I hadn’t listened to New Found Glory in years.
Not “a couple of years.” I mean, I realistically couldn’t tell you the last time I sat down and intentionally listened to one of their albums. I was a big fan when I first started getting into punk rock and pop-punk around late 1999 and 2000, and they stayed in pretty regular rotation for me through somewhere around 2006, but eventually my music tastes wandered off to more 1940s and 1950s, and classical, and New Found Glory mostly stayed behind in that particular chapter of my life.
Then Chad Gilbert died on September 20th at just 45, and suddenly I found myself thinking about this album again. Gilbert was one of the founding members and lead guitarists of New Found Glory, and while I haven’t kept up with the band in a very long time, hearing that news was still one of those strange reminders that the bands you grew up with, and the people in them, are getting older right alongside you.
I didn’t want to write some big sentimental tribute pretending New Found Glory has remained one of my favorite bands for the last twenty years, because that wouldn’t be true. What I wanted to do instead was pull up the self-titled album, hit play for the first time in probably over two decades, and see what happened.
Turns out, quite a bit came back. So today on Melody Monday #4, we’re revisiting the 2000 self-titled album New Found Glory.
The album kicks off with Better Off Dead, and within seconds I knew this was going to be fun. This is still a fantastic opener. Fast, loud, catchy, energetic, and exactly the kind of song you want starting a pop-punk record. If I were ranking the album today, I think this would still be right near the top. It throws you directly into the record without wasting any time, and even after all these years, it still hits.
Then comes Dressed to Kill, which is a good song, but oddly enough it has never been anywhere near one of my favorites on the album. It’s one of those tracks I completely understand people liking, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but even back then there were several songs I would have chosen ahead of it.
Sincerely Me was where this revisit started getting weird in the best possible way. I hadn’t heard this song in twenty years, and once it got going, I still knew the words.
That is such a strange thing about music. You can forget what you ate three days ago, forget people’s names, forget entire stretches of your life, and then somebody plays a song you haven’t heard since the early 2000s, and suddenly every lyric is sitting there waiting for you like it never left. I loved Sincerely Me back then, and listening to it again now, yeah, I still really like it.
Then you hit Hit or Miss, which is probably the obvious song most people associate with this era of New Found Glory, and for good reason. This was the song that introduced me to the band, although technically it was the video that did it because I practically lived on MTV back then.
That music video got my attention; I went looking for more, and that was pretty much that.
Hit or Miss is still a classic New Found Glory song, but after revisiting the album, I don’t think it’s actually better than Better Off Dead. It’s more important to me historically because it’s how I discovered the band, but if I’m just judging the songs today, Better Off Dead wins.
Second to Last was good then, and it’s still good now. Nothing complicated to say about it. It just works.
Then we get to Eyesore, and my brain decided sometime during the last twenty years that this song was not important enough to retain.
I must have listened to this album a thousand times back then. I know for a fact I heard Eyesore over and over again, and yet listening to it now, I don’t remember it at all. Nothing. Not the melody, not the lyrics, not some random little piece buried in the chorus. It’s like somebody quietly deleted this track from my memory and left the rest of the album untouched.
It’s not bad either. I actually liked it listening to it now. It’s a little on the long side compared with some of the punchier tracks around it, but there’s nothing wrong with it. Apparently 15-year-old Gary’s brain just decided there was limited hard drive space, and Eyesore wasn’t making the cut to retain until being 40.
Vegas, on the other hand, came right back.
I liked this one then, and I like it now. It’s easily one of the better tracks on the album, and by this point I was starting to realize something else about revisiting New Found Glory: there really aren’t many bad songs here. There are songs I like more than others, obviously, but nothing has made me wonder what the hell I was listening to back then.
Which brings us to Sucker. I remembered this one instantly, and I also remembered that I used to absolutely love it. Listening to it now, I still think it’s good. I just have absolutely no idea why I liked it that much.
There are songs where twenty years later you can immediately understand why younger you latched onto them, and then there are others like this one for me, where you’re sitting there thinking, “Yeah, this is perfectly fine… but apparently I used to think this was the greatest thing ever recorded.”
Sucker falls into that second category for me.
Black and Blue is alright. Again, not bad at all, but it’s nowhere near the top of the album for me. On a record this consistently good, something has to end up toward the bottom, and Black and Blue is probably hanging around down there with Dressed to Kill for me.
Then Boy Crazy starts, and suddenly we’re right back to that weird musical time-machine thing. This was one of my favorites on the album back then, and within moments I was singing along again like I had listened to it yesterday. I haven’t heard this song in probably twenty years. Didn’t matter. The words were still there.
And unlike Sucker, where I couldn’t quite figure out why I loved it so much, Boy Crazy still makes complete sense to me. This is still one of my favorite tracks on the record. Fast, catchy, fun, exactly the kind of pop-punk song that hooked me during that period.
All About Her is another one that holds up really well. Great song then, great song now.
And then the album closes with Ballad for the Lost Romantics, which was a banger then and is still a banger now.
That’s a hell of a way to end the record.
What surprised me most about revisiting New Found Glory wasn’t that I still liked Hit or Miss or remembered Better Off Dead. Those were expected. It was how much of the rest of this album was apparently still sitting somewhere in my head after all these years.
Sincerely Me starts, and suddenly I know the words. Boy Crazy starts, and I’m singing along. Vegas comes on, and I immediately remember liking it.
Then Eyesore plays, and my brain just goes, “Never heard this song before in my life.” Like someone inserted a new track on an album I used to listen to all the time.
Music is weird.
This album also takes me back to a really specific period. Around 1999 and 2000, I was getting into punk rock and pop-punk in a big way, and for the next several years that stuff became a major part of what I listened to. New Found Glory was right there in the middle of it. MTV still mattered, music videos could still introduce you to bands, and hearing one song you liked could send you looking for an entire album. I’m sure we’ll be getting to a lot more of the pop-punk and punk stuff over the coming weeks; Sum 41, Good Charlotte, H20, Simple Plan, Pennywise… they’ll all be making an appearance soon.
Eventually I moved on. Not because New Found Glory suddenly became bad, and not because I had some dramatic breakup with pop-punk. I just started listening to other things, again oldies and classical stuff, and then I kinda just quit listening to music altogether, and somewhere along the way this album ended up sitting untouched for about twenty years.
Going back to it now, though, I understand why I loved it.
Maybe that’s what I like most about doing Melody Monday. Sometimes nostalgia completely lies to you. Sometimes you revisit something and discover that twelve-year-old you had terrible taste. Other times you hit play after twenty years and realize younger you actually knew exactly what he was doing.
New Found Glory falls much closer to that second category.
I’m not suddenly going to pretend I’ve been following the band religiously all these years, because I haven’t. But Chad Gilbert’s death gave me a reason to go back to an album I probably wouldn’t have thought to revisit otherwise, and I’m glad I did. For about forty minutes, it sounded like the year 2000 again.
And apparently I still know most of the words. Just not to Eyesore.
What album from your teenage years could you probably still sing along with today even if you haven’t heard it in twenty years? Sound off in the comments.
