as much as you can stand to be; you’ll sit alone forever if you wait for the right time, what are you hoping for? “23” isn’t really about being 23 years old, or wanting to be 23, or looking back at turning 23 — just the point when people decide they’re here, they’re now, they’re ready to truly live.

Jon Stewart is new to Twitter, and yes, it’s 2021. One might guess that Hell has frozen over, but that might not be the best hyperbolic statement go make, given the U.S. is currenly covered in snow and ice and resembles a Roland Emmerich movie. Stewart recently joined the platform to express fury over the GameStop/Robinhood stock fiasco, and he’s subsequently tweeted a handful of times, mostly jokes.

Now, the former The Daily Show host appears to be doing slightly more than having fun with his latest offering. “Has anyone seen my me packet?” Stewart tweeted.

The first thing on a lot of people’s minds was to wonder what the heck was happening.

Well, this probably has plenty to do with Stewart’s recently announced Apple TV+ show, for which he’ll do the current-affairs thing again for multiple seasons beginning sometime in 2021. The gifted satirist will likely not be able to resist amusing his viewers, even though the show (according to the Apple TV+ synopsis) “won’t have a nightly or even weekly cadence.”

As for the whole “packet” thing, he’s apparently asking Twitter users to offer up original jokes, which is standard practice for the late-night TV realm (writers who want to work for the show submit packets of sketches and/or provide impressions). People quickly picked up on what Jon was (likely) asking for, and they had a field day while alternately attempting and not attempting to impress him into throwing out some gigs. And yes, of course there was a John Mulaney joke in here. Also, “FULL METAL PACKET”!

People got a little carried away. Good for them! I hope someone here gets the gig.

Jon Stewart’s still-untitled Apple TV+ show should arrive in 2021.