Welcome to New Retro Week, a celebration of the most important artists, hits, and cultural moments that made 2012 a seminal yr in pop. MTV Information is wanting again to see what lies forward: These essays showcase how right now’s blueprint was laid a decade in the past. Step into our time machine.
It’s troublesome to conjure up reminiscences of 2012 with out Enjoyable’s Some Nights spinning within the background. The pop-rock group’s frenetic, theatrical sophomore album dropped like an atom bomb, with lead singles “We Are Younger” and “Some Nights” immolating notions of what each genres might sound like blended collectively for a brand new decade.
It additionally catapulted the New York Metropolis-based trio — lead vocalist Nate Ruess, bassist and pianist Andrew Dost, and lead guitarist and drummer Jack Antonoff — to fame, scoring them six Grammy nominations and two wins. Every member has gone on to forge their very own profession, too, with Ruess releasing an album on his personal and collaborating with the likes of Younger Thug; Dost scoring a variety of movies and tv exhibits; and Antonoff making a reputation for himself as each a profitable solo act (Bleachers) and pop music’s most sought-after producer. He’s imbued Taylor Swift’s Folklore with its wistful, woodsy thrum, Lorde’s Melodrama with its dispirited spectacle, nevertheless it was the crucial and industrial success of Some Nights that gave Antonoff legs on which to face.
And it began with an evocative, unforgettable refrain.
Regardless of Enjoyable’s bombastic sound, the band had humble origins. Ruess’s earlier outfit, The Format, disbanded in 2008, and the singer-songwriter reached out to Antonoff, who had beforehand fronted Metal Prepare, and Dost, who’d performed percussion and sang backup vocals for Anathallo, to collaborate on what would ultimately turn into Enjoyable. The trio lower their tooth touring with Jack’s Model in 2008. Their first album — the indie rock-leaning Purpose and Ignite, stuffed with energetic, guitar-driven bops punctuated by the occasional trumpet or vocal crescendo — dropped the next yr.
Though Enjoyable’s debut didn’t attain mainstream audiences, it did seize the eye of Fueled by Ramen, the emo-centric file label behind pop-punk giants like Panic! On the Disco and Paramore. The trio signed with the label in August 2010. “It was type of a bizarre one by way of what Fueled by Ramen had carried out at that time,” Mike Easterlin, co-president of Elektra Music Group, Fueled by Ramen’s mum or dad firm, tells MTV Information. That they had a considerably emo look — who might overlook Antonoff’s thick-rimmed black glasses? — however the similarities stopped there. Between Ruess’s hovering voice and the band’s penchant for flamboyant instrumentals, their sound was extra corresponding to Queen than Fall Out Boy.
Whereas ideating round their second album, Ruess, Dost, and Antonoff have been impressed by hip-hop artists like Kanye West and Jay-Z. Ruess quickly realized a single songwriter-producer was the frequent denominator: Jeff Bhasker, whose credit embody everybody from Beyoncé to Taylor Swift. Ruess managed to attain 5 minutes of Bhasker’s time whereas the producer was coming by way of New York in early 2011. Bhasker remembers that first assembly properly, principally as a result of he thought nothing would come of it.
“I invited Nate as much as my resort room and performed him some stuff,” he tells MTV Information. “I stated, ‘What are you engaged on?’ And he stated, ‘Effectively, the opposite day in a cab, I used to be simply scripting this tune.’” Ruess proceeded to belt the rousing hook to explosive lead single “We Are Younger,” its lyrics and melody already totally shaped. Bhasker felt like a slot machine hitting triple-sevens. “My eyes lit up, and I stated, ‘We’re going to a studio tomorrow.’ And that’s precisely what we did.”
By the point Bhasker was on board, Enjoyable had already written the bones of 5 songs, together with Some Nights’s title monitor, a stirring lower with an existential bend, and “Carry On,” a piano-backed pop ballad about transferring ahead after a tragedy (“Might your previous be the sound / Of your ft upon the bottom”). The writing and recording course of moved shortly: With the assistance of co-producers Emile Haynie and Jake One, Some Nights dropped in February 2012, lower than a yr after Ruess’s fateful chat with Bhasker.
Round that point, Easterlin was in control of radio promotion for Fueled by Ramen and Roadrunner Data, one other EMG subsidiary. He says John Janick, the label’s former president, saved the album underneath wraps through the recording course of. Easterlin himself didn’t hear “We Are Younger” till it had already been positioned in a Tremendous Bowl industrial for Chevrolet. “I can’t say that radio fairly acquired it, even with the industrial, till they began seeing the gross sales that occurred off of it and the quantity of downloads the tune had,” he explains. “It simply turned nearly plain, one thing individuals actually could not ignore.”
“We Are Younger” takes maintain of you from the very first drumbeat. The tune opens with lyrics that set a vivid scene, your lover ready for you simply throughout a hazy New York bar. Ruess’s dramatic vocals construct to a easy but anthemic refrain based mostly across the three-word title. Bhasker likens Ruess’s abilities to, who else, Freddie Mercury. It’s a lofty comparability, however Easterlin agrees. “Nobody had heard a voice from a person in a very long time who might hit the notes he might, and it simply jumped out. I believe individuals have been attempting to determine, who’s that? What is that this?”
“We Are Younger”’s hook additionally boasts backing vocals from Janelle Monáe and a “actually heavy, knocking hip-hop beat,” two components Bhasker believes play a serious function in its enduring recognition and cross-genre attraction. Thus far, “We Are Younger” is Enjoyable’s most streamed song on Spotify, with over 7 million performs. It additionally scored the band a Track of the Yr Grammy in 2013.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagicJeff Bhasker with Nate Ruess, Jack Antonoff, and Andrew Dost on the 2013 Grammys.
“If that is in HD, you’ll be able to see our faces, and we’re actually not younger,” Ruess quipped in his acceptance speech. It didn’t matter. Like different carpe-diem pop hits earlier than it, “We Are Younger”’s anthemic lyrics spoke to an overarching urge to “set the world on fireplace” and let unfastened, even when just for an evening.
Though 2012 was a politically charged election yr in the USA, it predated a variety of destabilizing occasions within the years to return. Bhasker rattles off just a few that left indelible marks on youthful millennials and Gen-Zers: the opioid epidemic, the rise in mass shootings, and now the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. “These generations don’t have rather a lot to stay up for, so their music is type of numb and repressed,” he says. “However ‘Tonight we’re younger / We’ll set the world on fireplace’ — this music could be very emotive and has an final air of hopefulness even among the many unhappiness.”
Enjoyable have been on hiatus since 2015, but the band’s affect remains to be felt. Some Nights was “undoubtedly a game-changer” for stadium-sized pop-rock, Easterlin says. “You may level to numerous bands from the years on after that album that went in comparable instructions.” Enjoyable’s boundary-pushing sound kickstarted a shift towards room-filling, chant-ready choices from teams like Misterwives, Neon Timber, Grouplove, and Stroll the Moon.
The album’s success can also be a testomony to every Enjoyable member’s strengths as songwriters and recording artists. As we speak, file labels typically pair youthful or rising signees with exterior songwriters and producers. That wasn’t the case 10 years in the past, Easterlin explains. “Definitely with Some Nights, there have been exterior writers, however there have been solely a pair, and so they have been very a lot following the band’s lead.”
Antonoff particularly has turn into a prolific pop songwriter and producer, amassing a veritable cinematic universe of A-list collaborators. Nonetheless, a educated ear can simply determine an Antonoff-produced album. His trademark model harkens again to the traits that made Some Nights stand out sonically, marrying daring, ‘80s-inspired synths and playful percussion with spirited hooks. Enjoyable’s success gave him proof of idea and allowed him to lean into his pure strengths.
“Jack has most likely thrived in his potential to actually interact with numerous completely different individuals, which is finally why he was capable of work with Taylor Swift or anyone like that,” Easterlin provides. “He might have been in awe of those individuals, however he is simply such a assured man in his potential and his method of being round individuals whether or not he is aware of them very well or not. I believe that is what made Jack type of distinctive to the band.”
Though Antonoff is arguably Enjoyable’s most recognizable alum, Ruess has his moments. He has recorded with P!nk, possibly ghostwritten a tune for Zedd and Hayley Williams, launched his personal solo album and even reunited The Format in early 2020. Bhasker calls him “one in every of my finest mates.” They write collectively each Monday.
“It is such a segregated world between indie rock and hip-hop and R&B,” Bhasker provides. “[‘We Are Young’] particularly, I believe, has gone to penetrate each of these worlds equally. So seeing that play out 10 years later could be very satisfying, and an incredible legacy for [Some Nights] to have.”
