I like to say that Clarity is the first album that saved my life.
Looking back, that is perhaps a bit overdramatic. I was in what felt like a deep hole, a combination of teenage heartbreak and depression. Dreadful and dark and real yet not as existential as that sentence sounds. Seeing the Lucky Denver Mint video for the first time on Viva Zwei didn’t save my life (as it was not in danger). Clarity wasn’t the only thing that got me out of that hole. As with the much deeper pit of depression and anxiety later in my 20s, I was lucky to have the right support system that prevented a further descent, but music helped. A lot.
Clarity changed my life. I’ve always been into music and had other pop culture infatuations before Clarity and Jimmy Eat World. But Lucky Denver Mint was the first video that I could see myself in, and Clarity was the first album where I thought ”I would’ve made this if I had more talent”. The mix of emotions, rock guitars, pop hooks, literary references, a vague notion of experiments, and a lack of strict scene adherence is a common thread through most of my favorite records.
Clarity and Jimmy Eat World was also the soundtrack of my personal coming-of-age novel in many ways.
- A record I recommended on romantic and non-romantic crushes.
- Lucky Denver Mint still makes me happy.
- Table for Glasses is my number 1 song number 1 on an album.
- Goodbye Sky Harbour is the exact length it took me to drive from my high school girlfriend’s place to my parent’s house in my Toyota Yaris.
- A Jimmy Eat World show at Georg-Elser-Halle in Munich was the first longer nighttime drive I took (together with my brother) after I got my license.
- The Jimmy Eat World forum at the time was the first internet forum I felt at home in. My first real email address was chrisclarity at [forumname]. I basically experienced 9/11 through CNN and in the threads on that site.
At times, Static Prevails was my preferred album, Bleed American was almost equally important for me, and I haven’t really connected with a Jimmy Eat World album after Futures. But Clarity will always be an album that changed my life.
Thoughts?