Jaimee Eat World

I Didn’t Mean To Leave You Hangin’ On

There was a point in this project where I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to continue it – I went as far as to bid my farewell to at least close this chapter without any sort of ambiguity about it. It’s silly to think about it now, but at the time I had really reached a point where I felt like I was too invested in the initial expectation of the project and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get back to a place where it really began, where it was just about celebrating these songs with my perspective after spending so many hours over the years with them and thinking about why this band above all others seemed to be the one I always kept in my back pocket.

When things in my personal life were getting difficult to deal with, I put some blame on how much time was going into this whole thing. There were, arguably, more important things to tend to and I was a little annoyed with myself for letting those things fall by the wayside. The two had nothing to do with each other, really.

Then there was the impact of the experiences I had unconsciously tied to these songs; It started to get heavy as I was brought back to places I had tucked away. A bit of time and space away from it all felt necessary to regroup and reset before I could come back to it.

Songs are powerful that way.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve assigned a lot of my best memories to these songs and those still give me incredible joy, but the difficult ones – I don’t always want to revisit those and it can be tough to separate the song from the memory.

I Didn’t Know What To Say

I started this project not long after I started writing my own original music again after a significant sabbatical where the idea driving it was to no longer hold back on what I really wanted to say. I decided to carry that into this project.

Some of the subjects I unearthed in those initial years were decades old – I’d never given them the attention they needed growing up because, well, I didn’t know how to or why it was important to. I’ve been detached for them for so long that I didn’t think it would really matter to address them now; Surely anyone else involved or aware of them would feel the same, if they even remembered it at all.

In allowing myself to feel everything wholly again and speak on it, I constantly felt like I was looking over my shoulder for the next person I was about to piss off or upset and I came anxious about how that would fall back onto me. My own perspective doesn’t often align with many of the people around me and that becomes a difficult line to toe when keeping harmony and balance is critical to self preservation.

I’m talking of course about family and our most intimate partnerships.

It shouldn’t shock you, but I don’t come from a family that is open with each other or all that supportive of each others goals. I learned long ago that there is really no use in trying to build that openness with certain people – you can’t force love. But I’ve always liked to believe that people are capable of change, so often against my own desire, on occassion I do still try.

Likely none of this is what was circling Jimmy Eat World’s heads when they recorded this one way back when, but given the date’s close proximity to what used to be my favourite holiday centred on the magic of togetherness, that’s what I’m thinking about now 30 years later.

Here’s Jimmy Eat World’s original recording:

Merry Christmas, Baby

Initially I thought I’d really lean into the Christmas theme with sleigh bells and other whimsical sounds, but I didn’t feel like that would serve the song well. It’s everyone’s favourite Christmas song that isn’t a Christmas song because it doesn’t fall into the typical parameters of one, so let’s not throw it in the wrapping paper box.

Instead I followed the general idea of a loop that gradually builds, but I kept it even more simple than the original as though the instruments themselves didn’t know what else they could say that was more important than the words in the song.

And that’s my favourite part about this song. The words that don’t really say anything, but in that manage to encapsulate so well a feeling we’ve all found ourselves in; Standing in front of someone we care about or over the phone with them not quite knowing how to fill the air between us.

But I still want to wish you a Merry Christmas, so, Merry Christmas, baby.