“Man” by Relient K, Tuesday, November 15, 2022

For some musical acts, it takes a while for their audience to take them seriously. Take for example Relient K. After three records of lyrics about Marylin Manson eating girlfriends, manipulating emotional girls to wear mood rings, and fantasizing about showing up to an '80s-themed prom in a pink tux listening to Tears for Fears, the band scored two mainstream pop hits from their not-quite-as-cheeky Mmhmm album. 

TOO OLD TO BE GROWING UP.  Relient K's latest effort Air for Free was released in 2016 and the band continues to tour with the record. While the band gets playful with songs like "Local Construction," "Cat," "Mrs. Hippopotamuses'" and "Elephant Parade," there are serious moments on the record. One of the most serious songs is "Man," the fifth track. Relient K's early music was almost exclusively punk rock--electric guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. But little by little, Relient K began introducing other instruments--acoustic guitars, piano/ keys--and production elements. Now the band freely incorporates piano without fears of not being punk rock. Today's song is both lyrically and musically masterful. Starting out at a laid-back pace, "Man" gradually gains tempo. In a 2016 interview, lead singer Matt Thiessen stated that "Man" is a follow-up to the band's album-closing tracks for Forget and Not Slow Down, "This Is the End" and "(If You Want It)." To signify the growing urgency in the song, the tempo continuously speeds up until the final chorus which presents the lyrics as a swirling round. 

I SPENT THE LAST SIX YEARS LIKE HOFFMAN IN THE SWIMMING POOL."Man" is, coincidentally, the third track this month that references Peter Pan following Tyson Motsenbocker's "Wendy Darling" and Anberlin's "Godspeed." Peter Pan is often used in songs and literature as a symbol of the struggle between staying young and growing up. The beginning of the song references Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, spending his summer in the pool, eyes locked on Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), waiting to see where life will take the young man. The song also subtly references one of the band's covers, the Veggie Tales silly song "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." In "Man" the speaker feels the gravity of waiting around for life to happen. As time is slipping away, the speaker has many impulses: hide from it, try to delay it, die prematurely, but ultimately he realizes he has to face it. There also seems to be some regret for the singer's careless attitude in the past alluded to in the song's lines. With millennials and Zoomers demanding accountability for misogamy and homophobia in Christian and secular media, many songs and artists have suffered losses in streams and have become irrelevant. Just this year, Matt Thiessen apologized for the problematic lyrics in "Mood Rings" after a TikToker went viral with a message about how the song stereotyped young women as emotionally turbulent forces in a young man's life. While much of Relient K's most remembered tracks may be muddied by some of their past statements, it seems that the band is waking up and seeing the role they played in it and taking accountability. 

Read the lyrics on Genius.