BEDIO: Jimmy Eat World [Bleed American/Self-Titled]

Hey everybody, I hope your October has been awesome!

Today, we are continuing on the Jimmy Eat World album train. For this post, we’re going to discuss Bleed American.

Bleed American is an interesting album for Jimmy Eat World, in many ways. It’s their album that brought them commercial success with songs such as “The Middle” and “Sweetness”. The album and title track also had to go through some name changes. Bleed American was released on July 24, 2001, and only a few months later, 9/11 happened. After September 11, 2001, radios were putting bans on songs and albums that could have any reference to the horrific attacks from 9/11, and with an entire album named Bleed American, Jimmy Eat World was added to that list. Since they already had struggled with getting the album together and out to the public, Jimmy Eat World changed the title of the album to Jimmy Eat World, and the title track “Bleed American” to “Salt, Sweat, Sugar”.

Since I’ve been listening to a lot of Jimmy Eat World recently, I stumbled across this video from the channel Trash Theory, about how important Bleed American was to the longevity of their career. It goes into more depth about the musicality of their work, and the issues that arose with Bleed American after 9/11. The video even breaks down “A Praise Chorus”, as the song itself uses many different lyrics from various artists as an homage to them.

Bleed American is the first album of Jimmy Eat World’s that I ever listened to. In the summer of 2001, my family had gone to visit relatives in New York, and my dad obtained the CD from one of them (I can’t remember who exactly… I want to say it was one of my cousins). The CD was sitting in our family’s collection, until I found it a few years later in middle school, when I was looking for stuff to add to my Zune (Yeah, I know I know). It seemed interesting to me, especially as I hadn’t heard of the band before, so I downloaded it and listened to the album. At first, I wasn’t too much of a fan, but after replaying the album more and more, I really started to like it, and started looking for other music by them.

Here’s the list of my favorite songs from that album, so sit back, relax, and enjoy!

“Bleed American” (AKA “Salt, Sweat, Sugar)