That's what playing in a band felt like: At any minute, this could really end. At 25, I was just thinking about how much I could get away with. So I knew that it wasn't anything that you could build a whole lot of long-term stock in. “When we came to Capitol in ’95 or '96, there were double-door posters for these alternative rock bands, and none of them actually broke, and I have no idea what any of them were doing one record later. Maybe it doesn't turn out to be that great of a song, but it's not going to be anything unless you turn it into something, so you might as well explore it.” “Whatever it is going on in your head, don't be afraid to put it down in your song if it's simple or if it's personal, whatever it is, it came to you, and that, it's a gift that you're just rejecting by not exploring it. That's something that I feel everyone still fights with all the time.” It’s still applicable to a lot of situations, this idea that your sense of self-worth isn't based on outside approval. “The central theme of ‘The Middle’ is something that I still find nuances in to explore now, as a completely different person than the person who wrote that song 20 years ago. At the end of the day, the listener's not going to know any of that or care-they’re going to find a connection in there or they're not, and it doesn't really matter what you, the artist, had to go through to get there.” Like this thing that just came out of you in two hours couldn't possibly be as valuable as this thing you labored over. When you're working, there's just this thing you've got to get over, that sometimes because it took you a lot of effort or struggle to solve the musical puzzle, to complete the song, that somehow that's worth more. “‘The Middle’ wasn't high on our radar when we were making Bleed American, in part because it was a simple song and it came together quickly. What's going to really transcend is if you're honest with yourself about what you're doing and what you like, and putting that forward.” There's nothing more of a turnoff than when someone's just chasing your approval. You might have last summer's novelty song jam, but I think when you're chasing your idea of what an imaginary listener would really like, I think it comes off of as desperate. And I still don't think it's something you can, really. “Having a bona fide hit is not at all what we were chasing.
“I think that comes through.” Here, he shares the lessons he learned along the way.
“It’s a snapshot of us in our early twenties, curious and trying to protect the rewards of playing music, the part that makes it stay fun,” Adkins says. In setting out to make an album for themselves, they’d made one for everybody. Though the band would temporarily change the album’s title to Jimmy Eat World after 9/11, its sense of openness and possibility ran deep and undiminished. “Everything I've learned about the punk-rock world is it's inclusive and accepting and there's no such thing as not being punk enough that you can't be part of the club. But where Clarity reveled in added layers of instrumentation, Bleed American saw them embrace a more direct approach, from the swift and wordless hooks of “Sweetness” (originally written for Clarity) to the fizzy romance of “A Praise Chorus” to “The Middle,” a runaway hit (and Taylor Swift favorite) that was inspired by an email from a fan who’d been excluded at school by a clique of friends who claimed they were punks. After two LPs with Capitol Records-1996’s Static Prevails and 1999’s much-beloved Clarity-the Arizona rock outfit had developed a small but dedicated following as one in a burgeoning scene of emo and post-hardcore bands in the late ’90s, The Promise Ring and The Get Up Kids among them. On the other side was mainstream stardom. We were just making something that we think is rad. “There was the sense that we didn't know where this was going or what we were going to do with it once it was completed,” frontman Jim Adkins tells Apple Music of the album 20 years after its release. When Jimmy Eat World began work on 2001’s Bleed American, they were free-unattached to any label or schedule, recording entirely on their own time with their own money.
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