Jimmy Eat World Thought They Were ‘Getting Away With Something’ When The Blew Up

Dan Cribb

“The coolest band you can think of is full of people scared shitless that they're going to be discovered as having nothing."

Jimmy Eat World(Credit: Christopher Wray-McCann)

Jimmy Eat World Profile

You can write one of the most popular songs of all-time and still have imposter syndrome. Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World fame felt like he was “getting away with something” after the band dropped Bleed American in 2001, which featured seminal hit The Middle alongside fan favourites Sweetness, A Praise Chorus, and more.

“2011 is when I started letting myself believe that things had really changed,” Adkins shares. “Because we'd had opportunities before that were seemingly impossible to have, especially for who we were and the way that we came up playing gigs and making friends with other bands and sleeping on floors.

“We had opportunities that were just insane. And we took them feeling like, ‘Well, what we're probably going to get out of this is some funny stories and that's it.’ It's about securing the ability to make the music that we want to. And beyond that, some funny stories. That's what you're going to walk away with. And every single time that you get the opportunity to do that, it's probably the last time you get that opportunity. So, cool, have fun with it.”

Before Bleed American was released, one of the first things they did in “setting up the album” was get on a plane and head to Australia, which Adkins reminisces about ahead of their upcoming shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Join 'Backstage Pass', our FREE members program for music fans

“We hadn't done a whole lot of international touring at that point, so everything about it was just this adventure,” Adkins recalls. “And it was also when the record industry was still a record industry… labels had buildings. It's hard to imagine that now. We basically got to see the tail end of the music industry as a real thing all around the world. That's nuts.

“There's just something about playing in Australia that's like... it's just different. I don't know. I mean, the friendliness or the warmth is just on a higher volume than almost anywhere that I think I've been.

“That entire time coming to Australia to play for the first time before Bleed American was even out, that's what we were thinking: ‘We're getting away with something and we better enjoy it before this all stops.’ I still feel like that today to some degree, but I've worked on it.”

Imposter syndrome is what drives a lot of musicians; the constant questioning of their worth forces them to work harder.

“The coolest band you can think of is full of people scared shitless that they're going to be discovered as having nothing,” Adkins agrees. “And it's like they're just all the outcast kid that didn't feel like they fit in anywhere. And they found their other outcast kids who feel like they didn't fit anywhere and they made friends with them. And that's what music, that's everybody I know, is.

“I guess everyone deals with that imposter syndrome outwardly differently. I was always the person that agreed with you that I got nothing. That's how I dealt with it. Other people become Mick Jagger as a way to deal with it, you know what I mean? You put on this character of either humour or you are The Beatles. That’s how you deal with it. But secretly, no, everybody is just scared to death they're going to get found out.”

The band’s longevity and consistent line-up come down to one thing: remembering why they first started a band back in the ‘90s – to have fun.

“If you don't have that as the primary motivation, you're not going to go far,” Adkins stresses. “You're going to be miserable and you're going to get in literal fights with everybody or you're just going to be phoning it in and miserable and the people listening to your work are going to hear that and they're going to not connect and that's going to be that.”

Jimmy Eat World created Bleed American for no one else but themselves, which comes through across the album’s songs.

As he reflects on Bleed American 25 years on, Adkins says that he has a “far more nuanced understanding” of the album.

“When you're creating stuff, you're just sort of channelling and you're not questioning it. The moment you start overthinking or questioning too much, then you just kill it... you're no longer the vehicle for the creation. You are now judging and editing, and you're not enjoying it. You're not just stoked that you're on the wave. You're now thinking about the mechanics of surfing.

“When you're creating it, you need to be just about riding the wave. And you know when it's fun. You know when you're having a good time, you know when it's a good one. Can you explain it entirely? No, you just sort of feel it and you move on.

“After 25 years of performing this stuff and thinking about it, I've come to understand things I've been trying to tell myself about that first sort of feeling.

“I didn't have the words to describe The Middle back then for what it is - the idea of when you place your sense of self-worth on external validation, it's going to run out of fuel real quick. It just is unsustainable. That's not the place to be getting that. It's like a sugar high. You might feel good for a minute, but then you're going to be chasing it again. And that's a lesson that you learn over and over and over again.

“As a kid, it's a really hard lesson and then you think you got it, but you don't. Later on it's going to show up in different ways, in different forms your entire life. And that's something I really wouldn't have been able to fully describe when we were making it.”

When Adkins first wrote The Middle, he didn’t think too much of it, because it came to him too easily.

“I think you always place a little bit more sense of value on the creative puzzle that you struggle to solve,” he says. “And Middle came together really quickly. It just was a simple idea and I wrote the lyrics pretty fast and there's nothing wrong with it. It's just like, ‘Yeah, this is cool. This is good enough to record for the record, but it's just this fun song.’ I didn't realise what we were doing.”

Whatever Jimmy Eat World are doing is working, as the band’s 25th anniversary tour of Bleed American, heading to Australia this December, is “surpassing” their expectations.

“If I was the type of person to set high expectations, we've blown right through all of them, so it's going great. Across the board, it's the biggest shows we've ever tried to do as a headlining act.”