I first discovered Bleachers in late 2020, and I had no idea how my life and my undergraduate career would be changed by their presence in my life. My Discover Weekly provided me with “Rollercoaster,” one of their most popular tracks. I was immediately enamored with the song and wanted to share it with everyone I knew. A few weeks later, I discovered “Don’t Take the Money.” I thought I had heard perfection when I heard “Rollercoaster,” but “Don’t Take the Money” was on another level. This was the song for me in January and February 2021. Sentimental value was added when I was starting to develop feelings for my now-boyfriend, starting in late February. Every Bleachers song I discovered one by one subsequently made me more interested in them. At the time, they had just two albums: Strange Desire and Gone Now. Both went quadruple platinum in my earbuds as a junior and senior in high school. I was in love with Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night when it came out. TTSOOSN solidified my place as a Bleachers fan, rather than a casual listener.
Bleachers is the band led by Jack Antonoff, the legendary music producer and former member of the bands Steel Train and fun. The band is currently comprised of Jack, Evan Smith, Mikey Freedom Hart, Sean Hutchinson, Michael Riddleberger, and Zem Audu. Legend has it (AKA Jack tells the story at every concert) that amid insurmountable sadness, Bleachers was born from the sound of a Juno chord (thus was born the “Juno Interlude” before every performance of “Rollercoaster” in concert). The Juno chord, which is named after the synthesizer instrument it was played on, filled the empty space and gave Jack a direction. In the years following, the band members started to enter the picture, and thus, there was Bleachers. There have been many members of Bleachers over the decade of its existence, but the spirit has remained the same throughout.
At the beginning of my relationship, we bonded over trading songs we liked, and “Don’t Take the Money” and “Wild Heart” were at the top of my list to share (this was before TTSOOSN). These songs were foundational in our getting to know each other. Starting college a year and a half later was admittedly lonely, and I often turned to music to give me solace. The three Bleachers albums in existence at the time, along with the music of my other favorite artists like Taylor Swift and Florence + the Machine, were my safe place. The song “45” came out a few months into our relationship, and it quickly became one of ‘our’ songs (this will be important later). When I lost a friend to cancer at the end of my first semester of college, Bleachers was there for me. I started looking into the history of the band and meanings behind the lyrics, and I found out that a lot of the first three albums were inspired by lead singer Jack Antonoff’s experiences with grief after his sister’s passing when he was young. Specifically, the song “Like A River Runs” met me in the middle of my unexplainable grief, as I was preparing for my first finals week ever, and to this day I’ve never heard a better example of how it feels to go on with your life when someone you know has passed. The upbeat track and unsuspecting melody, coupled with devastating lyrics (which many of you will know is the Jack Antonoff signature special), met me exactly where I was: trying to pretend to be normal and okay while everything was crashing down inside my mind. In a way, Bleachers was there for me in a way no person in my life could have been. Only the music knew how I was feeling and what to say.
Fast forward to my sophomore year of college- in September, Bleachers released the lead single for what we didn’t know at the time was their fourth studio album, “Modern Girl.” When Bleachers (the self-titled album) was announced, I was over the moon. Not only was I going to get new music from my favorite artist, but they were also GOING ON TOUR! I waited in the (very short) presale queue and instantly got tickets (fanbase so small the presale queue took 5 minutes). Around this time, the singles for the new album were rolling out. As a long-term Lana del Rey fan, “Alma Mater” was an instant favorite for me, though I still can’t quite figure out what it’s about. “Me Before You” was unexpectedly emotional for me; it’s still a song that resonates deep with me, and I’m so lucky to have heard it live with my boyfriend next to me. But the one song that has literally never left my mind since it came out is “Tiny Moves.” If someone were to ask me my favorite song on any given day, it’s this one. This is quite literally the best song I have ever heard, and I would die on that hill.
When the rest of the Bleachers album came out, I listened to nothing else for weeks (conveniently, TTPD came out a month later and “Good Luck, Babe!” was in between, so I had a little bit of variety). The Bleachers album is truly life-altering. Every single song is so real and hard-hitting, even the happy songs. A quick (not really, sorry in advance) breakdown of the standard album:
- Track 1: “I Am Right on Time,” the admittance that we are flawed people and always have been, and it’s easy to get caught up in our past mistakes, but we are right where we are meant to be nonetheless. It hits home in the moment as someone who’s always felt out of place. A lyric that sticks out to me: “My mind is mirrors, don’t know what is and what’s reflection, the future’s past, I’m right on time.”
- Tracks 2 and 3: “Modern Girl” and “Jesus Is Dead,” the tracks that re-establish the classic sound of Bleachers. The lyrics are all about the band itself, a self-mythology of sorts, and feature solos by band members while also driving home the signature homage to New Jersey. (Nothing to do with Jesus at all, really, just a metaphor.)
- Track 4: “Me Before You,” which I’ll mourn the lack of a music video for forever. A song about how finding the person you love can turn your life around. A music video for this single would’ve been the perfect follow-up to “Alma Mater” and “Tiny Moves,” both of which feature Jack’s wife, Margaret Qualley. Favorite lyric: “Scared to start and my face betrays me, gotta get out before my heart starts shaking, that was me blue, that was me before you.”
- Track 5: “Alma Mater,” a track that I mostly think is about nostalgia and a person that feels like home. “She’s my alma mater, chasing lines all night, smoking me outta sight, while the summer’s getting hotter.” The music video features Jack driving in a vintage car around a dreamlike version of his home state of NJ. At the end of the video, MQ gets in the car with him, which takes us right into…
- Track 6: “Tiny Moves.” The most perfect song I have ever heard. “The tiniest twist of fate, watching my whole world shake, watching my whole world change.” The music video is my favorite of all time, featuring Margaret dancing while the sun rises over New Jersey and Jack watches, symbolizing the tiniest move she made- meeting him- that changed his life forever. The most danceable song you will ever hear, a song that always puts me in a good mood. Watch the video here to be completely entranced.
- Track 7: “Isimo.” Named after MQ (re: @isimostar on Instagram), I think of this song as the Bleachers analog of “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” An ode to the strength and courage it takes to persevere through hard situations in life and sharing the burden with the person who loves you most. My favorite line? “You’re just like the rain, carrying everyone’s shame, but you move just like a river, you don’t wear an inch of it, babe.”
- Track 8: “Woke Up Today,” featured in the recent Broadway production of Romeo & Juliet that starred Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor. A track about being in love while still processing loss and grief, and all of the mixed emotions you’ll feel.
- Track 9: “Self Respect,” my second favorite from the album (and a close one!). Florence Welch (of Florence + the Machine) sings background vocals on this song about being so completely in love and wanting to let go of expectations and rules to be with your loved one (while still echoing the mental battles brought up in the previous track). This one was even more amazing live, and it’s my boyfriend’s favorite on the album, so I have a little bit of bias toward liking it so much, but it was my favorite upon first listen as well.
- Track 10: “Hey Joe,” a little bit of a political commentary, but disguised pretty well. Basically, it’s a song that says “we’re in deep s*** and we can’t do much about it, so let’s roll with it.”
- Track 11: “Call Me After Midnight,” a deceitful track that reads as a cute love song but is really about the struggle of loving someone so pathetically that you’re okay with them only returning the feelings when they’re using drugs. But the instrumental and the syncopation get me every time.
- Tracks 12 and 13: “We’re Gonna Know Each Other Forever” and “Ordinary Heaven.” These two are tear-jerkers for me. Both are love letters, in my opinion. The former is a love letter in my eyes to my friends and the people who have made me who I am, even if I don’t talk to all of them anymore. The latter is a love letter to life, and all of the mundane normal things that make life, as well as to love and being in love. As a graduating college student, my “Ordinary Heaven” is campus, my apartment, Her Campus meetings with my friends, the students I tutor, the nights my roommate and I watch Love is Blind, the empty dance studio I’ll use for hours- it’s everything around me and everything I am.
- Track 14, “The Waiter,” is the closer of the album. To be honest, I usually don’t get this far because “Ordinary Heaven” puts me in such a nostalgic state of mind that I have to listen to it over and over until I feel better. But I think “The Waiter” really brings the album full circle, like it would logically flow right back into “I Am Right On Time.”
If there was ever one single album I could recommend to someone, it would be Bleachers. The sheer depth in the songwriting on this album is unmatched, and this album is absolutely deserving of being the band’s self-titled, though it is unconventional for a fourth album to be named after a band. I think the reason it is titled as such is because it really holds a mirror to the heart of Bleachers, which is finding your people when your life is a mess. This album is the first to really lean into relationships this way, as Jack has discussed that he wanted to sort of move away from the focus on his sister’s passing and his grief with that with this album. I feel like all the growing up I’ve done as a college student has been right on track with the band’s releases, and with every passing year, I become more and more in phase with the music.
I saw Bleachers in concert on June 5, 2024. I am truly not exaggerating when I say this was one of the most memorable days of my entire life, and I think that statement will hold true forever. My boyfriend and I showed up very early because every ticket was GA and I wanted to be close to the barricade. We were actually really good at estimating the time to show up for this, as we ended up about 10 feet from the stage even after going through the merch line. It helped that we chose to stand for the opener, Samia (another life-changing moment, I had not heard much of her music until then), but I was also determined not to let people cut in front of me. I got to hear all of my favorite songs live and with such amazing stage presence, including the acoustic set, which was different every night. I had been following the setlist online since the beginning of the tour, and really hoping to hear “45” in the acoustic section of our show, because that song has meant a lot to my boyfriend and I specifically. Jack started the set by playing an unreleased, unfinished song he wrote while living in Pittsburgh, where the show was, then went right into “Isimo,” which he also wrote the majority of in Pittsburgh. When he moved from “Isimo” into “45,” I recognized it from the very first chord. This was the most moving part of the show for me, not only because of my personal ties to the song, but because the audience somehow knew to do a call and response during the chorus without any direction. That’s how much connection the song brings to its listeners. He finished the acoustic set with “Dream of Mickey Mantle,” which is definitely a favorite of many Bleachers fans. I was a little bit ashamed to have been recording the entire thing, because I was also trying to live in the moment, but I’m glad I did record that part of the set so I can go back to it, which I do quite often.
I also made Bleachers album-themed friendship bracelets for the concert, which was encouraged by the band, and gave them to others waiting in line to take up some of the 3.5 hour wait for doors to open. Most of them had the acronym “WAGTKEOF,” meaning We Are Going To Know Each Other Forever, after the song. In doing so, I got back a couple of friendship bracelets and a rainbow Pura Vida bracelet from two girls who are unofficially THE Bleachers fans, so much so that Jack has specifically asked for them to come up to the barricade in the middle of shows. I follow them both on Instagram now. If you ever see this, thank you for the bracelet! I wish I had recognized you in the moment because you are so cool to me.
At the start of this academic year, Bleachers released a reworked version of their debut album, Strange Desire, which was called A Stranger Desired. The rollout of the album re-release was centered around the fact that in 2014, Jack was looking for someplace to call home and found it in writing the songs that make up the first album, which played a role in the naming of the album in the first place. But now, he felt encouraged to share what he really wanted- people, whom he said he had found in the Bleachers fans’ community. “I hadn’t been honest enough in my life and as a result I let the wrong ones in,” he wrote while announcing the rework. This was a maybe intentional parallel to “Self Respect,” in which he sings, “Good morning, my strangest twin, I’ve changed the locks and let the right one in.” This really resonated with me, because I think as adolescents we all go through a period of time where we’re just trying over and over again to find where we belong. And this rework came into my life at a time when I had finally found my people. “In search of myself and my people. A stranger desired,” he wrote on Instagram in July 2024.
Most recently, they released “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call,” which honestly belongs on Bleachers. If there was ever a song that sounds like growing up and feeling less holiday magic than usual, this is it. I know it’s technically about feeling betrayed and left behind by someone you once loved, but to me, it sounds like coming home for the holidays to see that somehow nothing has changed, but everything is different. “You should know that I died slow, running through the halls of your haunted home.” The song came out in late November 2024, right around the time I went home for Thanksgiving Break. Things felt even stranger than usual now that I’m in my last year of college. Over and over again, this band has met me exactly where I am and said what I couldn’t find the words to. Our paths cross every day, and somehow, we’re still moving in perfect parallel, despite my being a 20-year-old girl and the band being made up of men in their 30s and 40s. I was raised by musicians. My mom is a choir teacher and professional pianist, and she gave me my first piano lesson when I was a toddler. My dad plays several instruments, has worked in instrument repair, and played in a band for parts of my life. So it’s not difficult to understand why music is the driving force of my heart. While writing this piece, I talked to my mom about what I wanted to say, and how important it was to me to get this out into the world. She said this, and I’ll never forget it: “Music can be your best friend if you let it. It dances with you in the good times, and cries with you in the other times. It always says what you need to hear.” And that’s what Bleachers has been for me since the very beginning. I recommend their music at any chance I get. So, I guess this is my love letter to Strange Desire, Gone Now, Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, and most of all, Bleachers. Four skipless albums and four life-changing tracklists helped me to have the words to describe how I feel about life and how I see the world. I would not have made it through my college years without this band.
In a very long-winded way, I am saying thank you, Bleachers, for being there for me in the best and worst times of my life. Because of you, I truly believe that with the tiniest moves you make, the whole world shakes.