There was a point in my not-too-distant youth where I worshipped The Starting Line. Each song stirred my teenage angst and fleeting feelings of infatuation, each lyric about a girl I had every intention of pursuing but just "never got around to it". I had a giant, throbbing, possibly heterosexual man-crush on the lead singer, Kenny Vasoli. I wanted his voice, his hair, and above all, the girls he appeared to be singing about. The Starting Line's first album, Say It Like You Mean It, was my Abbey Road, however pathetic that may sound. But at that age, most things you think are pathetic. So you can't really blame me. If I had iTunes on my computer during the time that I spent obsessing over Kenny's shamelessly sappy songs, I can safely say that the song "The Best of Me" would have racked up at least 500 plays in the span of one sad excuse for a high school relationship (one sad excuse for a high school relationship equates to roughly one month in real time).
When TSL's second album came out, entitled Based On A True Story, I was three years older and probably not three years wiser. I more than likely felt the same exact feelings of teenage angst and infatuation that Say It Like You Mean It confided in me. So when Kenny Vasoli starting singing about sex, shouting lyrics such as "I'm gonna tear your ass up like we just got married", I was unprepared. Surprised. Perhaps most appropriately - caught with my pants down. It seemed that Kenny was aging about five years to every one year that went by in my own life. His hair, formerly short and blonde, had become long and dark. I immediately wanted long hair. I listened to the album again and again, loving every lyric and hook nearly as much as Say It Like You Mean It. But there was one seriously important element that it became clear was missing - relatability. As much as I wanted to empathize with Kenny about his vigorous wishes for apparently physically abusive sex, I couldn't. I was still lost in the maze of puppy love, not quite thinking of having sex any time soon, even though that was still the first thought that crossed all of our minds in high school.
Even though I couldn't quite relate, I loved the songs nonetheless. I loved them in spite of the messages, messages I was unfortunately not yet ready to hear. By the time The Starting Line released their third album, Direction, I was hardly even a fan anymore. It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I was now experiencing things in my life that demanded something of a more mature sound from my music library. I never bought Direction. I remember finding the album in the mall one day, months after its release, and listening to a few song samples in the store. I quickly removed the headphones in disgust. This was not the same band I had fallen in love with some six years earlier. They were far from The Starting Line that I associated with being a lost and confused teenager, wandering the halls of a bland, high school hallway. And although my experiences were now approaching something similar to what Kenny had been trying to tell me on Based On A True Story, I still could not find it in me to go back to the music. The songs existed on my computer somewhere, but they had been totally played out. I had new favorite bands, new favorite songs, and new totally heterosexual man-crushes to occupy my time. It seemed that my relationship with The Starting Line had met an all-too-quick end.
Why does any of this matter? Because today I felt an overwhelming urge to listen to the old pop-punk bands that I became so enamored with in my teenage years. While browsing my collection of CDs, I came across such treasures as New Found Glory, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional, and - the tearjerker - The Starting Line. At this point, I had not listened to any TSL songs in years. I immediately thought about the one album I did not own - Direction. I wondered, would I now be able to relate to the more adult messages of the band? I checked out some samples from the album while surfing the iTunes store. My reaction shocked me. The songs sucked. A few were okay, but I couldn't get into the music at all. It seemed so bland, so void of originality, so...high school hallway-ish. The shocking part, however, was that I didn't mind the lyrics. I understood them. The life Kenny seemed to be singing of now sounded familiar.
The song "Somebody's Gonna Miss Us" seemed to be speaking directly to the death of TSL as my favorite teenage band. In the song, Kenny laments the awful truth that plenty of fans - myself included - have abandoned the band over the years due to the progression of their musical sound. When he sings "This is no attempt to abandon anyone/It is the influence of music we love", you almost feel bad for leaving in the first place. But Kenny understands your departure, offering "Well, if you can't relate and refuse to sing along/Then maybe I can interest you in some other song". It's true, Kenny could interest me in plenty of other songs. I'm just not so sure they would be the ones I want to hear. Even if I can relate to his more recent lyrics, I'll never feel more connected with the music than I did when I was a kid listening to Say It Like You Mean It. It's not Kenny's fault and it's not mine. The sound didn't change because Kenny changed the sound. It changed because he changed. Because I changed. Because everything changed. I can still sing along to Say It Like You Mean It, remembering every word and melody, but the words don't mean anything anymore. After listening to Direction today, I still didn't buy it. It didn't make sense to. The album had nothing to offer me, save for the sense of nostalgic obligation I felt to buy it. I'll always love The Starting Line. Maybe not because I love them now, but because I loved them once. And once is enough to make it true.
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