The first time I heard a Bleachers song, I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram when a black and white photo of a handsome, baby-faced Jack Antonoff caught my attention. He was wearing his signature black glasses while sitting on a bare mattress, looking solemn and alone. For a 17-year-old girl in 2014, a cute, sad boy in a black and white photo was basically clickbait. I went to his profile and discovered that the photo was an album cover for “Strange Desire,” the debut record for his new band, Bleachers. I was hooked immediately.
“Strange Desire” became the soundtrack of my junior and senior year of high school. It had everything I could want for my junior summer. Upbeat instrumentals, loud drum solos, electrifying guitar riffs, funky bass lines and lyrics you could scream your guts out to.
My best friend Hannah and I would hop into her 2000 Nissan Frontier and drive for hours with the windows down shouting “I Wanna Get Better” at the top of our lungs and imagining that Jack wrote “Rollercoaster” about us. I bought yellow laces for my Doc Martens (another Jack Antonoff style signature) and listened endlessly to the album’s 80s-style synths and poetic lyrics about grief and heartbreak that made my big, adolescent feelings seem less monstrous.
On the 10th anniversary of “Strange Desire” back in July of this year, the band announced they were releasing a re-imagined version of the album. A version that came “without the armor” Jack needed back in 2014, read Bleachers’ Instagram post. It would be called “A Stranger Desired,” and was set to be released on Sept. 6. I was elated. A band I had loved for nearly a decade was re-releasing an album that was so sacred to me. What more could I ask for?
Cut to today as I drove down South Lamar in my Kia Soul with the album queued up on Spotify, and that elation slowly went away.
You know when you really want to like something so much but you just…can’t?
As I heard the first few songs with their melodic, acoustic guitar instrumentals and Jack’s soft, conversational vocals, I was struck with a sudden sadness. The stark difference in the album’s sound was almost alarming. What used to be an upbeat, head-banging, emotional album was now slow, contemplative and repetitive. I found myself longing for what the album used to be.
Why change something that was so good to begin with? Why strip away those classic, Bleachers’ synths and heart-pounding drum beats to pluck a guitar and softly sing a melody that was meant to be screamed out of an old truck’s window? I texted Hannah right away.
“Have you listened to Bleachers’ reimagined album,” I asked. I waited impatiently as those three little dots lingered in her text bubble.
“OMG NO. How do you like it???”
Her question felt like a loaded one. One I didn’t want to answer because the answer felt disloyal to the band and all they had done for me. For us.
I didn’t like the album. Any of it. As I listened, the battle between how I wanted to feel and how I actually felt overwhelmed me so much that I had to turn the album off. Why was I feeling so emotional in the first place? It was just an album, after all. Why did it feel so big and life-altering?
I stopped for coffee and sat with my feelings for a bit. I thought about the original version of the album and how so much had changed since then. Ten years had passed, and my life did not look at all like what I thought it would. I had been married, divorced, lived in three states, had six jobs, survived a global pandemic, moved home to Texas and been accepted to one of the top journalism schools in the country. Through all that change—all that upheaval—“Strange Desire” was there. It was a safe space to run to when life got the best of me. It was the album that helped me grow up. One that understood the heartbreak and confusion of my twenties and allowed me to scream my way through the grief. Through the change.
I’ll be honest, if you were to listen to “A Stranger Desired” without the baggage I have, you’d probably like it. I mean, Jack Antonoff hasn’t won Producer of the Year at the Grammys three times in a row for nothing—he’s extremely talented and knows what he’s doing. For someone like me, however, who is highly sensitive, nostalgic and a little too dependent on her parasocial relationship with Jack and the rest of the band, it feels like a shift in their sound that’s too big. Too different. Too scary.
“I feel like I’m betraying Bleachers by not liking [the album] that much.” I texted Hannah later that night.
“No, I think that means you’re a true fan,” she sent back.
Maybe. Maybe the real art of fangirling is knowing when your favorites flop. Or maybe it’s just coming to terms with the fact that, like you, the artists you idolize also grow up. They learn, change, adjust and reminisce about their past, just like you do.
As I drove home from the coffee shop, I decided to give the album another try. I stripped away the expectations I had for it to be life-changing and let go of the expectations I had for myself to love it in the same way I had loved the original all those years ago.
And I still didn’t like it that much. I could, however, appreciate the softer approach the band took to the album. Songs like “Like a River Runs” and “You’re Still a Mystery” actually lent themselves well to an acoustic version, no matter how little I wanted to admit it.
If Jack Antonoff is reading this, no, I don’t hate “A Stranger Desired,” I just really, really loved the original. To this day, I turn it on and feel like the teenage girl who discovered you back in 2014. The girl who dreamt of getting out of her small town to pursue her big dreams. The girl who thought she knew what heartbreak was but hadn’t even scratched the surface. The girl who felt invincible in the passenger seat of her best friend’s truck.
Who knows, my opinion on your new album could change. In time, I could grow to love it. Just give me another 10 years.
