The Maine - XOXO: From Love and Anxiety In Real Time (July 9, 2021) Album • Page 61

You Are OK = Lovely Little Lonely > XOXO > American Candy

 

LLL
AC
YAO
XOXO

 

LLL
YAO
XOXO
AC

 

LLL
XOXO
---
AC
---
---
YAOK

 

damn You Are OK is severely underrated lol.

 

Other than LLL on top, this probably changes regularly:

LLL
XOXO
AC
YAOK

But even being at the bottom of this list is a top-notch record for me

 

I don’t get it whatsoever

 

Everyone can like what they like, but I personally can't imagine ever putting American Candy above any of the albums after it. I do like it, and it's got a few songs that are pretty great, but I think it's the worst of the bunch in basically every aspect. The melodies are solid enough, but most of those lyrics have always felt so uninspired to me. It feels like the first step toward what they'd achieve with Lovely Little Lonely and You Are OK, where there's some good stuff and you can see where they're going, but it's just not quite there yet.

 

I mean, we're all ranking just four albums that I think most people in here agree are very good. Something has to be on the bottom. It's not like a fourth place ranking equates to "Lol, this album fucking sucks amirite?!"

 

I also think that the 3 duds on it are worse than anything on You are OK. I do really like the other 7 songs on it though. The duds im referring to are 24 floors, hair, and diet soda.

 

To me, AC and XOXO are much closer in quality to the rest of their output than they are to YAO and LLL, which are head and shoulders above everything else (but also have a significant gap between them imo)

 

Part of my fondness for American Candy is nostalgia for the moment in time it came out. 2016 was when Yellowcard and Relient K were releasing their final(ish) albums and the rest of the scene was moving away from pop-rock either into more pop-punk (State Champs, Real Friends, etc) or going straight pop (Paramore, Fall Out Boy)... In that climate, AC -- as well as Integrity Blues -- felt like more of a revelation than maybe it does in hindsight.

I ranked You Are OK last, but that's mostly because my favorite tracks (Slip, Heaven, Flowers) are the first, middle, and last songs, so it's much harder to just hit play and listen to straight through than Candy... which doesn't necessarily reach the peaks that OK does, but never makes me want to hit the skip button.

 

I promise this is not an attack on your nostalgia, but American Candy came out like a year and half before the Jimmy, Yellowcard, and Relient K records haha. Those are all much closer to the LLL release - Bad Behavior came out just a couple months after the first two in particular. I agree on the general point though

 

It's always interesting hearing which songs hit for different people. American Candy for me is kind of the same thing you said about You Are OK, just with "Miles Away," "English Girls," and "(Un) Lost" being the highlights there and the rest falling flat. You Are OK is a lot more consistent to me (I do agree about the opener and closer being highlights, but "Broken Parts" in particular would like a word with you).

I get what you mean about the mid-2010s being kind of a transitional time for this scene, but I think American Candy just ultimately feels a little more unremarkable to me now than the other albums from then (especially with the benefit of knowing how good the records The Maine would put out over the next few years). "English Girls" is going to be my 2015 song of the summer forever, but the revelation didn't come for me until Lovely Little Lonely.

 

Yeah I’d put AC at the bottom of the last four, honestly I barely even remember what most of the songs sound like

 

If we're only ranking the last 4 then:
LLL>YAO>=XOXO>AC

Where YAO is a more solid front to back album but XOXO has bigger highlights (aka Lips)

But I'm taking it further:
LLL>Pioneer>YAO>FH>XOXO>CSWS>AC>B&W

 

I'd take almost every song on YAO over Lips, haha.

 

I’ve probably done this before but it’s something like

YAO > LLL >>>>> B&W = FH > XOXO > AC > Pioneer > CSWS

 

Probably:

Lovely Little Lonely>XOXO>Black & White>American Candy>You Are OK>Pioneer>Can't Stop, Won't Stop>Forever Halloween

 

I was just going off the date I added American Candy to my iTunes library, but you're correct on the dates (though I'm gonna give myself a bit of a pass because the band was so far off of my radar before AC that I was probably late to it)

 

Funny, because those three AC songs are also my favorites off of the album (in addition to the title track, which I think is criminally underrated)... but I feel neutral at worst towards everything else. With YAO, I just cannot get into tracks 3-4 and 6-7, and so that stretch basically kills the enjoyment of the album for me.

I think if the tracklisting was different and One Sunset/Broken Parts were bumped up and Numb/I Feel It/Forevermore were bumped down, my view of the album would probably wildly differ...

 

American Candy and Future Hearts were like all I listened to in the Spring 2015. I thought I was totally done with both bands before those records.

 

I have no attachment to anything before LLL, so there's that. I've heard parts of FH and Pioneer I liked, but not a fan of those albums in full.

 

XOXO
LLL
CAWS
AC

BW
Pio
FH

 

Pioneer and Forever halloween are at the very bottom for me as well.