AJR is a band composed of three brothers: Adam, Jack, and Ryan Met. They started making music and performing in 2006. They have four albums, but their third album, “The Click,” is what started their rise to fame. Each of the brothers has their own set of skills, both on the production and the performing side. Most of their songs cover topics of mental health, therapy, and growing up.
For “Ok Orchestra,” the band recommended on their Twitter that you listen to the album in order to get the whole story of their journey with those topics.
AJR has a specific sound, and they lean into it. There are a few key features of their sound that they have been developing since their Living Room album. In “Big Idea,” they describe their sound as “ukulele DJs, only band in the genre.” While they only had “pro tools, and a mic, and a big idea,” those components defined their sound. They have a mixture of classical orchestra and electronic music. There is often a theme of a metronome that started on the fittingly titled album, “The Click.”
AJR starts most of their albums with an overture. It pulls out the main melodies of each song. This album starts with a computer-generated voice walking through the drum intro, which is similar to how AJR gave insight to their creative process on their OK Orchestra virtual show, titled “One Spectacular Night.” An interesting motif on this album is instrument morphing, which was a technique that Ryan worked on over quarantine. In “OK Overture,” a violin melody slowly changes to a trumpet. Additionally, in the lyrics, “I’ll become a trumpet or a drum set in a sad orchestra,” the words “trumpet” and “drum set” are created to have those instruments’ sounds while still singing the lyrics.
AJR released “Bummerland” in Aug. 2020. It is about how the sudden quarantine affected the band: “Bummerland, here I am / Better nix my summer plans.” However, they still have optimism for the future: “Bummerland, give a cheer / 'Cause you're only going up from here.” It became important for everyone to keep an eye on their mental health due to the stress of quarantine, and “Bummerland” addresses how the band attempted to stay positive.
On the instrumentation side, the motif of instrument morphing appears. It goes from vocals to a trumpet to ukulele to a violin.
“3 O’Clock Things” feels like the train of thought you have during a 3 a.m. existential crisis: “Would you go running if you saw the real me?” On their album “Infinity,” the song “3AM” also ponders the concept of someone not knowing the real you. Jack is questioning everything, from social anxiety, “It's kinda funny how I keep debating / If someone's shy or if they hate me;” to politics, “It's kinda funny how you vote for someone / To vote for someone, to vote for someone / And you might end up with someone evil but you say that he means well.” Jack touches on how taboo it is to talk about politics to friends. They even talk about how they are always advised to avoid politics because, as celebrities, they can lose popularity: “Stay out of politics, stay on the fence / Stay out of all of it to keep half your fans.” However, the band takes a stance despite that advice: “there's one thing I know / That if you're f****** racist then don't come to my show.” They end the song with one more round of instrumentals as a final send-off for the song. In an interview with Zach Sang, when asked why they added another chorus of instrumentals, Jack says “No, we’re not just gonna end the song and be like, ‘And that’s a big thing.’ It’s more like, ‘No, that’s obvious. We’re still gonna party without you guys.’”
There is a musical connection to their earlier “Neotheater” album. On the first track, “Next Up Forever,” they sing, “Your eyes are open / So never close them.” On “3 O’Clock Things,” a similar choir sings, “Your eyes are tired but keep 'em open / 'Cause you wouldn't want to miss a thing.” “Next Up Forever” is about finding and maintaining popularity. These two songs are almost opposites of each other. “Next Up Forever” is about the future and obtaining a fan base. They just want to be known by anyone: “Someday they'll be talking about me / Right now they're just walking around me.” Conversely, “3 O’Clock Things” is about how those expectations were not met, realizing what the reality is, and finding what matters in a fan base. They care more about the quality of their fans than they care about the quantity.
“My Play” was released as a single in Dec. 2020. AJR has a lot of songs about growing up and being an adult when you don’t feel prepared to do so, and “My Play” transitions to the root of where those fears arise. It is all about the struggles of having divorced parents through the eyes of a child having to grow up too fast. The visualization of this trauma in the video is clear via symbolism used with moving services. No matter how hard the child tries to stay in his imaginary world, the reality of his parents’ divorce forces him out of it, symbolizing how he has to grow up faster.
“My Play” also mentioned the struggle of joint custody. You do everything twice: “Lemme show you my play / And I don't wanna do it twice, 'cause it's not the same.” Joint custody is a jarring change at first, and the constant back and forth can be exhausting for a kid.
Even further, “My Play” touches on the effects of divorced parents as an adult: “If you both outgrew one another / I could start now, lookin' for a lover / But if love dies, do I f****** bother?” Growing up around divorced parents, especially when the children feel the weight of their tense relationship, can often lead to this mistrust for love as an adult.
At the end of the music video, after using zippers to enter his imaginary world, the child ends up unzipping himself into two; one half for each parent.
“Bang!” is one of the most popular songs on “OK Orchestra” and was released as a single in Feb. 2020. It is full of references to their previous songs. “So I got an apartment across from the park” is a reference to “Don’t Throw Out My Legos,” where he sings “Saved up enough to rent an apartment / Far away from mom and dad.” “Still I’m not feeling grown” is a reference to “Next Up Forever,” in reference to “I know I gotta grow up sometime / But I don’t think I’m ready yet.” Both of these parallels show that despite his growth as an adult over the years, Jack still sometimes feels like he is holding onto his childhood. In the chorus, Jack sings, “I’m way too old to lie here forever,” which is a response to “Wait don't go away, can I lie here forever?” from “Karma.” Despite feeling like he is not fully an adult, he knows that he needs to face reality.
On the musical side, “Bang!” features the metronome motif very obviously. In the second verse, an announcer's voice shouts, “Metronome!” The click track replaces most of the accompaniment. Both the “Metronome!” and “Here we go!” lines are vocalized by Charlie Pellet, one of New York City’s subway announcers. Ryan outlines how the band put “Bang!” together in their virtual show, “One Spectacular Night.”
“Humpty Dumpty” is the first song on “OK Orchestra” to feature the namesake: “OK.” It is a reference to how when people ask how you are, you just say “I’m okay” or “I’m fine.” This song is all about hiding the reality of one’s mental health: “When Humpty Dumpty went down / He said, ‘Screw it, I'ma smile right through it’ / ‘And I'll scream when no one's around.’” Jack talks about how he feels obligated to hide how he is feeling because he does not want his mental health to be a burden on someone else. Even further, Jack sometimes feels like people are genuinely deterred by his mental health: “Wonder if they're gonna call depending what my face is.”
The trauma that Generation Z and millennials face today is drastically different from the trauma of older generations. Jack compares his own struggles to the wars and brave jobs of his grandparents. However, finding an “audience” or a therapist and support system is important, even for the world’s smallest violin.
Some fans suspect that the title is a reference to a gag in the show “SpongeBob SquarePants,” which is plausible considering that their earlier song “I’m Ready” uses a sound sample from the same show.
Musically, “World’s Smallest Violin” features the instrument morphing motif. First from violin to trumpet to piano and back to violin, and later from violin to voice to electric guitar and to xylophone. Additionally, this song feels like anxiety. The music video takes place in an apartment slowly falling apart. The accelerando, or speeding up, at the end feels like building anxiety. This ramble is similar to one at the end of “Karma,” which is another song about talking to a therapist and not seeing improvements in your mental health.
“World’s Smallest Violin” helps reassure listeners that they can seek help, no matter how small their problems seem.
AJR released “Way Less Sad” as a single in Feb. 2021. It feels like a response to many of the problems addressed previously in the album. While “Humpty Dumpty” and “World’s Smallest Violin” mention the struggles of mental health and the discouragement of getting better, “Way Less Sad” serves as a progress report: “No, I ain't happy yet / But I'm way less sad.” “Way Less Sad” also references the existential crisis in “3 O’Clock Things” as Jack sings “'Cause it's half-past three and my brain's on fire.” Jack also sings about Twitter, “I wake up and I’m not so mad at Twitter now.” Similar to the political points in “3 O’Clock Things,” AJR performed in the Biden-Harris Inaugural We The People concert, and they featured the announcement on their Twitter.
This song also features the instrument morphing motif, from piano to trumpet to vocals.
AJR utilizes lyrical and musical motifs and themes from their previous albums to continue their discussion on mental health and adulthood. It is easy to see how the brothers have been handling their mental health, especially during a difficult climate, and their future songs will likely only further their story.