I was in my junior year of high school, watching the movie Just My Luck at a sleepover with my friend Courtney. It was a night that wasn’t particularly abnormal or interesting. At one point in the movie, though, a song played; it was a song that sounded familiar, but nothing I knew the name of. It was catchy enough. Again, though, it didn’t strike me as anything unusual. We continued watching the movie.
It wasn’t until weeks later that I was doing my usual search for new music on Youtube. As a high schooler who had spent most of my life parasitically mimicking my older brother’s music taste, I was still unsure of how to find new music but desperate for something to listen to. I jumped from song to song randomly, not particularly engaged but complacent with the noise that filled the silence of my bedroom. At one point I found the song from the movie. It was called “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” by a band called Eels. Again, it struck me as catchy, upbeat, so I listened to it a few times. It wasn’t anything groundbreakingly amazing, but I liked it well enough. So, being a music-hungry high schooler, I decided to look for more songs by the band.
What followed was an exploration of a band with an unbelievable variety in sounds and moods, not only different from their own songs but from any other musician I had ever heard. Some of the songs I found annoying; others, I found enjoyable in a way I had never experienced before. When I heard one of their slower, sweeter songs, “In My Dreams”, I was hooked. The sound and feel of the songs found a place in my heart and latched on for dear life. It hasn’t let go ever since then.
Mild interest graduated to full blown obsession within the following months. I started buying a few select songs, playing them over and over until I knew all the words. A few became dozens, and dozens led to more than fifty “favorite” songs. I had never experienced anything even remotely close to this feeling; in the past, I had always known people who had a band that meant everything to them. That had never related to me. Music was always enjoyable to me, but I had a weird range of appeal for songs, which meant that I really only liked one or two songs from most artists. This was different, though. As cliché and dramatic as it sounds, this felt like the lead of the band, who goes by E, had figured out exactly what sound and tone I liked in music, and he had crafted these just for me. The songs fit in this little place of my heart that had apparently just been waiting vacantly for the years preceding.
Throughout the course of my junior year, I knew a large quantity of the songs from his (at the time) nine albums, and I was able to list albums in order, as well as the overall tone of each one. I knew the stories behind some of his most well known songs, and when this wasn’t enough for me I bought his book. I soaked in the words eagerly, hungrily, like the answer to the meaning of life could be found on those pages. Something about his work struck a chord with me, and I needed to learn everything I could about him.
Mark Oliver Everett did not live an easy life by any means. He was the second child to Hugh and Nancy Everett, and his father was one of the founders of the parallel worlds theory. Despite the genius within his family, most of the time the dynamics between family members was distant and impersonal. His father died of a heart attack, and Everett (who goes by the name E) was the one to find him dead on the couch. His older sister, Liz, had mental health issues which were only worsened by drug abuse, and she committed suicide before E’s first album got released. His mother found out that she had cancer shortly after, and he had to care for her and watch as the cancer slowly overtook her body and brain. In short, all three of his family members died before his second album released.
As a man living with a lot of pain, both his own mental illness and the grief of losing those closest to him, you would imagine that most of his music would be dreary and depressing. To an extent, you would be right. His first album, Beautiful Freak, is very oriented to what our mainstream culture was looking for in the 90’s. It’s a little rock, a little alternative, with a lot of vague lyrics that don’t mean much without any backstory. This album was well received; to this day, "Novacaine for the Soul", the first song on the album, is viewed as one of his best songs. Only then, before the album was officially released, he received news that his sister had died. Overcome with grief, E decided to write a new album to deal with the pain. This one was centered around much more negative emotions: it featured songs about visiting his sister in a psych ward, attending his sister’s funeral, as well as a song consisting of words from a note Liz had written while receiving treatment. “I am okay, I am okay…I am not okay.” This album touches on grief in a very real and striking way that most artists cower from. At the same time, though, the album also features songs like “P.S. You Rock My World”, which is all about going through something awful, but coming back from it and learning to appreciate life not in spite of the hardships, but because of them.
In his book, E says, “To me, it wasn’t a record about death. That was missing the point. It was about life. And death was a big part of life that tended to be ignored, or denied. No one wanted to think there would be an end to themselves, but I couldn’t ignore it, and I realized that if you treat it like the everyday fact of life that it is, it becomes less scary. And also, by being more aware of death, you gain a perspective on living and how you’d better make it count, whatever that may mean to you.”
Unlike his first album, his producers worried that this one would be harder to sell. Depressing songs about being sick and dying don’t sell the way upbeat, catchy songs do. However, E was determined to keep his music exactly as it was, refusing to sell out for what the world wanted. As it turned out, Electroshock Blues has gone on to be arguably his most well received and beloved album. He received a flood of mail from fans who told him how much they related to the new album, and how much it helped them in their personal struggle.
Among those fans who were positively influenced by his work was me. When I first stumbled upon the Eels I was in a stormy place emotionally, and his songs provided me with the relief that someone else out there, even someone who was over 30 years older than me, understood what I was going through. His voice displays a combination of the positive and negative which I have never seen in another artist; his message, overall, seems to be that life can be difficult and full of pain, but all of the loss and grief and sadness ultimately is beneficial because it teaches you to appreciate the good moments more fully. Pain encourages gratitude. Coming out of a cold winter helps you treasure the warmth of spring.
I have carried this own mindset into my life, that our world is more special when you learn to not take beautiful things for granted. Additionally, that it’s perfectly acceptable to not be okay. Most of the music industry glosses over depression or any negative feelings in general, but E’s songs clearly show that there is pain in this world, pain which demands to be felt, and that pain is what makes us human. It is by no means pleasant in the moment, but it is also very real and not something we should feel like we have to hide. Discovering E, learning about his life and his experiences, showed me the voice of someone who didn’t shy away from examining their feelings, showing the bad but also presenting hope for the good.
For me the obsession has waxed and waned over the years. I return to the band when I need to, whether I’m in good moods or bad. I might spent a few months with new music, enjoying the excitement that newness brings, but then, without fail, I always return to the Eels eventually. The return always provides this weird sense of comfort, like coming home after a long time of being away. I don’t need them in the same all consuming way I used to, but the mindset I gained from the singer of this band still lingers with me. Thanks to this band, now I’m really living.
