PREACH, girl. Same story, different name with all the fan complaints lately. I've seen the same thing happen over and over again. First U2, RHCP, Foo Fighters, Incubus, and now 30STM (Been a Jared fan, acting-wise, for years, but just got into the band over the last 6 months or so. The usual cause is just plain nostalgia, I think. People associate eras of a band with eras of their own lives, and when the band evolves beyond it, they view it as a betrayal.
hey - get outtamyhead, ok?! but, totes.I’ve loved Jared since I was 11years old lusting after his iconically-90s-gorgeous-derp, where he was both insanely beautiful and broken, and awkward but puresex and grunge but femme (i swear to god some of his gifs, i’m like, damnnnn girl lookit you!) but overall, i’ve swooned for him for ages. i mean:
i cannot even. (the face of a boy, but the GD HANDS OF A MAAAAAN.)
but other than following his film career, i kinda was not into ThirtySeconds moreso because i never really took the time to listen and i was under the unfair impression that they were supes-emo and not talented.
fastforward 12 years and i’m like full-frontal-bonkers into MARS and LETO (ahem, la-leto.tumblr.com) - and really because of Love Lust Faith + Dreams, which is really an incredible album. i listened to it all on a drive to and home from a bikram yoga sesh and nearly started bawling. i wanted to keep driving. all day. and listening. it was pounding and accelerating and quiet and intimate but soaring and it reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s films and David Fincher and i couldn’t believe the Leto i was hearing. it was life-changing. and since then, i’ve been so into them. first forayed into This is WAR - and was hooked, and now i’m completely overcome with A Beautiful Lie. It’s one of those albums I legit look forward to listening to the moment i leave my house on my commute to work. and then when i get to work. and then when i leave work and travel home. i just am fully-immersed in MARS.
but yea, maybe because i’m traveling backwards, knowing now where they are (LLFD) and having a chance to hear where they were (TIW, ABL, TSTM), it colors all the albums, and songs, and stories and lyrics - things seem tied to one another and you see a progression of sorts. It’s lovely and exhilarating. but if i had been a fan since 2002 of MARS specifically and hearing now their sound in 2014, i could see why some people are sad, like losing a lover you had that you had such good fucks with - and now seeing them 12 years later at some party or maybe even a reunion and they’re older, wiser, and just…. different. it can be devastating. but i almost feel their sound has changed, but even on previous records you have moments you see on LLFD; they’re the same men, they’re just older, wiser, and different. and maybe - having a chance to go backwards on their stuff, i almost feel like it’s that feeling you have when you see a pic of a boyfriend you’ve only met now, in his 30s, and you stumble upon their pics from their twenties. maybe even their teens and you suddenly see these other men, boys, they used to be and you appreciate moreso who they are now - and see maybe the strands of their evolution, their progression into the people they’ve become.
it’s not fair to give up on someone for simply growing as an artist or an individual. but, i do feel some of the disenchantment maybe lies in the feeling of intimacy MARS tends to create - and the sense of their popularity growing - that intimacy becomes thinner and thinner and soon you maybe just feel like another nameless person out of the millions following their twitter handle or another avatar in the VyRT chat window, out of the 3k logged in. but in order to survive as a band, to continue doing what they’re doing, they have to grow their audience. And basically, i’m a product of that expansion. so i can’t hate too much.
I think it’s healthier to keep in mind that while Jared may never privately DM me (omg that sounds so naaasty when associated with him wheeewww) i know i’m still an important part of the MARS movement. They wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing if they didn’t love what they do, and most of what they do is for their fans. Let’s face it - people complain about the costs for shit, but we’ve basically seen how Jared lives (Twitter, Artifact, VyRT, Paparazzi, etc) and he ain’t living like a baller. His art collection is amazing and he clearly invests money into so many things - but they’re things he truly has a passion for. He’s not putting all the money we send their way into diamonds and gold chains; he’s putting it back into the shit they do for us: albums, tours, growing VyRT, expanding the letoscope on this world. and i can’t hate on that.
Anyways. Sorry I launched into a bananas-long diatribe on shit. But. Whatevs.Your question just sparked so many thoughts - thank you for speaking out and for giving me a post to speak out too.
