“Waffle House” by Jonas Brothers, Thursday, August 1, 2024 (repost)

Let’s revisit last month’s discussion about The Album, the latest record from Jonas Brothers. Referring back to the interview with Charlie Harding on the podcast Switched on Pop, Nick Jonas explained that the brothers wanted to put “something together that sounded like what coming to one of our shows is like.” Achieving this sound has the band leaning into the past rather than electronic elements or studio sound effects.

IT’S GON’ GET FIGURED OUT. Charlie Harding referred to the Jonas Brothers’ The Album’s sound as “album-oriented, band-driven music,” which refers to the music of the ‘60s- ‘80s when many listeners preferred listening to albums over singles. My guess is that the experience of a Jonas Brothers show in the late ‘00s probably wouldn’t be focused on the musicality of the band, but rather the euphoric dopamine rush (for a certain demographic) of seeing the brothers performing. However, with only Kevin strumming a guitar in the band’s recent videos, the “band sound” of a live Jonas experience—in 2008 or 2023–requires many touring musicians who are not Kevin, Joe, or Nick. There seems to be something about fidelity to music that can be played live rather than sample-based music at the core of who Kevin, Joe, and Nick are as musicians, at least for their Jonas Brothers projects, which could literally sound like anything made in a studio. They could have produced an entire album with DJs like Marshmello, and probably fans may not have noticed the difference.

YOU KNOW IT’S ONLY LOVE. In 2020, the Jonas Brothers performed in the Netflix holiday series Dash & Lily. The band performed some of their new songs after breaking their hiatus in 2019. And while the performance was filmed for a drama, I realized that the demographic of a Jonas Brothers’ show now looked very different. The brothers weren’t just performing for tween girls anymore. It was still pretty clean-cut, but it was pretty much for everyone. Last April, the Jonas Brothers performed on Saturday Night Live, performing the closing track of The Album, “Walls” with their producer Jon Bellion and a special appearance by Gospel artist Kirk Franklin. The band also performed their bombastic single “Waffle House,” a song that lyrically digs into the brothers’ family structure as they were growing up with their parents managing their musical success. From both performances, the band’s music utilized a small choir. The band released the single a day prior to their SNL performance, and just as Nick said in the Switched on Pop interview, the sound of both the single and the live performance is quite similar. But what sells “Waffle House” is the nostalgia for a time when millennials were old enough to drive but not old enough to drink, legally. It is the feeling of wanting to be older and following your dreams, but looking back on that time and realizing that those “late-night conversations” were the dream. And with any Waffle House, there’s always the threat of danger. It’s the place where meth-heads mentally unstable people and racist idiots with guns might show up. But that’s a rare occasion, and when you see the warm glow of the yellow lights, you tend to forget about that incident you saw on the news in another city six months ago. So, pour another cup of coffee; order your hash browns smothered, covered, topped, diced, or however; and slab on some butter and fake maple syrup because this night is gonna get interesting.