Hear You Me

Jimmy Eat World was known as one of the early emo rock bands of the 2000s. Along with Weezer, The Promise Ring and The Wedding Present, Jimmy Eat World pairs ghostly melodies with raw emotional lyrics.

Their album Bleed American was released in 2001 with the song “Hear You Me,” written as a tribute to friends Mykel and Carli Allan. Bleed American was their fourth studio album and saw major commercial success.

I first heard it when I was seven years old.

While the song gained stardom on shows like One Tree Hill and the movie A Cinderella Story, I found it sitting on the plush blue carpet of my basement childhood home in suburbia Maryland as a cover titled “May Angels Lead You In.”

The carpet was old; it had been there since my parents had first come across the brick home painted white when I was just two years old. It was the only one on the block painted white, and it had a beautiful drooping tree outside of the dark wooden front door.

I would sit cross-legged on the carpet of the basement floor for hours, listening to the blaring rock music of my father’s band.

Dad is a drummer. His full time job is a surgeon, a scientist, and an oncologist. But at seven, I didn’t like to see him work there.

“Hear You Me” opens with an acoustic guitar that is soon followed by a slow drum beat and bass guitar. The three instruments play three distinctive melodies that compliment while simultaneously speak very different languages. There isn’t much diversity in each, however together they create a sound that while light and airy, has a depth that the vocals continue to bring out.

There’s no one in town I know
You gave us some place to go
I never said thank you for that
I thought I might get one more chance
What would you think of me now
So lucky, so strong, so proud?
I never said thank you for that
Now I’ll never have a chance

He was gone often 12 sometimes 14 hours of the day, and while he still somehow made it to every soccer game and run drills with me outside, this was my favorite time with him.

The basement wasn’t made for music like this. The walls absorbed nothing; the room would fill with the melodies of drums, a guitar, base, keyboard and voice of lead singer Darrell.

Jimmy Eat World has a different sound than the many other bands they chose to play. It is probably why it stuck with me in a way quite unlike the others.

While many of the other bands had a more 80s or grunge feel to their lyrics and melodies, Jimmy Eat World was far more understated. The melodies would strike me in ways that were equal yet distinctive from the overarching tone of the lyrics.

May angels lead you in
Hear you me my friends
On sleepless roads, the sleepless go
May angels lead you in

They were all doctors, but would play for hours when they got the chance. Creed, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana or Stone Temple Pilots would take center stage of my basement floor, and I had front row seats.

It was Darrell’s idea to cover the song. His mother had recently passed away and this song better expressed his love for her than he thought a speech would.

For him, this song was goodbye.

And for me, it was a start.

May angels lead you in
Hear you me my friends
On sleepless roads, the sleepless go
May angels lead you in

Music attaches itself to all forms of memory. Some songs regardless of intention will bring distinctively different emotions or meaning to each listener.

This particular song, for me, cannot be attached to just one memory, just one moment.

For Jimmy Eat World, this song expressed their undying devotion to the women they believe made possible the start of their career. These were the women that selflessly offered their home to them when they did not have one.

For them, this was their way to say thank you.

For me, it has been an anthem.

And if you were with me tonight
I’d sing to you just one more time
A song for a heart so big,
God wouldn’t let it live

Music fills the empty air in a way conversation and language cannot. It has an all-encompassing sort of air about it.

For most of my childhood, my conversations with dad revolved around one thing, soccer. Whether it was the upcoming game, my performance, or where he felt my team needed to improve, the central theme was the same, and I hated it.

I hated it so much that I preferred the silence of a long drive home. I knew he didn’t mean to bother me, or lead me to feel like I would rather not play than endure the endless conversations. He wanted to connect with me. He wanted to be apart of my life and this was his entryway.

We spent so much of our time together on drives to and from practice. His hands drumming the beat to whatever would come on over the radio, in perfect rhythm with songs he had never heard of. Like an impulse or subconscious movement, the beat of the drums seeped into every part of his life, into every moment of the day.

He didn’t know that I felt closer to him with a drum between us. He didn’t know that one song gave me more clarity about our bond, as father and daughter, than any conversation about soccer did.

May angels lead you in
Hear you me my friends
On sleepless roads, the sleepless go
May angels lead you in

Jimmy Eats World combines themes and sentiments that reach all types of people. The song came at a time where people wanted to connect to the lyrics. They wanted to feel something more than just the rock beats and indecipherable lyrics of 90s bands like Nirvana.

This song is all about the words you wish you said, but never did.

It’s about guidance and finding your place when you are placeless.

At least to me it is.

You gave us some place to go.

The melody, outside of the lyrics, doesn’t have a clear cut meaning on its own. Unlike the lyrics, it doesn’t have to. While lyrics are made up of one language, melodies and beats are universal. The melody is where I attach my memories. It is the melody that enables me when I hear the song, regardless of where I am, to immediately be brought back to the old basement floor.

Absorbed in a world where nothing exists outside of the basements walls.

It is the instruments, their melody, that fill a room. Without the melody, the words fall short of their expectation. Without the melody, the words don’t quite measure up.

Music, this particular song speaks in ways I am unable to. It has been a way to understand times that are sometimes unexplainable. Like a secret message kept just for me, a voice for the times when I do not know the right words to say or even the right way to feel.

My dad never knew that this song brought me through my grandfather’s death a year later. That it was the song I played on repeat when I would often sit next to him in silence on our car rides home. That it answered a void I couldn’t quite fill when we uprooted and moved my sophomore year of high school.

I never said thank you for that.

My dad has done everything to give my family the life we dreamed of. Working endless hours, missing so many moments, so that I could be where I am today.

Some people have photographs, letters, or other keepsakes that remind them of their loved ones; that bring them comfort when they feel lost or alone.

I count myself lucky.

A song for a heart so big

It may not be his words, it may not be his image, but I have “May Angels Lead You In.”

I have the beat of the drums, the notes of the piano and strokes of the guitar strings that ring through my ears the same way they did when I was seven years old.

And it’s a memory that holds stronger than any other.