Chimeo Classics: Jimmy Eat World - 23

Chimeo Classic: A cultural moment / release that is or has been important to one of our team at a key points in their life.

There are songs in everyone’s lives that instantly transport you back to a certain time or place, good or bad. Everyone has a soundtrack to their life – mine is as eclectic as my musical taste. Early memories comprise stealthily creeping about my Grandmother’s Grand Piano as she would play Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude (Op.28 No. 15), with her narrating the music: “Here come the monks…” she would say as the slow, stomping piano gradually climbed to the crescendo of the forte before breaking into the sweeter melody.

Then there is the memory of my mother singing “Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I want to go to bed…” whilst behind the wheel. Having looked up that song to write this piece, alas, I regret to say that my mother’s musical rendition sounded nothing like the original by Emerson, Lake & Palmers.

My mother’s love of Jim Reeves didn’t stick with me; and it took a while for me to come to appreciate my father’s taste in Björk – but that said, my love of Sixties Rock and Roll, John Denver and Elvis came from the CD player of my childhood home. And inconsequential exposure to music as a youngster has latterly caught up with me – the best example being when strolling through a park in Leeds during my time at university when I happened across New Order’s True Faith on an iPod bought from a friend. For an enchanting five minutes fifty-one seconds I was back in my dining room with my sister, bopping around to the eighties electric synth pop as it was pumped from the tinny local radio station, which I believe was called Orchard FM.

Just this morning I have put on the very same iPod (now very old and decrepit) and returned to a favourite from a similar period – university. Jimmy Eat World, described by the internet as a band blending pop-punk and emo – I couldn’t tell you how or why I came across them, but one song of theirs – 23 – sticks with me through my adult life. Its seven-minute duration was almost perfectly timed for my walk from halls to the campus; a perhaps gloomy start to a day of study – but with melodies that inspire.



Why 23 resonated I do not know. The “emo” kids of my high school period were the ones adorned with black hoodies and thick kohl eyeliner who smoked weed on College Green at lunchtime. I was friendly with some, but certainly not one of them. I never fitted into any specific group at school, perhaps another reason why the music accumulated in my teenage years was as diverse as it is.

Yet the melodic melancholy of 23 remains a go-to track when I want to immerse myself in a piece of music that allows an escape from whatever is taking precedence, unwelcomely, in my mind.

My days of being twenty-three are long since passed, but the lyrics are a bittersweet reminder of the solitude I felt through my formative years. “No one else will know these lonely dreams, no one else will know that part of me.” It reminds me of the intensity of connection I formed as and when I could “No one else will have me, only you.” And it reflected the regret I felt about a great deal of things – not just what I did or didn’t do, or what I could have done better, but perhaps in response to how I treated those whom I latched on to with such desperate ferocity. And still there was that perpetual hope for something better just around the corner – I thought: “I am young, I still have my life ahead of me” – yes, it would take years of effort to get through to the other side, but without hope, what is the point? I can’t say that I achieved the promise to not “always love these selfish things” - I can be deeply self-absorbed (to my own disgrace) but with maturity, I have learnt to forgive the past, move on from regret.

I do not write this to stir sympathy – it is simply an honest response to a piece of alternative-rock-cum-power-pop music from an album (Futures, 2004) that speaks of teenage angst and deeper existential concerns – from heartbreak to alcoholism, drug addiction to despair -all peppered with a dash of optimism.

Nowadays I can simply lose myself in the layers of melody, the acoustic guitar and the gentle accompanying drums. And as a 2012 review found on sputnikmusic.com Sputnik Music. concludes - (it is a) reminder that no matter what happens in life, nobody can take away your future.