“Bent” by Matchbox Twenty, Thursday, June 15, 2022
In 1999, Carlos Santana topped the Top 40 radio stations, the Billboard Hot 100, and the Adult Contemporary charts with his biggest single in years, "Smooth." Santana's latin guitar licks were accompanied by the sexy vocals of pop-rock frontman Rob Thomas. Three years prior to this #1 hit, Thomas' band Matchbox 20--later stylized as Twenty--had released their debut album, Yourself or Someone Like You, which featured several hits on pop and rock radio. It was a year after the Santana collaboration that Matchbox Twenty followed up Yourself or Someone Like You with Mad Season.
SHOULDN'T BE SO COMPLICATED. After "Smooth," Rob Thomas' fame soared, and with a renewed interest in Matchbox Twenty, the band returned four years after their successful first album. The first single, "Bent" topped the Hot 100, radio top 40 singles, and several other charts, which was the only Matchbox Twenty single to do so. Although Matchbox Twenty continued to release successful radio singles throughout the '00s until their '07 hiatus, the band started embracing their status as a pop-rock band more than the Alternative sound that they had honed on their first record. In fact, besides "Bent," the other singles on Mad Season, "If You're Gone" and "Mad Season," didn't match the intensity of the lead single and no single the band would release in their future would compare to "Bent" as a bonafide rocker. Listening to the song today, I was both surprised at how twenty-two years ago, the heavy guitar could be heard on Top 40 radio, when today everything sounds so tame. However, that also got me thinking about how simple the guitar/drums formula on this track is. The production on the track heightens the guitar bend and the drums make the rock more intense. Furthermore, some ambient guitar or maybe early programing gives the intro a mysterious feel. The verse strips away the intensity of the intro, however, a pounding heavy guitar adds emphasis and tension to Thomas' lines. The guitar solo is only a variation of the intro.
STARTED OUT CLEAN, BUT I'M JADED. "Bent" is an example of music coming out at the right time when I was a certain age for me to be fascinated by it. From seeing the music video on a 4-H trip hotel room in Charlotte when MTV and VH-1 had been strictly off limits at home, I was hooked on late '90s/ early '00s Alternative Rock. The sound of music changed quite a bit by the time I started watching MTV or Fuse at home when my mom was out. The video for "Bent" was so cool. From the color effect, the boxy car swerving on the road, people beating up the cool lead singer--I thought all of Matchbox Twenty's songs had to be that cool. I thought Rob Thomas was awesome with his shaggy hair cut, earrings, and leather jacket. He sang with an almost Southern accent, and although the song seemed violent, the way that Thomas sang sounded sexual, though I didn't think too deeply about it. No, nothing the band has done before or after has surpassed that feeling of that Thomas might have actually been a successor of Mick Jagger.
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