The Maybe Man, released today. It’s AJR’s 5th studio album and honestly it probably is my favorite album. by AJR. So, let’s discuss this new album known as The Maybe Man.

The Album Itself

This song, really hits hard for the older gen z, millennial going through the ringer of life. The stresses of life, from relationships to dead end jobs. It touches on everything that just seems like a current issue or something that is a looming thought. Like how in Hole in the Bottom of My Brain it is a cheery song but looms with how we hide our feelings and how our brains just feel better by posting photos on social media to just hide our feelings and to pretend our lives are better.

This is also the album with the third and final Turning Out, as The Click had Turning Out, Neotheater had Turning Out Pt. ii and now The Maybe Man has Turning Out Pt. iii and it even “references” to the past songs by the use of guitars and other sounds.

Favorite Songs

Inertia is one of my favorites because it’s reminiscent of Neotheather and OK Orchestra and that’s why I like it so much. It has that old timey sound, and also the chorus of “I’m an object of motion / I’ve lost all emotion / My two legs are broken / but look at me dance” just hits hard. Plus, this song discusses the hardship of dating and being a hopeless relationship because dating or finding someone is much worse. Another line I like is just them saying they’ll save the planet but they got plans. It’s also just kind of true, where we want to do things helpful but often we got plans so we can’t fully do it.

2085 / Maybe Man. It’s two songs but it is a teased “13th” song, but that will be discussed later. Maybe Man is Jack describing what if he was something else but seeing the bad in being something other than him. He says he could be stone so he wouldn’t feel emotions but he likes the way that she smiles. He says if he was his dog he would be happy when he returns but knows he wouldnt live long and reminiscences how he will miss his dog when she’s gone. But 2085 is about being old, and how it’s okay to just do whatever. They wrote their “dumb songs” but it also says how you don’t have to try so hard to be liked. They also don’t think they’ll have everything together by that time…and that’s okay.

The Continual Loop

So, as mentioned with 2085 / Maybe Man they go together. Well, when AJR teased TMM (The Maybe Man) they mentioned it having 13 songs, but when they released the track list there were only 12. As the CD shows a continual loop people thought about how it could go together. It wasn’t until someone decoded 2085 as 20-8-5 which translates to The…so….The Maybe Man as the two songs connect. The name of the album. It was quick to note that AJR made that theory known that they were correct.

Yet, as TMM is a continual loop is shows how repetitive our lives can be, the cycles we go through. The issues we go through. Which, is kind of funny. In every AJR album it’s mentioned the meaning of life or trying to figure out why we’re alive. This just adds onto that, of when we’re living we still make the same mistakes. We do the same actions, and we learn. We learn from them, and grow from them. But yet, we still do them sometimes and it’s hard to break that cycle. It also shares the insecurities that we will be like our parents, that we are consciously doing what they did and we don’t want to end up like them (in this case, divorce is very prevalent in this album as Ryan did propose to his girlfriend before the album’s release).

Pre Release

The album The Maybe Man was pushed back a week, and honestly a part of it seemed worth it. This week, a lot of great albums were released and AJR’s was one of them. Plus the release of the album, and the hype surrounding it made it perfect for them to release a tour coming in April 2024 and the dates that go along with it.