To celebrate the release of their 11th studio album, Listen Up!, New Found Glory drummer Cyrus Bolooki sat down with us to go through the record in full.
Read all about the inspiration and journey to Listen Up! in this exclusive track by track.
Boom Roasted
“‘Boom Roasted,’ awesome song. We knew from the very beginning it was going to be the first track. Literally, the first two or three words are “listen up”. It’s the name of the record! It’s lyrically kind of about what’s going on in music. We’ve never shied away from that before. If you go back to Catalyst and the song “Intro” off Catalyst, it’s talking about almost the same thing musically. For Listen Up!, we thought that this was a great introduction to the record because it really does kind of set the tone for what you’re about to hear. “Riff city”, as somebody has said in the past, and I agree. And there’s super catchy melodies and a fun chorus. I think it’s a great album opener.”
100%
“‘100%’ is a song that I think most people would know. But if you don’t know, we wrote and recorded this song about a year prior to actually recording the rest of the record. It does sound like the rest of the record, and it was a great litmus test for us. It was a song where the riffs and things were kind of there early enough for us to record it. But we got in the studio while we were doing some other stuff and we’re like, ‘Let’s see what this sounds like.’ And we were so pleased with the results. It was like, ‘Well, we know we can do a record now if we just assemble the same team, go to the same studio, it doesn’t matter what day or time; it’s going to sound great.’ And that’s literally what set the stage for this entire album. It’s a great song, and it’s got a good message about giving your all. And musically it’s heavy. People have responded well to it, it’s a staple of our set right now!”
Laugh It Off
“‘Laugh It Off’ is another song that we were very excited about. I feel like it was one of the first songs from when we did this two week writing session with Ian [Grushka], Chad [Gilbert] and myself at Chad’s house. We kind of had this one from the very beginning, we didn’t really have to do much to it because it pretty much wrote itself. It is a song that has an iconic guitar riff that it starts with, and that continues throughout the song. It’s a cool thing for us, I say it has ‘All Downhill From Here’ vibes. And this is a very nerdy musical thing because it’s a minor song that goes major in the chorus. For anybody who doesn’t know anything about music, forget what I just said. But it’s a great song lyrically too, it’s a cool thing because it’s really looking at, ‘Hey, look, stuff happens in life. And a lot of times, or most times, it’s probably not as big of a deal as it feels.'”
A Love Song
“‘A Love Song’ is a great song. It’s one of my favourites on the record. Some of the other guys might not agree, but I don’t care. This was another song that we didn’t really have to do much to. It’s a very straightforward song, so it’s maybe not as ‘involved’ as some of the other songs. A cool little caveat about this song is that a lot of the lyrics on this song were directly derived from, or taken from, a journal that Jordan [Pundik] had been keeping of random sayings or little poems or just different things he’d been writing down. That’s a little different for us. Most of the time we don’t write in this sense. And just a little extra backstory, Jordan was not present for the two weeks that we were all at Chad’s house musically creating this record. He was on a family vacation that had been pre-planned years before and he couldn’t really change it. But his contribution was freely giving this inner look into his mind in a journal to us. And there were some other things here and there sporadically pulled from. But with ‘A Love Song,’ a lot of that is really from him. So kudos to you, Jordan, for making one of my favourite songs on the record.”
Beer and Blood Stains
“When we were musically putting this song together, the main riff, which is at the beginning and the chorus; it kind of was already there, it was great stuff. When we get to the middle of the song, which I call the bridge, some people will call it the breakdown. But it is the ‘hardcore’ part, let’s say that. We didn’t know what to do there because that was just a random voice memo that Chad had. When we were in writing mode for the song, we knew it was going to be a heavy song and we knew that maybe we should talk about where we came from or reference this old stuff. But then Chad’s like, ‘Why don’t we try this riff?’ And me being the musical person I am, I’m like, ‘I don’t know how that works. It doesn’t seem like it works?’ But we made it work and it kind of goes in its own little direction. And it’s cool because it is a departure, in a sense, because it is very hardcore; but we’re not being cheesy at all. We’re able to do that because we came up in that scene and that is literally what the song is talking about. So it goes hand in hand, the way that that song was written and the lyrical themes. I mean, we’re talking about it so much and we’re so direct about where we came from. You literally have a Florida chant at the end of the song. And all I can say is after this comes out and at our shows in Florida: that better be the loudest part of the set or else we should have said any other thing, Australia or you name it. Maybe we will change it based on where we are at the time? We’ll see.”
Medicine
“Now that we’re literally about halfway through the record, it gets real. And I have said in the past that we write songs about where we are in our lives. It’s like a snapshot of what we’ve been doing in our lives for the past year or two, or however many years we’ve been going since the last record. This is no exception. ‘Medicine’ is probably the first track on the record that is directly related to what Chad’s going through. And we’re going to be real about this stuff, and we’re going to write songs about this stuff. I think it fits the music on that song, and it’s a complete departure from ‘Beer and Blood Stains.’ When ‘Beer and Blood Stains’ ends, it’s got such an abrupt ending. And then ‘Medicine’ starts, and it’s just a complete 180 from that. But we’re very happy with this because we were able to make this song extremely heavy. Musically, it’s almost got a Weezer-ish vibe, I feel, in the guitar riffs at least. And in my opinion, I think it’s got some of the greatest melodies in the chorus. For me, it pulls at the emotions. And lyrically, you’ll have another track or two on the record like this as well, but Chad’s obviously directly going through something and everybody’s affected by it, and this is us snapshotting that.”
Treat Yourself
“‘Treat Yourself!’ So let’s go back 180 again, going from ‘Medicine,’ which is one of the slowest songs on the record, to ‘Treat Yourself.’ I think this was one of the earliest songs we wrote, and it was pretty straightforward for us. It was like, ‘Hey, we want a faster song. Let’s do it in this West Coast punk style.’ There’s nothing super crazy going on in this song, but I think I’m the most proud of this song. It’s got what I call the ‘Cyrus chord’ in it, which is the chord going into the bridge. Again, this is for all you musical nerds out there, Chad had this idea for a guitar solo, and when he played it for me, I’m like, ‘That’s not the same key as the song. So we have to figure out how this works.’ And we sat there for a couple minutes trying, trying, trying. And at this time, I’m holding a guitar because as we were writing, I grabbed a guitar to kind of help out Chad instead of going on the drums right away. I asked him to do what I call the Jimi Hendrix chord. It’s a ‘Cyrus chord’ to the band, but for me as a seasoned guitar player, I call it the Jimi Hendrix chord, I dunno what it actually is. But long story short: right before the solo? There is this chord that happens. And that’s my big contribution to this song. I swore when we wrote that, in my head I’m like, ‘We’re going to get rid of this. They’re just being nice to me right now, but at some point before we turn it into Pure Noise it’s going to be deleted and replaced.’ And lo and behold, it wasn’t! It’s still there.
“It’s a fun song. And lyrically, this one is cool too because we wanted people to really look at life and just be like, ‘Hey, you should celebrate. Life is going to be hard, and you should celebrate in your own way. If it’s a small thing or big thing, life is going to be hard. Laugh it off. Nothing’s really that big of a deal.’ And more importantly, you’ve got to take time for yourself every now and then or else what’s the point?”
Dream Born Again
“‘Dream Born Again’ is a song where…now that I think about it, I always forget about this. I said ‘100%’ was recorded well before this record. With ‘Dream Born Again,’ this version of it was not recorded, but we recorded and released ‘Dream Born Again’ a few years ago on our acoustic EP. When we did release that song, we always said, ‘This would be such a great song if we could just do this heavy.’ And we were telling ourselves, ‘Maybe we’ll just do that live.’ But then, when we were coming into recording this record, it’s like, ‘Why don’t we just record ‘Dream Born Again?’ With that last acoustic record, we celebrated it, we released it, we pushed it, we had an acoustic tour; but it didn’t get the same kind of push. We’re really, really excited with Pure Noise and what they’re doing with this record.
“So we were like, ‘We should put this on here because people may finally hear it. And also, we can make it heavy like we originally thought about.’ With this song, we didn’t have to worry about the writing because it was already done. Ironically, I will admit it was one of the hardest songs for me to record myself on drums because there were no drums on the original. So I was the one who had to do all the new stuff. And there’s this pressure of don’t do anything that’s going to make it not good. I’m thinking to myself as I’m recording the drums, ‘I wish I could just be playing acoustic guitar.’ As nerve-wracking as it was when we were doing the acoustic version, I recorded acoustic guitars on that album. I’m like, ‘At this point, I just want to do the guitars because I know them! I don’t want to do this stuff I don’t know.’ But I think it came out great. And it’s kind of a classic love song, if you want to call it that.
“Ironically when we did the demo of this song at Chad’s house, it was the last song we did. He actually did an Instagram live stream, or a story or something. He might still have the post of me, Ian and him playing this song heavy that day. And it’s very similar to what you hear on this record. But when we were recording all of that so that we had something to reference after we left his house, I took Jordan’s vocals and all the stuff from the acoustic record and just threw it on top to hear it… and it was cool. So this was the first song and pretty much the only song that we were able to have a full demo with singing on for this album, because for the rest of it, a lot of the lyrics were written as we were entering the studio and then Jordan would kind of sing on it as we were there.”
You Got This
“‘You Got This’ is a really cool track. It’s neat because it is different from any other song. It’s got keyboards on it, it’s got a little bit of a Radiosurgery vibe, like the album Radiosurgery. I actually really love this song. Again, nerdy music stuff here, but it’s got a unique drum sound on it, which I think is cool. But it’s fun. It’s a fun song, and it’s got a good message too. I almost feel like I wish it were earlier on the record, but it was hard to figure out how we could put it earlier. All those other tracks seem to fit together. But I think it’s a good thing to put here because we’re about to talk about the last song on the record, which really is great as the last song. ‘You Got This’ was a good way to finish off the positivity of this record, or at least the airiness of this record before we get into a deeper topic again.”
Frankenstein’s Monster
“Musically again, this is a weird one because there are two parts to this song, and it kind of goes somewhere halfway through, and it doesn’t come back. Typically with songs, they would call this the bridge, where it goes somewhere, but it always comes back to the chorus. We did this before, we did this on the song ‘Greatest Of All Time,’ which is on our Forever + Ever x Infinity record, where we kind of went to a different place and kept it that way. So because we had done this, I remember talking to Chad and him being like,’Is it okay to do this?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, we did it, it worked before, so let’s do it again. It’s fine. Let’s just keep going. And we’ll either fade it out or do something.'”
“Lyrically, obviously it is a very, very heavy song. And when we were arranging this record, or we call it sequencing, where we’ve recorded all of it but you don’t record it in the order that you’re going to put it out in, you just record all the songs. When we were talking about what order we should put stuff in, Chad actually originally wanted this a little earlier on the record, and the rest of us were like, ‘We don’t feel like you should. We feel like this is a song that is good to put at the end.’ When you’re finishing out this song and kind of hearing what’s going on, it really is a good way to leave it. It does kind of sum up a lot of stuff. And I think more importantly, it would be very hard to come back from this after that. And even musically, too, it’s a little faster, which is good, and then it gets a little slower at the end. It kind of sums up a lot of stuff. But I’m glad that this is the ending track on the record, and I think at the end you can finish it and be like, ‘Okay, I just went on a journey and it feels like it ended and it’s a good place to end.’ And hopefully like me, you’ll be like, ‘Okay, now I’m ready for what’s next.’ Well, we’ve gotta wait a couple of years probably for what’s next. But you’ll feel ready.
