Man’s Search for Meaning Through Music
Bleachers’ album "everyone for ten minutes" and what it means to be human
I wasn’t always an album listener. A few years ago, even, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a single or an EP or an extended mix of a song. I very much fell into the category of “ooh, that’s a shiny song, let me add it to my Apple Music playlist.” And that was that.
Ever since marrying my husband, who I bonded with over our mutual love for synth-pop and 80s/90s bands, I’ve taken to listening to albums cover to cover. The first artist I did this with was none other than Bleachers, an alternative, Jersey-born rock band led by musician Jack Antonoff. You’ve likely heard some of his work before — he also spends his days producing music for some of pop’s heavyweights like Lana Del Rey and the Taylor Swift.
Album art for everyone for ten minutes. (Source: New Noise Magazine)
So, naturally, when Bleachers released their album everyone for ten minutes last Friday, I gave it a listen, cover to cover. What I found within the 11 songs (only 39 minutes in length!) was pretty insightful — not solely for this band, but for what fuels us as humans.
Bleachers’ music has a knack for latching onto a theme and weaving it through a whole album (take Gone Now, with its ideas of loss and the transience of the things that matter). In this latest addition to the band’s catalogue, everyone for ten minutes expertly uses nostalgic beats and emblematic saxophone to explore some of those things that make us feel alive: love, art, and, if you’re Antonoff, Wawa.
With this new entry, I was eager to hear callbacks to the nostalgic work inspired by Erasure and Bruce Springsteen that was also very much Bleachers. However, I couldn’t help but feel through each song that the singer is trying to claw at something quite deep — a yearning that can’t quite be quelled by things of this world. But more on that in a bit.
An important note
Before we continue: While I’m a fan of Bleachers’ music, I’d like to emphasize that this entry, much like its predecessor, Bleachers, explores — ahem — matureterritory. There are loads of expletives (f-bombs, unfortunately) and heavy imagery that squarely put this as an album for adult listeners.
I truly wish there would be a radio-edit/“clean” version of this album, but I imagine it’s unlikely. There are certain songs that I’ve listened to 2-3 times for the sake of analysis, but quite frankly, I won’t add to my heavy rotation (aside from “sideways,” the album’s songs labeled with an E for explicit are going to be skipped going forward.)
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Glory, glory, hallelujah?
This album has a strong start with opener “sideways,” music humming to life in a head-bopping way reminiscent of “Chinatown” from Bleachers’ 2021 album Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night (which I can’t believe was already five years ago!) Antonoff croons about a love that’s loved, well, sideways.
The songs hearken back to themes of nostalgia, as in “the van,” where Antonoff recalls his early years making music back in Jersey. Friendship, loss, and fiery, fiery love are also explored in catchy songs like “we should talk” and “dancing.”
The collaborators who’ve helped shape Bleachers over the years also get a shoutout in “upstairs at els” (els being Electric Lady Studios, where the band records much of their work).
While Bleachers’ music has great depth — and as I’m personally a music-lover who listens closely to lyrics — I was surprised to see lots of religious imagery throughout the album…except that this idol-worship is exactly that, placed upon things of this world.
For one, glory is mentioned quite a bit — 11 times; I counted! There are these cries throughout the collection of songs:
“Glory to the ones on the edge/ I just don’t wanna be lonely” (from “the van”)
“For crying out loud, I was crying out for a savior” (and then some pretty irreverent things I’m going to skip over in “you and forever,” the lead single and my least-favorite song on the album)
“You’re someone and nothing all at once / How could you let me do this alone? / Glory to the ones who were left, hallelujah” (from “dancing,” which could be a potential reference to the death of Antonoff’s little sister)
These not-so-undertones pull back the veil on vulnerability, leaving much of the music feeling raw and real as the music tries to make sense of the world. We, as mere mortals, try to search for meaning. We always have, always will. In this album, this message is clear: Bleachers’ antidote for meaning is found in intentionality, in bonds that go beyond the surface. It lies in being seen.
Being seen
Antonoff reflected on the album’s title in one of his newsletters this past spring:
how interesting that my phone knows that i can’t be accessible to the entire world around me for longer than ten minutes but my self doesn’t sometimes. i saw that on airdrop one day and was stunned by it. i love accidental poetry out in the world. sometimes the ones selling us sh*t say the quiet part out loud and it’s beautiful. …
everyone for ten minutes encapsulates the end of the experiment and the beginning of the next one. let’s have this next one be about the people we care about.
In “dirty wedding dress,” Antonoff laments the way people try to claim they know him, when in fact, they really don’t:
“Now only my people can see me
Only my people come in
Everybody outside talkin’ like they know
But no, they don’t know
They don’t know what they think
What they thought, thought they heard…
And they’ll never get why
So glory to the ones gettin’ right”
Without a doubt, this is an album for Jack Antonoff’s people: the people who really, truly matter to him. While the sounds are fun and the lyrics are candid and raw, there isn’t anything particularly revolutionary about the revelations in everyone for ten minutes.
The music-makers may not see it themselves, but there’s something deeper going on lately. There’s a desire to be seen, to be known, to be loved and understood.
The world is craving this.
The Pope chimes in
In his fresh-off-the-papal-press encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo discussed that same nature of being seen.
“It is individuals that matter,” Pope Leo wrote, “each and every person” (MH, 58). While this encyclical tackles the concept of technology and artificial intelligence head-on, it reminds us about the humanity, that great gift we’ve been given from God, that sets us apart.
I can’t help but think that Antonoff and artists like him are scratching at that idea. Isn’t that the beauty of music, after all? It evokes something from each and every one of us: sometimes indifference, sometimes tears, sometimes a yearning that comes from deep within. And so we artists continue to create and capture those sentiments about the things that matter. To Antonoff, it’s his people.
Further in his encyclical, Pope Leo wrote:
“The quality of a civilization is measured … by its ability to recognize the other as a face not merely as a function” (MH 114, emphasis added).
We claw away at the world, looking around us to see who’s truly paying attention and placing our hope in people that ultimately fail us. That’s the thing: we weren’t meant to fill that hole; only God can do that.
There’s something about the arts that gets our hearts and minds stirring. Somewhere, deep within each one of us, we all yearn for beauty because it points back to a “Beauty ancient, a Beauty so new” (St. Augustine).
“Only my people can see me,” goes the Bleachers tune. Yet, just yet, God says, “I see you.” And we are called to see one another — truly see one another. In doing so, that’s where our humanity lies.
That’s where the beauty is.