AJR Swims The Sea of Life in "The Maybe Man"

Written by Meg Clemmensen

Graphic by Rebekah Witt

AJR is a weird band with strange, quirky music — and it’s my favorite thing about them. As a fan since their 2017 album, The Click, I’ve seen them grow up to evolve the themes of their music, explore new genre blends, blow up on TikTok with recognizable tunes like “World’s Smallest Violin,” play unforgettably unique live shows, and release plenty of songs. The truth is, there’s really no band out there doing it like them. In a world so filled with art by multitudes of creators, it’s so easy to find phenomenally talented bands with wonderful records and still be able to compare them and identify where inspiration may have been drawn from due to similar lyrics, melodies, or instrumentation. But when you look at AJR, the art they’re creating is so individualistic that it becomes way harder to find anything similar. From their days street performing as three teenage brothers with a dream to now playing their first ever arena tour, they’ve stayed true to their roots, which is writing about whatever is real to them. No matter how uncomfortable, awkward, or personal those feelings may be, they are documented within the music. The Maybe Man is no exception, as the group’s highly-anticipated fifth studio album.

On November 10th, the band’s newest cohesive piece of work was introduced to the world. The Maybe Man is a 12-track album, put together in a carefully planned order to guide listeners through the intended journey. Before November 10th, I was afraid to listen to the record. I utterly adored The Click and Neotheater — in fact, when I was 17, I got the lyrics “Follow The Click” tattooed in lead singer Jack Met’s handwriting. When OK Orchestra was released in 2021, it wasn’t my favorite work by the band. There were plenty of songs that I fell head over heels for, but there were also a handful that didn’t stick with me much. That has nothing to do with the band and their evolution, and everything to do with my shifting music taste! But I felt the same about many of the newest singles, besides “The DJ Is Crying For Help” which I adored, and “I Won’t” and “Yes I’m A Mess” took a little bit of time but really grew on me. I began to worry that the direction AJR was taking their music was out of my taste range and that I would have to put effort into appreciating their newer records to the same extent as their older ones. I listened to The Maybe Man for the first time on the morning of November 11th while driving an hour out of town for an event. I’d seen a few spoilers in advance, but I put care into making my first listen a circumstance where I was disconnected from social media, and all I had was the music and the road. By the end of that day, I’m pretty sure I’d listened to the album front-to-back at least four times total.

Let’s get into why this is some of the band’s best work yet. One of AJR’s signature artistic developments is creating an overture to begin their records, something to encapsulate the body of music and tap into all the themes and major melodies that are going to be explored. For this record, they went with a simple title, “Maybe Man.” Compared to their previous overtures, however, this track is anything but simple. In past albums, the overture has simply included echoed lyrics and musical progression, a culmination that calls out to what the brothers deem as the most important concepts of the record. Neotheater explored a new form of doing this by having very cinematic, telltale intro and outro tracks rather than an explicit overture. OK Orchestra used the overture method again, but it presented a shift from The Click and Living Room. It incorporated some original lyrics that were drawn from themes surrounding other songs on the record, but weren’t featured in those other songs. “Maybe Man” has now perfected this formula. With 12 total verses that rapidly build up until Jack Met is almost screaming in a frustrated need to be understood by the end, and a triumphant outro at the end of it all, the band has confirmed to fans that “Maybe Man” serves as a table of contents for the songs ahead. Each of the verses alludes to one of the album’s songs, and a theory exists that one of the verses is attributed to an allegedly scrapped thirteenth track, but that the ‘pandemonium’ conclusion is meant to reference “Maybe Man” itself. This song is charged with raw emotion and a whole lot of questioning oneself. The Mets consider wide arrays of options to fit in, be liked, and find their purpose by changing form and fitting into the world. The remainder of the album follows suit.

As one can typically expect from an AJR release, there’s a steady blend of fast and slow songs to follow. The band takes inspiration from theater, modern radio pop, indie, electronica, and the good old-fashioned pensive ballad. This formula equates to boldly personal artistic statements, with danceable songs about hopeless romanticism and an inability to stand up for oneself like “Touchy Feely Fool” and existential finale songs about mortality, growing old, and wrapping things up like “2085.” On The Maybe Man, we primarily get fast music leaning heavily into instrumental experimentation. A personal top pick of mine is “Hole in the Bottom of My Brain.” Each verse of this track explores a new theme of building stardom, such as partying, spending money, and conforming to the lifestyle that comes with fame. But after each verse, the refrain repeats itself with added lyrics referencing the most recent verse. So by the end, we have a fast-paced burst of emotion and rhymes that are unbelievably fun to sing along with. AJR have always been very open about their experiences with the band rising in popularity and dabbling in the scene of fame, and it seems they wish to continue sharing this truth with their fans. It is fairly new terrain for the trio, and as I’ve previously mentioned, these three are best known for keeping it honest and down to earth. They only write what they know, and “Hole in the Bottom of My Brain” is as honest as it is goofy and enjoyable.

Along the topic of raw and truthful songs, “Turning Out Pt. iii” and “God is Really Real” are some of the most emotional tracks the band has ever given us, and they’re featured right on this new record among other gems. Band member Ryan Met has now penned all three components of the “Turning Out” saga, beginning with 2017’s The Click. These songs tell stories about love and relationships, and the uncertainty of it all. The first installment sings about a combination of fear and longing to grow up, and inviting a potential lover to grow up alongside him. “Turning Out Pt. ii,” a lot more depressing than the first, comes from the perspective of the ending of a relationship, when he has now grown up to the point where he can recognize he wasn’t actually in love, but just hooked on the idea of being in love. He regretfully breaks the heart of the song’s subject and realizes that this is, in fact, how things turn out. The latest installment to the saga came in 2019, and now, four years later, we have the third part in our hands. Ryan Met sings this song, rather than his brother Jack, who typically handles vocals in the foreground. Ryan spirals as the song continues, riddled with anxiety and fluctuating between wanting to get married, have kids, and buy a house instantaneously, or whether the pair of partners should split and call it the end. He longs to figure out why everyone else has their life figured out except him, but his thoughts quiet for a conclusion where he recognizes taking things one day at a time and appreciating the people in his life is an ideal way to turn out. It’s pretty funny to think how every “Turning Out” track gets better than the last, and once fans believe the latest is surely the most vulnerable yet, something as heartbreaking as this song drops.

“God is Really Real” is the other emotional standout on the album. The Met brothers experienced the tragedy of loss this year with their father passing away. Evident based on prior songs the group has penned such as “Call My Dad,” the trio was very close with their father and felt this loss deeply. “God is Really Real” is their way of coping with his illness, which ultimately led to his death shortly thereafter. The band reflects on how life goes on around them, including their own shows and careers continuing by the day, but their father is still bedridden, so the rest of the world’s happenings are irrelevant in comparison. I don’t consider myself to be a religious person at all, and it sounds like the brothers come from a similar stance. Feeling lost and hopeless with what they’re experiencing, they are pleading to a God they aren’t even sure exists, and as a last resort, they find solace in the fact that maybe God is real in this moment that they desperately need such a higher power. In this song’s chorus and its overall theme, the band’s 2019 track “Karma” seems to be referenced. “Karma” is another song that AJR uses as a desperate plea, hoping that, since they’ve been so good and kind, karma would soon come their way — but it never does because such a thing is merely a concept. Their outlook on God and karma in 2023 is that these things only come true in moments of mere desperation. When it’s convenient and when there’s nowhere else to turn, they will show themselves, but otherwise, they cease to exist. Considering the nature of the band being a group of brothers, the sadness shines through stronger in the lyrics to this song than almost anything they’ve written before, as it’s a cause that hits close to home for them all. Going on without a parent, especially one so close to the heart, can be an incredibly daunting task. Though it doesn’t make it any less painful, the brothers are able to channel their heartbreak into art, and I’m sure it’s at least semi-therapeutic. 

I wouldn’t be able to write a review about standout songs without including “Inertia.” This track very quickly became a fan favorite, and funnily enough, Ryan Met confirmed that it hardly even made it onto the final album tracklist. This song has a very signature-AJR sound and meaning to it, almost feeling like it could have been an outtake to some of the themes widely explored in Neotheater, with a similar composition and melody as well. The lyricism to “Inertia” explores the concept of life remaining unchanged, and things continuing the same way; following the same moment-to-moment trends despite a longing for change that just never comes. Jack Met sings about both his and his peers’ desires to up and change their appearance or style, chase their dreams, go out and find the love of their life, and move to a big town, but how it’s so much easier to just sit comfortably in familiarity than it is to put effort into achieving these feats. One of the band’s greatest specialties is putting an upbeat tune onto an existentialist track, and “Inertia” is a perfect example. The irony of it all is that from the outside, it seems like the members of AJR have not actually fallen victim to the traps of inertia. They’ve very publicly been striving for stardom and working their way up in the industry for over a decade now, constantly doing what it takes to get their name out there. Even still, there must be enough of a sense of mundanity and lack of overall motive to shift certain aspects of their lifestyle in order for them to create such a charged song that quickly skyrocketed to the top of most diehards’ track rankings. “Inertia” paints a vivid picture of a reluctance to change, a fear of failure that results in not trying, and a comfort in maintaining balance instead of stirring the pot.

A couple of the songs that didn’t hugely stick out to me as favorites were still phenomenally well done. “Steve’s Going To London” and “The Dumb Song” were probably the two songs I found to be the least enjoyable and memorable, but that is absolutely not to say they weren’t enjoyable and memorable. “Steve’s Going To London” is a catchy track with simplified lyrics about comparing yourself to others and how life doesn’t always turn out how one could expect. Referencing what one could assume to be other people in the bandmates’ lives and where they’re at in their lives, AJR sings about trying to find meaning in anything going on. The band has confirmed this song has an impressive six tempo changes, and one of these can be identified as the bridge slows it down and essentially becomes a scenario where the listener is sitting in on Jack Met’s internal thoughts about writing the song itself. This abstract way of sharing the band’s experience of longing to write something that will both illustrate their feelings and connect with an audience among the general public is an interesting technique that I’ve never really seen other artists adopt, so my hat goes off to them for always finding a way to keep their tunes different from the rest of the mainstream. “The Dumb Song,” on the other hand, doesn’t have as much of a deeper meaning, at least not to my findings. It’s really just a silly song where the band takes an insult and rolls with it. It seems to involve some undertones of self-doubt, as whoever’s perspective the song is meant to be told from simply believes they’re dumb and uses it to explain away their actions. The songwriting is a bit shallower than most of the band’s songs, but the fun instrumentation is what makes this song fit into the album.

At the end of the day, The Maybe Man is an excellent record from front to back. Complete with catchy singles, but a way better album full of hidden, non-radio-oriented music, this is yet another piece of typical AJR work. It’s not my personal favorite record by them, but it’s without a doubt the one that displays their growth most efficiently. From day one, the band has lived by an identifiable, unwritten rule: be so blatantly, unapologetically real with the world, that the world will become more real to you. Sometimes the only way to cope with the insanity of day-to-day life is by somehow channeling it into art using words, visuals, or sounds, or in AJR’s case, all of the above. This band has gained a cult following by using these strategies and creating an open communication method for their fans to relate to. I’ve never felt more seen and heard than I do when I play certain songs of theirs, such as “Come Hang Out” and “Karma,” because they exquisitely describe feelings I’ve had, that I didn’t even know how to put words to. I look forward to the day that the world begins acknowledging this band’s genius and fully delving into their albums as a whole piece of art — front-to-back is really the only way to properly indulge in a new AJR release.