Deja Entendu
Deja Entendu is the second studio album by American rock band Brand New; it was released on June 17, 2003, by Triple Crown Records and Razor & Tie. It was widely praised for showing the band's maturation from their pop punk debut Your Favorite Weapon, and critics described the album as the moment when the band "started showing ambition to look beyond the emo/post-hardcore scene that birthed them."
The album, considered the band's "breakthrough", was Brand New's first to chart in the United States, and its two singles "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" and "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades" both reached the top 40 in the United Kingdom Singles Chart and earned MTV airplay. It was certified Gold nearly four years after its release. Its commercial success led to Brand New signing with DreamWorks/Interscope Records shortly after.
The album received very positive reviews and has since been placed on numerous lists as one of the greatest albums of the decade and from the emo genre.
Background
Brand New's second studio album was written in "the year-and-a-half or two years" that they were touring the material from Your Favorite Weapon. According to drummer Brian Lane, "Jesse wrote a lot of the lyrics about different things than 'I just broke up with my girlfriend' for the new record." Lacey wrote the songs on an acoustic guitar in his bedroom."I'm surprised that so many bands just keep putting out the same record as they did previously. We try to flex as much of our diversity muscles… as we can," Lacey said about the band's development.
The album was produced by Steven Haigler.
Album title
Deja Entendu literally translates to "already heard" in French. Frontman Jesse Lacey told MTV that the title was a "tongue-in-cheek" commentary about the band's music, stating: "No matter who you are or what your band is about, you can't put a record out without people saying it's derivative of something else. So by saying the record's already been heard, it's kind of like saying, 'Yeah, you're right. We're doing something that's already been done before.' We're not trying to break new ground in music. We're just trying to make good music." He also said that bands like Sigur Rós and Outkast were uniquely "groundbreaking" as "there is new territory to be charted, but I don't necessarily think that we're the ones to be doing it."Cover artwork
The cover art for Deja Entendu was designed by musicians Don and Ryan Clark of the band Demon Hunter, who ran the graphic design studio Invisible Creature. The band contacted the studio in early 2003 with just the album's title as a reference point, contacting the studio only once before receiving the final product. Don Clark said in 2015 that, "If I could go back, there are a zillion little things I would do differently. I was much younger at the time, so some of the light and shadow work is a bit clunky." However, both Clark and DIY agreed that the cover became an "iconic image" for an album that "from a musical standpoint, was way ahead of its time."Lyrics and meaning
Lacey's lyrics on Deja Entendu explore themes such as psychological pain and youth. They were a response to his dissatisfaction with the lyrical content of pop punk bands such as Good Charlotte, which he believed focused too much on how other people wronged them. He sought to do something different by writing about how he had negatively impacted others. "I've hurt people just as often as I've been hurt. I'm trying to be honest about the kind of person I am underneath it all," he confided in an October 2003 interview with Rolling Stone. Drummer Brian Lane described the lyrics of Deja Entendu as Lacey "pointing out things about himself and others that he doesn’t think are that great."Reflecting on the lyrics in a 2005 interview, Lacey opined that they were mostly written about situations that he knew. "Being white and middle-class is a very shallow thing to draw from," he said. "You can very easily start whining about things that really aren't relevant to very many people. It's important to me that they come out on a very large scale. Listening to Springsteen or Morrissey or Bono – they are all very universal lyricists, and they all say things that I wish I could say. But I really can't write about anything else. Even if I'm writing about an experience in someone else's life, I'm only going to be able to write about it if I'm very close to it. I have to have a good perspective on it. There wasn't much about anyone else."
Several of the song titles reference films. The first track entitled "Tautou" references the lead actress, Audrey Tautou, in the movie Amélie. "Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't" is a line from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and "Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades" is a quote from Wes Anderson's film Rushmore. In addition, the line "And I've seen what happens to the wicked and proud when they decide to try to take on the throne for the crown" is a reference to a line from the 1999 film Dogma, specifically referencing a line of Matt Damon's character Loki. "I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light" is a quote from the Bruce Brooks sports novel The Moves Make the Man, and borrows lines from the song "Chumming the Ocean" by the band Archers of Loaf.
"Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis" is a song that Lacey describes as being about his worst nightmare, turning into a washed-up figure after his prime has ended. The title draws a comparison to Elvis Presley, who died from a drug overdose, and Diego Maradona, who suffered from drug addiction and was accused of domestic violence.
"Guernica", whose title references the Picasso painting of the same name, was written about Lacey's grandfather and his struggle with cancer. Lacey felt guilty about how the band's recording commitments meant that he could not return home to be by his side. "It was a horrible circumstance and I felt very selfish and very bad about the whole thing," he told Rock Sound.
"Good to Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do Is Die" criticizes the music industry and "when managers, labels, agents and lawyers get their claws on the prize money". The title came from something that a friend of Lacey said after false rumors of his death created concern among people he had not spoken to in years. "As the band grows, everyone wants to take a piece of us," he said.
The song "Play Crack the Sky" was about the 1951 shipwreck of the FV Pelican at Montauk Point, New York where 45 people died within a mile of the lighthouse. Lacey claimed the song "touches on parts of life that I don't talk about a lot I have grown up around water being from living on Long Island. Surfing, sailing, fishing, that's a huge part of my life apart from the band." The ending of the song is a reference to the run-out groove on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. During a show on his 2007 solo tour with Kevin Devine, Jesse explained that the title was a reference to Mylon LeFevre song "Crack the Sky".
Release
Deja Entendu was released through Triple Crown and Razor & Tie on June 17, 2003. "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" was released as the album's lead single to rock radio on October 6. It peaked at No. 39 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 37 on Billboard's Alternative Songs in the US. The album was released in the UK on October 13, through Eat Sleep. On November 3, the album was released in Australia through Below Par. "Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades" was released to radio on November 18 as the album's second single. It reached No. 37 in the UK. The first pressing for the album in 2003 was 1,000 records.On March 2, 2015, the band announced a reissue of the album. It was first released for Record Store Day on April 18 in limited packaging before a wider release on May 5. Both were pressed on 180-gram black vinyl.
Commercial performance
After seven weeks since its release, the album matched Your Favorite Weapons sales of 51,000 copies. The album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on May 29, 2007, nearly four years after its original release.Brand New, who would soon sign with DreamWorks Records, were recognized as part of a trend that saw bands labeled as "emo" getting signed to major record label deals in an attempt to sign the next big thing. Spin dubbed this trend "mainstreamo", but Lacey rebuked the hype, believing that "I think it’s all gonna fall through in a year and a half, maybe sooner. This is becoming like ’80s hair metal all over again. All you can really do is try hard to be one of the bands that does manage to stick.” The program director for influential Washington, D.C. rock radio station WHFS noted that "we haven’t reached the point where Puddle of Mudd fans are calling up requesting Brand New.”
Following the album's success, Triple Crown Records knew that they had no chance of re-signing Brand New following the conclusion of their two-album deal. Lyor Cohen, at the time the president of The Island Def Jam Music Group, asked Thursday vocalist Geoff Rickly to speak positively about Island Records to Lacey in order to convince Brand New to sign with them. However, Lacey did not believe Rickly, as he noted how the label had told Thursday to rewrite their album War All the Time in order to placate the executives and did not want that happening to Brand New as well. Michael Goldstone, who at the time was leaving DreamWorks Records for Sire Records, told Interscope Records executive Luke Wood to sign Brand New; Wood recalled that "for about six months, every label was trying to sign the band, chasing them all over the world. It was brutal." Vagrant Records had the money to match DreamWorks' offer, but Brand New ultimately signed with DreamWorks/Interscope.