“Get Born” by Jet
2000s Week continues with a fun, raunchy, and impressive one-hit wonder.
Programming note: It’s 2000s week! I'm spotlighting some of my favorite records released between 2000 and 2009. Like previous decade-themed newsletter posts, I've selected albums that cover multiple genres and deliberately avoided the well-worn titles that top all "best of" lists for this decade. In other words, no Kid A, Marshall Mathers LP, and so on.
Hope you enjoy it!
Hello! 😊👋
Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!
Today’s 2000s music pick is an impressive one-hit wonder from a band who were as fun as they were raunchy.
Genre: Hard Rock
Label: Elektra
Release Date: September 14, 2003
Vibe: 🤘
Everyone has a shortlist of songs that hit them like lightning bolts when they were kids and have stayed lodged in their psyche ever since. For me, one of those tracks is “Are You Gonna Be My Girl.” As an AC/DC and Zeppelin obsessive, its singalong chorus and steady groove were endlessly appealing. It also made me really want to purchase Apple products. If you’d forgotten that song or Jet entirely, I’m happy to report that, 20 years after its initial release, Get Born sounds better than I remember. The group wore their influences on their sleeves, drawing inspiration from the likes of the Rolling Stones, T. Rex, Oasis, the Verve, David Bowie, and their aforementioned Australian forefathers, but they were also clearly a group ready for the spotlight. They find a nice balance between stadium-sized anthems, full of hand claps and one-word chants and tambourine accents, and big, soaring ballads that, more than once, feel like they’re a stone’s throw away from “November Rain” levels of theatricality. With so much going for them on this record, it’s always been puzzling to me why Jet never made good on the promise they showed here.
If you’re into good old-fashioned glam rock stompers, this album is for you. There are a half-dozen such cuts that rarely strike a wrong note, including “Rollover DJ,” “Get What You Need,” and “Get Me Outta Here.” They lead with beefy guitar riffs and backbeats, daring you to resist that urge to tap your toes or mouth the lyrics in time with the music. Despite being considered an album that fueled the garage rock revival of the early 2000s, the production is crisper and more precise than that. Those choices from David Sardy shine on the slower numbers like “Come Around Again” and the Keith Richards ode “Move On,” which recalls the languid, vaguely country contributions the guitarist made to so many Stones records. Everything sounded sharp and focused in the mix, with tom fills and piano chords never detracting from the uniformly strong lead vocal performances shared by all Jet members. Mostly, it’s just a really good time, a quality that the Sydney Morning Herald sneered at in their original review. “It's not cool. It's not smart. But it's all right.” At least two of those digs are entirely unwarranted. The third, especially in the context of the blueprint it’s gleefully following, seems irrelevant at best.
👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈
“Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” is one of those rare perfect songs. Sure it reminds you of a half dozen others, but to me it’s expressing the distillation of the best bits of those cocky, confident, fluid rock songs from The Stones to NY Dolls to Guns n’ Roses to The Strokes. And it’s got the best instrumental build-in since Sly and the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music.” I don’t remember any of their other songs, as Jet seemed to burn bright and then disappear from view. It sounds like the album deserves a revisit (or simply a visit).