#ryan key

[xpensivemistaxe]

That guy who loves blueberry milkshakes will fix you btw 🫐

[melanch0lymist]

Patrick Stump in Moustachette

[pissworm39]

yellowcard is one of the most underrated bands in the pop punk scene and it's so frustrating because they genuinely have so much talent but nobody seems to really recognize it (except for ocean avenue)

[tomsmusictaste]

Yellowcard // With You Around

[falloutbradreviews]

Yellowcard – Ocean Avenue

I’ve made it no secret that my favorite Yellowcard album is 2012’s Southern Air, but 2003’s Ocean Avenue is a close second. Southern Air is one of those albums that’s a perfect distillation of everything they did up to that point, but also managing to be well-executed, well-written, and well-performed. It’s not just another Yellowcard album, even though it could have been. Their 2011 comeback album, When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes, was more or less a “reunion” album that didn’t necessarily do anything to forward their sound, but it showed the band could still make a “Yellowcard album” after four years of being away. Southern Air, however, was the band with something to prove, as well as them firing on all cylinders. That album is an energetic pop-punk album with a lot of catchy hooks that harkened back to their earlier material but with a sense of maturity and wisdom in the lyrics and musicianship that made the album stick out quite a bit. The themes of the album are about getting older, not knowing where you’re going in life as you get older, and more adult themes in general (including the theme of miscarriage in a song), but the songs themselves are very catchy, fun, and energetic. Southern Air just feels like a great summer record, because it has a sense of wisdom and weariness that their earlier stuff lacked (I almost said maturity, but some of their later albums were very mature, despite how they were still relatively young), but that doesn’t mean their earlier stuff is bad or doesn’t hold up. Ocean Avenue is my second favorite Yellowcard album for the opposite reason of why I love Southern Air – Ocean Avenue was their second album with vocalist Ryan Key, and it felt like a sophomore album, because the band was almost completely different within their first two albums, but Ocean Avenue is a very youthful, energetic, and catchy album.

Ocean Avenue is a very nostalgic album, but it wasn’t nostalgic when it came out. At the time, it was just a solid and unique pop-punk record that included a violinist, but the album’s gotten a large following over the years. If anything, I think this album has held up even more over the years, because of the nostalgia that people have for it. A lot of people really love this album, and they credit this album with getting them into the genre, or even music itself sometimes, but this album has a youthful sound that makes me think back to when I was a kid. This album makes me think of when I was just getting into music, as well as when I was wide-eyed at the world, and I hadn’t really gotten out there to experience the harsh reality of how things really were. Southern Air, on the other hand, isn’t a bitter or jaded record, but it’s a record that has some wisdom and maturity that Ocean Avenue lacks. It’s almost like that record is looking back on Ocean Avenue and reflecting on the themes of that record while adding the life lessons that they’ve learned along the way, and speaking to their past selves. I could sit here and talk about how this album makes me feel young, because of its nostalgic and youthful themes that still hold up all of these years later, but I’ll let my buddy Jake take over to explain why this album works so well and what makes this album so good. I wanted to bring you on board for this piece, because you wrote a retrospective on the album for its 20th anniversary, and you’ve mentioned a lot how this album is important to you, so what’s your history with this album and why does it mean a lot to you?

Thanks for having me on board for this, man! I always love getting to do these with you, but this one is especially exciting because yes, Ocean Avenue is an album that legitimately changed the course of my life, in more ways than one. Like you mentioned, I am one of the people who credits this album with really getting me into music as much as I am; this was the first album I ever bought back in the summer of 2006 after seeing the music video for "Ocean Avenue" a bunch on MTV and being utterly smitten by this style of music I hadn't really experienced before, having mostly grown up with 80's hair metal and later 90's boy bands and pop stars like Britney Spears. Ocean Avenue was the first piece of music I could officially call "mine," in a sense, and I'll never forget my first time listening to it. I happened to have a portable CD player with me in the car the day I bought the CD (which I still have my original copy, nearly 20 years later), so as soon as I left that Walmart, I popped it into that player and listened on the car ride back. Outside of "Ocean Avenue" the song, I had never listened to Yellowcard, or any kind of music like that, really, yet I was hit with this sense of comfort and nostalgia that still hits when I listen to it even now. And I think that's a testament to what you mentioned, but also, it's just got this sincerity to it that makes it really resonate more than other releases at the time did. You may not have had Pete Wentz' wit and cleverness, or Mark Hoppus/Tom Delonge's humor and antics, or early Gerard Way's flair for dramatics, but Ryan Key and his lyrics just felt real, as kinda corny as that sounds. There was a level of authenticity and relatability these songs captured of being young and going through that time in your life that the band managed to capture in a way that resonated back then and still does today. Of course, the hooks are also top-tier, Sean Mackin's violin will always be their secret weapon, and the riffs and drums all have some pretty killer moments. One more thing, too, is thinking about it, I can make the argument to bounce of your earlier point that Southern Air being a companion album of sorts and revisiting a lot of the same themes with an older and wiser mindset only makes Ocean Avenue hold up even more after all these years. If Southern Air is a look ahead to where you're going and the uncertainty that comes with that, Ocean Avenue is a look back at times that were maybe simpler, maybe a little more naive, but still just as resonant to us now. And how many bands can say that two of their albums a decade apart can have such a lasting impact like that?

No, thank you for coming aboard and contributing to this, man! I’m always happy when you come aboard, especially when it’s about an album that we both love, or something we have a lot to say about. I didn’t grow up with this album, and my first Yellowcard album was Southern Air in the summer of 2012, but Ocean Avenue was the next album I listened to. I remember picking that up sometime after at FYE for a few bucks, because I knew that was a classic album in the scene at that point. I’ve always really enjoyed it, and the points you brought up are exactly why. Ryan Key’s always been a great vocalist, but his sense of lyricism was unique from the rest of the pop-punk canon at the time. Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy was a Shakespearian poet, Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 were the jokesters and pranksters of the scene, Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance’s penchant for theatrics and the melodramatic, whereas Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day was starting to become more politically-charged as American Idiot would come out in 2004, but Key’s lyrics were more down-to-earth, grounded in reality, and more sincere. Not that other bands in the scene weren’t sincere, but some of them tried too hard to be funny, and Key was a breath of fresh air in that respect. His lyrics were real, and they were about everyday things, as corny as that may sound. He wasn’t afraid to get serious, too, and a song that I’ve always overlooked on this album (unfortunately so) that goes there is “Believe.” Key talks about the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, and in 2003 (the song was surely recorded in 2002, as the lyrics mention it being a year ago), that was such a fresh national tragedy, but the song is in tribute to the people that lost their lives, versus being a patriotic jerkoff session like many other songs were at the time.

Southern Air and Ocean Avenue are a pair of albums that are best enjoyed together, because they’re two sides of the same coin. The former is about reflecting on the past and looking towards the future, whereas the former is about reliving the past and having a sense of nostalgia from when you were young and the world was new. Southern Air comes at the idea of nostalgia from a wiser perspective, realizing that you can’t relive the past if you want to move forward. Both albums hold up more now than they did back when they first came out. Southern Air holds up better as you get older, because you can truly understand what Key is saying about aging and not knowing where the future will take you. Ocean Avenue holds up better, because it’s such an innocent, sincere, and honest pop-punk album that makes you feel like you’re taken back to when you were young. Hearing the title track immediately takes me back to when I was a kid, even though I never grew up with the album, but it just has that effect on me. The rest of the album is very nostalgia-inducing, too, but it’s also just a great pop-punk album. That’s what makes the album work at the end of the day – it’s a wonderfully written and executed pop-punk album. There’s a reason why this album is a classic, and I think part of it is for people looking at this album through rose-colored glasses, as well as being nostalgic for it in general, but as someone that didn’t grow up with it, I genuinely enjoy it. It’s a bit on the longer side, clocking in at around 47 minutes, but it’s one of those albums that doesn’t feel its length. I’m always shocked when it’s done, because I’ve been having such a great time with it. A lot of Yellowcard fans say that this is the album you should start off with when you’re getting into them, and I would agree, because this is their most iconic album, but Southern Air is something special, too. You really can’t go wrong with either one, so if you want to start off with an album that exudes youthful energy, Ocean Avenue is the one to get into first, but if you want an album that mixes a sense of youthful energy with wisdom and maturity of someone older, Southern Air is the way to go. Regardless of what you start off with, you’re in for a treat.

[inlovewithaspiderguy]

Moustachette rocks. It’s very funny

[feelingsofaithless]

[mrwentzrossway]

oh my god i love the scene in moustachette after ryan key insults pete's gf and hez like can i help u with something buster? and pete just stares at him like

wtf did u say to me