It was an overwhelmingly positive process that Jeremy describes as a “needed reset” for him – both as a writer and a human being. Importantly, too, it gave A Day To Remember the freedom to stretch into more ambitious territories – both across You’re Welcome’s 14 songs, and in plenty of unheard leftovers…
“There were 40 fully fleshed-out demo ideas for this record, and honestly, some of my favourite songs didn’t make it – but they’ll be around someday!” he grins. “This record was weird in the sense that songs didn’t get left off because they weren’t good enough; songs got left off because it was like, ‘Okay, maybe this one’s a little bit too far for people.’ We were like, ‘Let’s wait, we’ll see how people feel about what we have here, and then in the future, maybe this works, and maybe it doesn’t.’
“We actually tracked 22 songs or something like that,” Jeremy adds. “The whole process was just insane – like, we couldn’t even wrap our heads around not recording 22 of them (laughs). And then as we continued to make the album it was like, ‘Oh my god, this is insane. There’s no way we’re gonna be able to finish all of these in this amount of time.’ So we just kept doing the cut, so it’s like, ‘Okay, fine, we’ll do 18. Okay, fine, we’ll do 16. Okay, 14…’”
Lead guitarist Kevin Skaff – who also predominantly puts togethers ADTR’s setlists – gave himself the task of cohesively weaving everything together, with Jeremy praising his bandmate for slotting together the tracklist in the same way he would a live show.
“It was like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna space these out and take [listeners] on a journey. We’re gonna give them some hills, we’re gonna give them some valleys. And it’s like a roller coaster,’” Jeremy explains. “For people who like us for heavy music, we’re gonna try to space these out to where we keep whoever you are entertained – we’re taking them on that ramp. We also wanted it to have that jarring effect and to really suck you out of your expectation and flip you on your head, and make you listen to it without that barrier of entry of, ‘Oh, well, this is what this band is.’ If you actually go into the album and listen to the whole thing, I find it very hard to believe – unless you’re just trying to completely reject it – that you won’t be forced to listen to it for what it is. And I think when people do that, they’ll be surprised.”
Here, allow Jeremy to take you into these surprises…