With the world changing around us so much since you first announced the album, has that changed your feelings about the music you’ve all been working on? It feels like the album title, You’re Welcome, is actually quite appropriate now for these times – like, ‘Here’s this new album for you to get excited about, you’re welcome…’
“It’s kinda crazy, because as time has gone by, a lot of the subject matter that was written about, and a lot of the themes and different lyrical content, fit perfectly. It’s almost as if we knew this was going to happen, which is really weird, because obviously we couldn’t have known that (laughs). We were just writing based on what was being felt at the time, and it just seems to fit perfectly now with what’s going on, which is amazing and unfortunate all at the same time – because if I could choose to make this go away, I obviously would.”
In what sense does it fit so perfectly?
“It’s hard to say without you hearing it for reference, but knowing this going into listening to it, you’ll hear it and be like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s what he was talking about.’ (Laughs) It’s kinda crazy how that happens. And it’s exactly what you were saying with the album title: You’re Welcome. It just fits perfectly now, and that’s how a lot of the themes have been as well. It’s weird how this stuff happens to us – it’s kinda happened to us our whole career, and maybe by design a little bit. You know [the lyrics from 2007 song A Shot In The Dark], ‘Mark my words, we’re taking over the world’ started to make sense whenever we started to do really well all around the world! And this is the same sort of thing: just small things that, when you listen, you’re like, ‘Wow, I know Jeremy didn’t know this was going to happen, but that really fits perfectly, and resonates with what’s going on.’ It’s going to be awesome, and I’m really excited for people to hear it.”
The latest song that fans have heard from the album is Mindreader. How have you found people’s reactions to it?
“It’s all over the place, and I think it’s actually really hard when you’re a band that represents multiple genres. You have people that want something specific from you, or want a little bit of a more broad spectrum from you. We’ve made music that we’ve been interested in making for ourselves, you know? That’s why all these songs are super-different, and it’ll always be that way, really. I guess my long story short is that someone will always be disappointed, but with Mindreader, the numbers have been great, people are listening to it, and it’s incredible to see how it’s affected people. Again, in this time, this is perfect because they’ve been stuck inside with their significant other having these little arguments (laughs). Everyone is like, ‘This song is perfect; this was written about me and my significant other!’”