On today's episode, I do a deep dive into the making and history of The Used' Self-Titled album. We talk about the origin of the band, the demoing process, the release, and the recording process.
I give my thoughts on the album and why I think it resonated with fans as much as it did.
We also discuss the role of John Feldmann as the producer of this album and the sound that spawned from this time period to define a genre and time period.
It was fun to revisit this classic.
The Used was released on June 25, 2002 through Reprise Records.
The album's sound has been described as screamo, emo and post-hardcore. "The Taste of Ink" is "pretty much about being frustrated and maybe biting on a pen", according to McCracken. McCracken said "Buried Myself Alive" was "about a girl. It's about drugs. It's about loss. It's about being alive, about living". "A Box Full of Sharp Objects" was inspired in part by McCracken's past experiences with drugs. He said it was about "drugs and alcohol and loss and love... and just being stoked that things are always going to get better or always gonna get worse and that's such a great thing". "Blue and Yellow" is about McCracken and Allman's friendship, as the latter explains: "When the band started to really pick up... we were almost not being friends anymore because we were focusing so much time on the band and not on each other".
