Release Date: August 14, 2012
Anniversary: 10 years
Genre: Pop-Punk
The best music appeals to us emotionally, which leads to future feelings of nostalgia. I’m not going to pretend that every album I’ve enjoyed has had this effect; Kid A, while indisputably and objectively better than any Yellowcard album, provides me no rose-tinted glimpses of the past even though I consider it to be one of the most groundbreaking records to come out in my lifetime. Perhaps that’s because it’s an inherently cold record, or maybe it’s because I was barely in middle school when it dropped. Musical nostalgia at its very best requires a precise blend of intangibles; where you are in your life, what kind of music you’re listening to, what happens to get released at that exact moment, and whether or not you encounter it. The stars must align perfectly. For me, only a few albums have struck such a chord – and among those, Yellowcard’s Southern Air tops them all.
As Southern Air turns ten years old today, I’m amazed by its ability to instantly transport me back to the most turbulent, yet amazing, year of my life. 2012 began as no picnic: my heart was left in shambles by a girlfriend who moved out of state with a fiance she never told me she had; my “career” had stalled at a dangerous and low-paying entry level position; my roommate and I were gradually drifting apart; my neighbor was threatening to kill me; my dad had a heart attack; I was scraping by financially with almost no money in savings; the woman I’d been hopelessly in love with since I met her was five years deep in a relationship that seemed destined for engagement; I spent every Friday and Saturday night – sometimes more – getting drunk off my ass to forget the pain. Yeah, so 2012 was no fun…but then, things suddenly reversed course. It started when I left my apartment in the city behind and moved closer to home. Then I found a much, much better job. Shortly after that, the aforementioned woman of my dreams proclaimed that she was also in love with me, and ended her other relationship. That very same week, my favorite pop-punk band of all-time just happened to release what was arguably their best album, brimming with lyrics that aligned perfectly with my situation: moving on from heartache (bottoms up tonight, I drink to you and I / ’cause with the morning comes the rest of my life), finding true happiness after years of unrequited feelings (I loved you first, I love you still / I always will), overcoming toxic roommates/friends/neighbors (someone’s gonna tell you that you deserve the worst…and when they give up, cause they always give up / say, here I am alive), honeymoon-phase romance (when the fireflies lit up our skies / those were the nights when the world made us smile), quitting drinking and accessing the best version of yourself (I thought about the day / when I could truly say I’m better now / and here I am), and identifying a sense of home, both literally and figuratively (after living through these wild years and coming out alive / I just want to lay my head here, stop running for a while / seems the only truth I know, this will always be home). The entirety of my experiences in 2012 could be summed up by one of the record’s final verses: the future’s coming on. You want to talk about musical fate? For me, this was it – and that’s why when I reviewed the album, it felt like I was writing about my own life just as much as I was the music at hand. As I drove to my new job each day, and then every weekend to see the woman who I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt – even way back then – would end up become my wife, these triumphant and optimistic pop-punk tunes played beneath the August summer sun, thus transforming Southern Air into one of the most emotionally significant pieces of music I’ve ever heard.
I could wax poetic for pages and pages about all the ways in which this album has impacted me, but the thing is, I’m not the only one who feels this way about Southern Air. It’s no coincidence that so many people identified with this album in a way that specifically connected it to a new chapter in their lives. Yellowcard always had a knack for growing with their fanbase, which is a trait that I can’t say is shared among all pop-punk bands. Many acts refused to budge from teenage angst, immaturity, and extremely basic/catchy songwriting. As fans of the genre know, the best musicians ended up separating themselves with time – blink-182’s self-titled is a prime example, but even bands like The Ataris and Motion City Soundtrack would go on to achieve a much more nuanced sound that you could appreciate well into adulthood. Yellowcard is right in that same company, shifting lyrical themes from summer relationships/breakups to ideas like the definition of home and starting a family. Rather than fixating on a target age group and constantly trying to remain relevant, Yellowcard wrote about their experiences as they lived through them, knowing that their fans would be enduring those same struggles. That approach paid dividends as the band, even well past their peak popularity, retained a large and loyal following. I have no doubt that if Yellowcard ever reunites to release another album, it will feel like the next chapter in my life — because that’s what they’ve always done. They’re the musical soundtrack to a story I’m living, writing the songs and conveying the feelings that I’ve always come up short of articulating. Even a decade later, that’s not a feeling I’ll easily forget.
