Good and Guilty" is a ballad that shows off the band's best vocal work, and the album's best song "In the Heat of the Morning". If you could pick only one song from this album to listen to, it should be this one.
So it's the last track on the original release, and I wouldn't change that, this is easily my favorite song on the album, and definitely the best thing on the record. When you listen to this song you hear things you haven't heard from MCR since around 2003. There is a lot of acoustic guitar and piano, and really just more of a 'rock' approach to the song and not so much that "oh now they're the next big pop band" kind of stuff. This song sounds like what MCR would sound like if they made a couple of albums worth of acoustic material. This song is so good.
Then the remastered version comes out, which is good because the live versions of this are all terrible. Some people probably already know this, but after the original release, they decided to record a live acoustic version of this song with the band, who, despite being very drunk and high, played it note perfect. One day, after they tried to get the recording back off of a girl that had it, the girl's mother took the recording and held onto it for 17 years. So the next track is one of those where it sounds like they were playing this song at a local bar with a band playing 'The Beatles'. This version is the best track on this album, which is a very important thing to know. This makes it hard to choose one track to pick if I'm trying to find a single to release to the masses. I can't pick just one of them. My favorite part of this version is how it starts with what sounds like a train whistle. This is how old I am, this could be from the '50s.
After the live version, the song then goes back to their original album version, and then starts the final track, which is just a bit of fun at the end. The album ends with a bunch of screaming into the microphone. "Oh and here's another song!" It's kind of jarring to hear this because a lot of it sounds like they're just talking in the middle of a big concert crowd, which is completely ridiculous.
And that's the album. Not exactly the best, not exactly the worst. When I was working at Best Buy, I had this CD in the back of my car for a long time, and the first time I heard the album and I got pissed and wanted to find the manager and go into his office and demand to know why this album wasn't in stock. It makes me kind of angry to think that if I had bought this album on vinyl, it would've been the only one. They had some other songs as well. Like "Undertow" was on the cover in the front window.
Now, when the album was reissued, they completely changed the song, it's much better. But I don't want to compare these two. I can't compare them because they would be comparing different things. This album is the band's first album, and that album was the band's most pop and poppy thing. On this album they started finding out who they were as a band and what kind of band they were. Which might be why so many people are pissed because this is the only album. I got that it was in demand, but if a new album is ever going to come out in 2016, it's going to be released in like 2026. I don't know why I thought that it was coming out soon, but apparently I was wrong. If a new album comes out in 2026, it'll be the end of the world. I don't know why I even made a guess, but this album was just released in 1999. But whatever, maybe a new album is coming out. This album is really just an interlude, and probably one of their worst albums. They weren't even a band then. That's why everyone should buy the albums.
I know that this was kind of all over the place, but I just have so many memories related to this band. This album is like if I was having a baby with an ex-girlfriend. I remember walking around with a copy of the album and just trying to play it for people, and them kind of just not understanding how I was trying to explain why this is better than everything that came before. It was weird to be a huge MCR fan and have everyone be like "yeah, that new song is pretty good" and be pretty unimpressed with their previous work. It's hard to try to convince people that something that you spent years creating is great. It seems like I'm being defensive about this, but I can't help it. I was so disappointed in how they developed and changed so much that even though this album's really good, it's just not as good as the band's best.
I can't help but feel like that when you first got into a band, you would be a fan of whatever music they released, or maybe some music like 'Good Charlotte' and 'Fall Out Boy'. They were pretty big on the radio in 2003. I was listening to the radio a lot, and I think it's important to see where a band is from. When you see where a band came from, it's a connection to where you are, and if you're a band from a place like Canada it's important to connect with people in the United States. Then when it all became about the internet and people just started buying and selling MCR shirts on eBay, that was really the death of the band. I just wanted to start a new band and be popular and have a group of people who would go out on the road to see them perform and see their albums. I didn't want to have a band where the members just sat in a room and wrote songs and nobody went out on tour. I wanted to be a real band. The same stuff that was going on with other artists happened with us, they tried to make us all into a part of the 'corporate machine' and it worked for awhile, but eventually they started taking away the groupies, and all that was left was a place where people could buy tickets to have a group of people that would perform music. There's nothing more to it than that. There was no art to be made. There wasn't a meaning or an impact, and as a result of that, we're here. A band that should've been great has turned into shit. A band with a fan base of people who wanted to show up at concerts and see them performed live has turned into nothing, no more than a band on Netflix. A band that should've kept going has gone, and that's what I hate most. It makes me sad to think about how the only band that we could connect to was a really good indie band, and then they just went away, with no warning, and we just couldn't do anything about it. I'd like to get a chance to be part of something like that again.
The final thing that makes me sad is that there's no one else out there that could be doing this band's sound. I'll listen to someone like The Weeknd, and I like them, but there's not really any other band that would be doing what MCR did that was around at the same time. It seems like every time they do something, they have to come up with something that's completely different, and they just can't do it. I mean, I can't imagine a band like The Strokes or something else doing this kind of music, and that just makes me sad. They were so good, and they were so close to really fucking us up. They had everyone convinced that they were about to become the biggest band on the planet, but at the last moment they just sort of fucked it up. They didn't like being MCR anymore, and I wish they would've just stayed away from that. It would've been so much easier if they were just a band that did a great cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and did nothing else. We would've all been much happier. But it's not like that, it's like they did something great and it all fell apart right after they were really happy. That's kind of what happens sometimes. You get excited for something and then it's over, like a band. You get excited to become a musician and then it turns out it was just an exercise and you're just going to die, which was really sad and depressing to hear.
My point of view may not be what you'd expect, but that's how it is. This album is the only reason why I listen to the band.
If it had been released in 2015, it would've been an amazing album, and if I found out about this album in 2016, I would be so happy. But it would've been in 2010, and I wasn't listening to music in 2010. I'm glad that they were able to be successful again, but this album is still the only reason I listen to them. I don't care what people think of the band or how old I am, it's just me. I wouldn't
