Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night by Bleachers // 5 Year Anniversary Album Review
Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night is an album built on its contradictions; the divide between wanting a big life and wanting a secret life, finding ways to live alongside simultaneous hurt and hope, going from the shadow to the city and back again, and most of all, the desire to move forward while still feeling tied to all that has come before. With this album, Jack Antonoff sets out to make a project that is largely an examination of joy and the need for it, but also the doubt that comes with not understanding why you can't seem to hold onto it. As so many Bleachers records do, this album approaches those feelings in a way that shows how they shift and evolve through time. It is shaped by the angst and fears of that moment, but also by what he called the "unearned hope" he was feeling at the time - with all of it wrapped up in the collective consciousness of that particular point in history.
With this music, Jack isn't necessarily setting out to solve all of his problems, but instead just trying to make sense of them and understand why he is the way he is in relationships, all while examining his influences in art, where he comes from, where he's going, and reckoning with the grief he's carried for so long. There is a desire to enter a new phase of life that is ultimately at the forefront of every single song on this album.
This album fully dives into the East Coast sound that has always been an inherent part of everything Jack has made thus far, with Bruce Springsteen's influence coming through the strongest. Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night feels like the first fully formed introduction into what Jack would later go on to explore more deeply with subsequent Bleachers records. It is a true love letter to the music and the sounds of where he comes from. Ultimately it's "the East Coast in the music" forever, whether that's coming from the shadow or the city, and all of the influences that make him who he is.
So much of this album was recorded during COVID, both in the studio and remotely with his band, at a time when they couldn't imagine performing live in front of massive crowds again. The first two Bleachers records were mainly an insular creative experience for Jack, with him primarily writing, performing and producing every track on his own. This time of collective isolation brought out some of the most communal energy that the band has ever tapped into in the studio, expanding the sonic palette of all that Bleachers could be.
Years before they would bring the studio to the stage, this was the first time they brought the stage to the studio. By working more closely with the entirety of his touring band on the recordings, Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night brought a new sense of direction for Jack as an artist and the musical identity of Bleachers as a whole.
The entire album is shaped by the two lead singles, released simultaneously in late 2020 - "Chinatown" and "45". Together, they introduced what this new chapter was set to represent for the band, while also reflecting everyone's wider desire for escape and new beginnings in the height of the pandemic. Again, these songs each equally compliment and contrast the other in a beautiful way; with the pull between the shadow and the city, as well as the desire to step into something new, while still carrying the weight of where you come from. They are each quintessentially Bleachers and essential listening to understanding all that this band is and what they represent.
"Chinatown" in particular feels like the culmination of so much of what Jack has been building toward throughout his entire career. The song features Bruce Springsteen, and it is a collaboration that allows all of the influence and aspects of their shared lineage - shaped by both of them being New Jersey's finest, of course - to shine on full display. Jack has been massively inspired by Bruce throughout his life, especially in the way he captures the place they both come from and the complicated pride that comes with it. "I heard Bleachers and I heard Bruce, his band and his culture's influence on me, even before he heard 'Chinatown', flowing through it," Jack said in an interview with NME. "I heard myself hearing his music and feeling value in the place that I was from, and these emotions that come along with this place. Finding my version of it, but only because of the doors that he kicked down for people like me."
"Chinatown" is such a beautiful encapsulation of all of the emotions that come with loving the place you come from, but also being counteracted by the strange desire to want more, to have a big life, to see what exists just beyond the shadow you find yourself living in - but also never wanting to fully leave the past versions of yourself behind either. "You have different lives and different experiences, but the feeling behind it is the same," he added in the same interview. "You think: 'This is how I feel. I understand what this person is talking about, I'm dying to fucking get out of here - but I love this place.'"
In the same way, "45" is an essential part of the Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night ethos; albeit one that was, at the time, somewhat overshadowed by the massive statement "Chinatown" was for the band. It's a soft, introspective acoustic track that is really more than anything an expression of appreciation for the people you love in life. It's a beautiful reminder of the support that persists through anything, even when circumstances shift and relationships change. He wrote it in the aftermath of a breakup, holding onto the idea that even though life took them down different paths, the message of "I'm still on your side" is what will ultimately outlast everything else that came with that ending.
"The hook is me saying 'I'm still on your side,' which is an interesting feeling with a breakup. When a breakup happens, you're obviously combing through only the darker parts of each other," Jack said in an interview with American Songwriter. "It's not a time when people are digging through the wonderful parts of each other, so here is a person I know and care about, and we spent all this time treating each other like villains it makes you want to shout 'I'm still on your side.'" With that, the song also connects back in a really intricate and emotional way to past love songs like "Wake Me", and pays tribute to the different seasons of their relationship and enduring connection they share.
"There's these pieces of us that, to the world, are gone. They're not gone - the people we love see them. When you meet someone new, or someone has been in your life for a while, they're bringing these pieces that, even if you know this person, you don't know and can learn to love them," Jack added in an interview with Apple Music. "It's exonerating. I can walk back into it in one second, even though no one else can see it."
This album opens with "91", which one of the most stunning songs instrumentally that Jack has ever produced and ties narratively into the concept of going back through your past in order to confront yourself in the present day. Lyrically he takes the listener through different chapters of his life, beginning with his childhood, specifically framed by the Gulf War playing on TV in the background at home in 1991. It's old through the perspective of him as a child who is too young to grasp the gravity of what's happening around him, but still able to sense that something is wrong. In the first verse Jack sings, "My mother dances around like there ain't no rip in the seam, while she waltzes with ghosts, I can feel what went wrong, yeah, she's here, but she's not, just like her, I'm not home".
He co-wrote it with author Zadie Smith, which was the first time he worked with someone that is not a songwriter in a traditional sense. When playing the song for her for the first time, he said in an interview with DIY that he thought, "'She can help me frame it', She did a beautiful job and, you know, it’s one of my favorite songs I've ever made." He also produced the song alongside frequent collaborators Patrik Berger and St. Vincent.
"I'm here, but I'm not, just like you, I can't leave, we've been gone just a little too long now", Jack repeatedly sings at the end of "91". What lives at the heart of this entire album is the underlying angst and the desire to break through and leave behind everything he's been carrying with him since that time. In order to do so, Jack sets out to confront the past versions of himself that he has been avoiding, and also examining the ways in which some things never change no matter how old you are. All of it is filtered through the vivid recollections and shifting variants of what it means to take the sadness out of Saturday night as an overarching concept of the record. "Sunday night blues are for people who love the weekend and are sad it's over. Saturday night blues are for people who can't find their way in the weekend," Jack told American Songwriter.
On "Chinatown", he sings about that idea from a deeply personal, introspective place, "Gimme that big red light and take the sadness out of Saturday night," he pleads in the second chorus. The meaning of the album's title then shifts as the record progresses. On "Stop Making This Hurt", it expands more into the greater context of the world, especially given the political landscape of the time; "If we take the sadness out of Saturday night, I wonder what will be left, anything worth the fight?" The need to hold on to personal hope evolved into something more reflective of the shared collective hope we all need to hold onto in order to survive the period of history that was (and in many ways still is) riddled with uncertainties. This feeling has only grown more fully realized with the live versions of it, as the crowd reacts in real time to the communal release that a song like that presents when collectively taking the sadness out of the metaphorical Saturday night together.
Much of this album is also built upon is the divide between wanting a "Big Life" and a "Secret Life", with the fourth and fifth tracks contradicting and complementing each other in equal measure. What does it mean to live a big life? What does it mean to live a secret life? Is it possible to live both at once? These questions are at the center of so much of this record, with the idea of legacy and what you leave behind versus the life you actually live while you're here, being explored in depth. Wanting to live an ambitious life that is expansive and meaningful, while also maintaining a crucial piece of privacy and safety is ultimately what emerges from all of this. The search for someone who wants to live both of those sides of life too becomes an emotional anchor within this music as well.
The bridge between Gone Now and Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night is best represented through the very first song Jack wrote for the album, "Don't Go Dark". Perhaps the heaviest Bruce influence shines through on this track - aside from the song featuring The Boss himself - evoking strong "Dancing in the Dark" sonic and lyrical references. It also represents the earliest ideas and artistic direction Jack would go on to experiment with throughout the rest of the album process, while still grappling with the feelings he was left with after making Gone Now and reflections on the time in his life that followed that release. The ways in which it influenced not just this album, but so many of the subsequent songs rooted in this narrative direction as well is evident, especially with songs like "Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call" or "we should talk" standing out as clear examples.
The lifelong search for oneself, and the ways in which we are shaped by our earliest experiences, lingers on every single song in a different way. Who we were when we were young will stay with us forever and there are certain parts of us that will never fully change, even as we grow older. That notion is best embodied by the ninth track, "Strange Behavior", which is a reimaging of a Steel Train song released in 2010 called "Behavior". To be able to revisit a song Jack made well over a decade prior, and give it a new perspective within the context of Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night and all of the life he has lived in between is so striking and a beautiful symbol of all this music represents today. "Look at this, this is just a shadow, what you thought was faith, that was hollow," is a lyric that especially stands out in the way it comes off as a conversation between who he was then and who he is now. The Bleachers version of the song preserves the intimacy of the original Steel Train version, but through a more mature, stripped-down lens.
"What'd I Do With All This Faith?" is the final question that closes the album and a song that beautifully encapsulates the chapter of his life that inspired this work. So much of the happiest, or most hopeful, sounding songs that Jack has ever written, at least up to this point in his career, were often still shrouded in a bit of melancholia - albeit not always overt and often living just under the surface of the other emotions he's singing about. On the opposite end of that, "What'd I Do With All This Faith?" is an intimate and somber ballad about asking yourself if there is a light at the end of all of this, and then seeing that there is still a glimmer of hope to be had for what's to come. To find yourself at that crossroads in life is an integral piece in the narrative of this record, as he delved deeper into with his interview with NME. "It's that moment when you're at the end of something, but you're not at the beginning of something else yet, and all the hope that's on the other side."
He later said that this music is built on the continuous mission to knock down all of the emotional doors standing in his way of having that breakthrough. Once the record was released, Jack reflected on that pursuit; "I don't know if I've knocked it down. But, man, I want to do it - and that feels like more hope than I've ever known."
Above all, that is what this song, and the rest of this album is built on - the hope that there is something on the other side of the shadow, on the other side of the crux of life you're finding yourself in, and on the other side of the sadness in Saturday night.
Thanks for reading! I have written about Bleachers music in-depth many times through the years, all of which are linked here and below. I'd love for you to check out my experience hearing this album for the first time and meeting Jack Antonoff afterward on the roof of Electric Lady in 2021 (and my reflection five years later), as well as my experience seeing Bleachers live for the first time at Radio City Music Hall in 2022. So many more are linked below and coming soon, always! TTSOOSN forever! 🍅
Photo Credit: Bleachers, RCA Records
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