“Like You Mean It” by Watashi Wa ft. Freeto Boat, Saturday, February 11, 2023

Pinkerton is a foundational album in the emo genre. Weezer’s second record was a commercial failure at the time of its release, especially following their massive debut record. Many successful bands look back at the album almost as a kind of bible of guitar tones and lyrical content. Pinkerton produced three singles, including “Pink Triangle,” a song in which the speaker, a boy in college, falls for a lesbian who doesn’t return his affection. The song explores the complexities surrounding sexual identity, which seems progressive for the time but a little cringy today. And it’s that cringe that seeps into Watashi Wa’s 2022 People Like People, an album I’ve talked about before, but today I wanted to look into why a self-identifying “ministry band” quoted Weezer to “say it ‘Like You Mean It.’”

SO HERE COMES THE SON TO REMIND YOU OF YOUR OWN BELIEFS. Watashi Wa started as a punk band when Seth Roberts and the original band were in middle school. Inspired heavily by early Tooth & Nail bands such as MxPx and Ghoti Hook in a time when Tooth & Nail Records started moving away from the fast drums and three-chorded fast songs, Watashi Wa signed to Bettie Rocket Records where many former Tooth & Nail punk bands and former members of those bands formed new bands signed. Also on Bettie Rocket was another band, Freeto Boat, who is featured in today’s song, “Like You Mean It.” Freeto Boat was a Christian ska/punk band, starting as a ten-piece band with horn section, eventually moving into a hardcore direction. The band broke up in 2000 but started making music in 2019, around the time when Watashi Wa reformed. Like many of the features on People Like People, only avid fans of the often obscure bands would know the contributions made to the songs. 

YOUR MIND AND PRIDE. People Like People was my #2 best album of 2022, but it certainly wasn’t without issue—some of which I have talked about in the two other posts about it. Today’s song, “Like You Mean It” takes a lighthearted look at polarization. Like a lot of the record, the lyrics are confusing. What exactly is Seth Roberts trying to say? What stance is he trying to take? The message Roberts comes back to is a lament about how unfortunate it is that people are divided on issues. He talks about how quickly love can turn to hate, possibly referencing cancel culture. Having been outside of America since before the pandemic started, I now think that I may have misjudged Roberts’ intentions with the record. And a big part of my reevaluation is the complete restructuring of small town America I’ve noticed particularly around gay and lesbian rights. Trans and non-binary rights are quite a bit lacking, though. When I can enter a Walmart in Mern, NC, and buy a Pride Bear for Valentine’s Day, it seems like progress. I see so many openly queer people in public. Of course not going to church might skew this view. Perhaps, Watashi Wa’s People Like People is an album of “live and let live.” I still think it’s naive, but perhaps not as malicious as I thought. It’s still a very pasty white, straight Christian male voice, but it’s slightly adapted for a modern world. Gay rights certainly has further to go, but I’d like to acknowledge how far it’s come since I was a high schooler in a small town thinking that I would take my secret to my grave. Tomorrow we fight the good fight. Today let’s just focus on the love for all people.

Read the lyrics on Jesus Freak Hideouts.