It Goes Like This, We Have No Choice: A Reminiscence on Maroon

“If you think growing up is tough, then you’re just not grown up enough”

I wasn’t grown up enough when I first listened to Maroon, the fifth studio album by Barenaked Ladies, released on September 12, 2000. In a way, that made me the perfect audience for the album. Though the sound was distinctly adult contemporary, the lyrics distinguished this from other breakthrough bands of the era. This wasn’t Sugar Ray or Smash Mouth. More than any other music I had ever heard, this sounded like music for adults. 

When you’re approaching what you think is adulthood, a song like “Helicopters” hits like a sledgehammer. “Helicopters” tells a first person story of a singer going on tour in a war zone. The singer sees the horrors of war, like a school bombed by the allies (“they say by mistake”), but has to reconcile what he’s seen with the reality that nobody really cares. “An entertaining scandal broke today” to distract the public from something that happened half a world away to people they don’t recognize as humans except in commercials begging for money. It’s a bleak song, heavy in its clear-eyed cynicism toward both the war machine and the public that ignores it. Buried at the end of the album, it’s a song that most people would just skip over because it’s a bummer, but I kept listening. This was the world as adults saw it.

Similarly, “Conventioneers” is a story of a love affair at work gone wrong simply through the act of consummation. Two coworkers who have peppered their every conversation with sexual tension go out of town to a convention, where they finally have sex. And then the whole scenario deflates like a sad balloon. What can you say after the will they/won’t they reaches its inevitable conclusion? “What you say doesn’t matter anyway,” as the song points out. The emotions matter more than the words, and all these two are left with are awkward silences. As a freshly-minted teenager, this sort of examination of what happens after the actual act of sex was world-shattering. When you’re a bundle of hormones you never think about what comes next, but here was the adult way of looking at things. There is a morning after, and things aren’t always rosy.

The album isn’t all a bunch of bummers. “Sell, Sell, Sell” is a classic bit of 90s-era irony regarding commercialism. “Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel” lightens its death and dismemberment with a circus-like tone, making the whole thing feel like a surreal dream followed by an ethereal trip to heaven in the hidden track “Hidden Sun.” “Pinch Me” and “Falling for the First Time” show off the band’s witty wordplay in a way that’s comforting and inviting.

All of it adds up to an album that welcomed me into adulthood with open arms. Becoming an adult means approaching reality, even when it’s bleak, but it also leaves room for an “under where” joke or two. Maturity means you can be honest, and you can be clever. Too often, people talk about “mature content” as something that’s edgy and offends their parents. My introduction to “mature content” was an album whose supporting tour I attended with my parents, and I think I’m all the better for it.