Over 20 years of "A Hangover You Don't Deserve"
Alright, grab a beer. We need to talk about this record.
A Hangover You Don't Deserve came out September 14, 2004, and somehow it's still the album people yell for. I honestly didn't see that coming. We'd just come off Drunk Enough to Dance, which did way better than any of us expected — "Girl All the Bad Guys Want" got us a Grammy nod, which still sounds fake when I say it out loud — and suddenly Jive Records handed us a bigger budget and said "go make another one." So we did.
Butch Walker came back to help write and produce a few songs with me, same as last time. But for most of the record, I ended up in the producer's chair myself, working it out with Russ-T Cobb in Atlanta and back home in Dallas. None of us really had a grand plan. We just wanted to write songs that were funny and loud and true, and hope people showed up.
They did. I still don't fully get it. We never expected any of this to get this far — the radio play, the tours, any of it. Once we figured out it was actually happening, we just decided to enjoy every second, and honestly, that's still the approach.
Depending on which pressing you own, you might also have "Somebody Get My Mum" (added to the UK edition after the first pressing) or "Bipolar" on the Japanese release. And not to forget the stretch of dead air near the end of the CD. That was a deliberate series of blank tracks before "Ohio (Reprise)" kicks back in.
The Single That Almost Wasn't
Funny story — "Almost" was supposed to be our first single off this thing. Then Butch's manager calls and says, "Hey, you guys should cover this song called '1985.'" It was an SR-71 song that never even came out here, only in Japan. I loved the hook the second I heard it, but the lyrics weren't us, so I called up Mitch Allan from SR-71 and asked if I could mess with them. He said go for it. That phone call changed everything for this band!!!
"1985" ended up at No. 23 on the Hot 100 and No. 5 on Adult Top 40. "Almost" went to No. 1 on the UK Rock & Metal chart. The album went Gold here, Silver in the UK. It was pretty wild.
What the Critics Thought (They Weren't All Nice)
Okay, so not everybody got it. AllMusic said the production made it hard to even hear us underneath all the polish. Entertainment Weekly called it a lower-SATs Fountains of Wayne, which, fair enough, that one still makes me laugh. But two decades of sold-out singalongs later, I think the fans settled that argument for us.
Going Back Out There for 20 Years
When the 20th anniversary rolled around, we took the whole album on the road across the US, Australia, and the UK, right alongside our 30th anniversary as a band. Wheatus, Magnolia Park, and Don't Panic came out with us on different legs.
I'll be honest — I was terrified going into it. We had to relearn songs we hadn't played live since we recorded them. But once we started running through the record again, the magic came right back. It was such a good time making that album, and getting to relive it onstage every night reminded me why.
Every night we played the whole record from start to finish. I always joked it would be the only time we played “1985” that early on in a set. Of course we threw in an encore stacked with the obvious "High School Never Ends" and "Girl All the Bad Guys Want".
A Hangover You Definitely Deserve...Live came from this tour — 36 tracks, the whole album plus the hits, recorded live in Manchester, UK.
Still Worth It
This record was never trying to be deep. It was trying to be loud, dumb in the right ways, and fun enough that you'd want to play it again. That's exactly why it's still around. Whether you bought the CD at the mall in '04 or caught us for the first time on the anniversary run, thanks for sticking with us through the hangover.
Here's to the next twenty.
— JR
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