- 2024-09-19
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MUSIC
The All-American Rejects Covers Harvey Danger's “Flagpole Sitta”
American rock band The All-American Rejects, consisting of Tyson Ritter (lead vocals/bass), Nick Wheeler (lead guitar), Mike Kennerty (rhythm guitar) and Chris Gaylor (drums), released a cover of American alt-rock band Harvey Danger's “Flagpole Sitta” on September 13, 2024.
The song is their first single in four years since the 2020 single “Me Vs. The World”.
The original version of the song was released by Harvey Danger as the first single from their debut album “Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?” in 1997.
The track was written by Sean Nelson, Jeff J. Lin, Aaron Huffman, and Evan Sult. The cover version was produced by The All-American Rejects.
The band said of the song, “We've always felt that if an idea survives a hangover, then it's probably a good one. Flagpole Sitta was such an idea, born of a late-night, post-show, adrenaline-fuelled drive.”
They continued, “We recorded it because we wanted to see how it would fall out of us on the floor - either like a hot bag of shit, or a vibe. It was also a good excuse to see if the four of us could stand each other for a week in the studio after seven years of silence. Turns out it was alright.”- The band guitarist Nick Wheeler told SPIN about the song, “Well, we started touring again last summer for the first time in several years, and since then, we've just really enjoyed being around each other and hanging out. And one night on the bus, we were having one of our nostalgic playlist listening parties and this song came up. Andmaybe even as a joke at first, Tyson was like, 'We should cover this, because we never we never cover songs.' We've never been a band to cover a song,not since we were basically a bar band in our hometown in the late 1900s when we had to play cover songs to get gigs. We were all kind of like, “Oh, yeah, sure.” And then, “No, we should cover it. And we should record it. That's hilarious.”
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He continued, ”The next day, we were actually all kind of stoked on the idea. And we actually followed through, and we did it, and everybody came to my studio in Nashville, and we produced it ourselves. And it was a fucking blast just to all get in a room together recording live. It's something we haven't gotten to do in a very long time and it wasn't only a great experience, but just a fun excuse to get in the studio and kind of see how that felt.”
Photo by Steph Montani
Background photo by Andy Knight - source : Apple Music