Music Review: Fun. - "Some Nights"

Time to Have a Little Fun.

        The group called Fun. (yes, they insist on the period) has released an excellent album with their February 2012 Some Nights.  The single “We Are Young” reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 list, but the real joy in the album is the title track, “Some Nights.”  The first single was a good piece and no doubt of it.  It was a venture into the indie scene that was still accessible to the average listener.  The group justly deserves accolades for it.  But the second single is what will be remembered.  Mixing hope and melancholy, the drum fueled song is a refreshing return to story-telling rock.  The song itself is an internal monologue of self-doubt and existential crisis, a young man literally not sure what he stands for but making an effort at figuring out himself and the world around him.  The one thing he is certain of is that he wants the conflict to be resolved so that he can go back to the simple joys of family life; hearth and home.  These things are too often denied us in today’s complicated world so a struggle for normalcy which integrates all the divergent aspects of one’s life is inherently appealing.  The singer/narrator is not trying to deny his past; rather he seeks to assimilate it as a functional part of the present and a foundation for the future.  The music video plays this up and transforms the solitary angst into a military commander who inspires his troops not merely to fight to survive but to have something worth surviving for.  This is a rare instance where the visual and lyrical stories match up neatly as parallels rather than as distinct narratives or with one-to-one correlation.  It is the disjuncture between internal and external which makes the video work.  But the song itself is a masterwork in that it recalls the era of protest rock without falling into any of the traps of hippie music or faux social consciousness.  The questions the young man is asking of himself he is demanding of the world, too, in a sense of fair play that few have ever approached.  Frankly, the world might be a better place if more people had that sort of curiosity.  For all that, it’s about accepting the consequences of one’s actions and embracing them as part of who you have become.  Fun.’s own philosophy in the real world, including embracing marriage equality, is an embodiment of this.  The song’s energy genuinely makes the listener want to get up and do something to make the world a better place with equal parts internal and external striving.  The story can thus be “read” as one of a young man not entirely sure of himself, but working on it and trying to be ok with what it will take to find his way in the world.  This is a healthy attitude missing from so much of today’s music and I genuinely look forward to more of their work.

- J. Holder Bennett