Jimmy Eat World - Background + Song (Pain)

This is a blog entry about the band we are constructing our music video around, 'Jimmy Eat World'.

Jimmy Eat World are an American Alternative rock band, originating from Mesa, Arizona, formed in 1993. The band lineup is a typical rock setup, being frontman playing rhythm guitar and vocals, lead guitarist (plus backing vocals), bassist (plus backing vocals) and drummer.

The band released two albums through the record label 'Capitol Records', being 'Static Prevails' (On which album the band first started to experiment with emocore) and 'Clarity', within which Jim Adkins took over lead vocals, replacing Tom Linton. On this record label, the band remained on the underground indie scene, attracting attention but still within the alternative music scene.

Jimmy Eat World's main breakthrough was with the album 'Bleed American', on which the band decided to not rely on a record label, supporting itself with touring and by compiling it's previously-released singles on their EP release (singles). This album features a few famous singles such as 'Sweetness', and 'The Middle'. The middle is the band's biggest-selling single yet, reaching #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

In 2004, after lengthy touring supporting the album 'Bleed American', the band started to work on a follow-up album. The band also hired a new producer, 'Gil Norton', due to their old producer's ('Trombino'), unavailabilities. The alubm was released titled 'Futures' in October 2004, with 'Pain' as the leading song on the album.

The song 'Pain' off the 'Futures' album is a song about a broken relationship with an ex-girlfriend, and how the narrator is trying to persuade themselves that they are over the breakup, and is either relating the feeling to quitting drugs or actually taking them, emphasising that it 'takes the pain away'. This song we have chosen to do for our sequence, as there are a lot of stylistic themes within it for us to build on. These stylistic themes are mainly features of the 'emo' conventions, which I have referred to and described in a previous post.