Songs In The Key of Life

In 2005, everything seemed to be coming together for Andrew McMahon. His band, Something Corporate, had done well with their sophomore album, and he was ready to release his first solo effort, "Everything in Transit," under the moniker Jack's Mannequin in August.

During a tour in June, McMahon was exhausted and suffering from persistent laryngitis. He checked himself into the hospital and was soon diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 22. "Everything in Transit" was still released as planned on Aug. 23, the same day the singer received a bone-marrow transplant from his sister. The album sold 250,000 units, despite the fact that McMahon was in the hospital, unable to tour to support it.

Now, three years later, the singer is in remission and ready to release the next Jack's Mannequin record, "The Glass Passenger" on Sept. 30. He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Susan Elgin. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: "Resolution" was just announced as the first single off "The Glass Passenger." Why did you choose that song?
Andrew McMahon: To be honest, I took myself out of the equation for single selection. I've been working on this record in various states for a year and a half now, so I'm at a place now where everything seems like vertigo. But seems like a sensible introduction.

"Caves," the last song on the album, directly acknowledges your battle with cancer. Did you intend to pack everything into that one song?
Absolutely. It's the last song on the album, and in some respects, it probably should have been the first. Pretty much everything covered on the album is the aftermath of what is being spoken about in "Caves." The piano hook, the monochromatic rise you hear throughout, haunted me. I woke up with that in my head at 2 in the morning. It was a huge breakthrough on the record because I tried to avoid writing that song for a while. I am glad I did, because I think it came in the most natural way possible. The second half of the song, I guess, represents the aftermath of what came following being in the hospital.

Why did you avoid writing a song about having cancer?
I'd lived it, and I wasn't sure I wanted to live it again, you know? I've always tried to write in the present moment about what's going on at the moment. With this record, there were obviously some unavoidable things and some things that were definitely hanging over my head. I wasn't aiming to capture that as much as I was aiming to capture what the fallout of all of that was, and where it put me in the present day. Being a dude who tends to write from a fairly therapeutic standpoint, there were certain elements in what I had gone through that I had never been totally honest about or spoken about. Music is where I tend to do that. I think, as we go toward the second half of the record, songs like "The Resolution" or "Caves" started popping up out of a necessity to reconcile a past that I hadn't gotten a chance to reconcile.

What do you mean by fallout?
It's one of the things you don't hear about when you're going in for your first treatments. When you survive the big battle, there's a whole life after that that can be a little confusing. Having walked right up that door and knocking on it, whether or not you're staying here or going, is pretty heavy. There's a shell shock that comes along with getting re-acclimated to everyday life, and integrating back into the real world was not necessarily as easy as I had expected or planned for it to be.

"Swim" definitely has some political references in it.
At this period of time, it's impossible to not have that permeate in some respects. But I try to be sensitive about that, and I don't want to create a scenario that draws a dividing line across my fan base either. There are things that are bigger than partisan politics, and there are problems in this world that have nothing to do with what side you align yourself with. This record wasn't meant to take those head on, but there were times when I felt that so strongly that I had to write about it.