"Amelia Jean" by Jack's Mannequin, Friday, August 19, 2022
It's no surprise that Andrew McMahon lists Billy Joel as one of his biggest influences. Though separated by nearly decade from when Joel released his final record of original songs in 1993 and when McMahon's piano-based pop punk band Something Corporate debuted in 1998. But McMahon's Billy Joel influences seem to come alive on McMahon's second act, Jack's Mannequin, and their third record People and Things.
AMELIA JEAN, YOU WENT AND MARRIED A SOLIDER. Jack's Mannequin's People and Things is full of storytelling. According to an interview with Meet the Musician, People and Things is the record on which McMahon processes his survival from acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Although his previous record, The Glass Passenger, deals with survival, particularly on songs like "Swim," People and Things deals with the aftermath--the thoughts on the road trips McMahon took across America. However, McMahon wrote several of the songs that ended up on People and Things when he was writing for The Glass Passenger. "Amelia Jean" is a song inspired by a road trip McMahon took in the middle of recording Jack's Mannequin's second record. Driving from California to Richmond, Virginia, picking up a thrift store keyboard along the way, the lyrics for "Amelia Jean" came to McMahon at a hotel in Richmond. The storytelling of the song is pure Americana: throwing in landmarks like "the grave of Buddy Holly" and cities and states, Nashville, "Texas wind," "Richmond."
I DROVE TO NASHVILLE WHEN YOUR SISTER CALLED, CONCERNED. The central figure in "Amelia Jean" like Amy from "Amy, I" seem to be ghosts. Are these real girls with whom McMahon was acquainted? They certainly are not names Amy or Amelia, as Aaron Marsh wrote about his ex-girlfriend Paula on Copeland’s debut record, Beneath Medicine Tree in the song “When Paula Sparks.” Are they stories told when you’re talking to your sister on the phone about a girl you used to date back in high school? Is Amelia a real girl or an idea or even an ideal? Is it a contemporary story or is it a tale told by your father about an old flame who made a few wrong choices. Whoever this girl is, she or her story blows in the breeze on the open road. The speaker broke her heart. Amelia Jean goes and makes a choice that doesn’t include the speaker in the last verse: “gone and married a soldier.”Whatever happened to her, she her ghost haunts the speaker. Who she became is irrelevant to her memory. And she sits in the speaker’s car like a glass passenger as the speaker drives across the country to figure some things out.
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