Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Maybe The Best Song I've Ever Heard

Andrew McMahon has got to be the most unheralded songwriter in the history of music. Back in 2002 I stumbled across an album titled "Leaving Through The Window" by a band named 'Something Corporate'. I fell in love with the album. I later bought Something Corporates album "North". Again, I loved the album. Andrew McMahon was the singer/songwriter for Something Corporate. After the band finished up touring for their North album they decided to take a break. They were not planning on killing the band, they just wanted to get away and rediscover what made them become Something Corporate in the first place.

Andrew put together a side project called Jack's Mannequin. On the day they finished recording their debut album 'Everything in Transit' in 2005, Andrew was diagnosed with Leukemia. He is now in remission, and in 2008 Jack's Mannequin released The Glass Passenger. I've absolutely loved all four of these albums.

This past Saturday, Feb 20th, I got the chance to see Jack's Mannequin in concert at First Ave. and it was one hell of a show. I was on Youtube today and came across some videos from that First Ave. show. As I was reading through some of the comments I saw some talk about a song called Konstantine and how people scream for it to be played at every Jack's Mannequin concert and Andrew doesn't like hearing that. I had no idea what they were talking about.

Tonight I was online and I decided to look up Konstantine. I found out its a song from the Something Corporate days that wasn't on either of their two albums. I then found a video of the song. I took a listen.

Fuck me.

This song makes me melt. Listening to it is like being in heaven for 9 minutes.

Here it is. Something Corporate - Konstantine




And as a bonus, here is a live performance of it.




From the wiki for this song (yes, the song has its own wiki):

"Konstantine" is a song by alternative rock band Something Corporate. The song is the third track of their album Songs for Silent Movies, which was only released in Japan.

The song is about lead singer Andrew McMahon's relationship with his ex-girlfriend Krystal and their breakup.

Although the band has stopped touring, fans of McMahon's new band, Jack's Mannequin, still request the song to be played while the band is touring. McMahon refuses to play the song and has said in a recent interview, "If I ever play it, I’ll have to play it forever, every night. If it weren’t such a big deal for me to play Konstantine, then I probably would play it. But the truth is, as soon as I bring that song out one time, I will never be able to walk through a venue, no matter what band I’m playing with or no matter where I’m at, and not have people chant and cheer for it.”

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