AJR
A pop band of three brothers known for vulnerable, goofy songs and theatrical live shows.
Where AJR comes up1 episode or test
AJR grew slowly by writing embarrassing, specific truths and building songs backward from the live show. They hold over 5 billion Spotify streams and 8.5 million monthly listeners, yet touring earns most of the money. World's Smallest Violin took about two years to catch on via TikTok. Lesson: stay honest and specific, expect slow compounding, and design for the experience that actually pays.
- 1Ryan drafts from gutFirst demo sounded extremely Broadway
- 2Jack edits as outsiderFlags where his attention drifts
- 3Cut the lecturing lineSwapped for 'oh my god, that's so insane'
- 4Slow climb on TikTokAbout two years to take off
- 5Passed 170M video viewsWorld's Smallest Violin, their biggest hit
From Ryan and Jack Met interview
What was said about AJR
1Writing from the most embarrassing truth
- Worked a little
- People stopped showing up
- Weak, Joe, Turning Out Part Three
- Listeners wrote back: same thing
- Show attendance grew
Vulnerable songs grew attendance; party songs didn't
From Ryan and Jack Met interview
AJR grew its audience by writing embarrassing truths instead of party songs. Early dorm-room party songs worked a little, but people stopped showing up to shows. Attendance grew once they wrote vulnerable songs like Weak, Joe and Turning Out Part Three, and listeners wrote back that they had been through the same thing.
Their test for the next song is what would embarrass them most to tell a stranger or a best friend. Ryan says honest writing becomes addictive, and eventually a silly party song feels like someone else wrote it. Turning Out Part Three covers intimacy issues; listeners said nobody writes about it.
Asking what the brand would say dilutes the voice. Ryan and Jack call asking "what would AJR do" the death of creativity: it stacks one layer of voice on another until it goes thin, like a photo of a photo. They ask what is embarrassing or true for them right now instead.
When they tried to look cool, like wearing metaphorical sunglasses on stage, they looked like they were in costume. They say they cannot be cool like Drake, so goofiness became their voice.
A specific vignette connects where broad confession does not. They borrow the idea that you don't write about the brutality of war, you write about a child's burnt sock on the ground. Inertia became a fan favorite by listing small cases, like a friend who keeps saying he'll quit his bank job and a couple who keep saying they'll break up for 20 years.
They separate this from trauma dumping, which they see as self-centered: a songwriter picks one personal thing and trusts that others quietly share it. "The word love is not really interesting to us."
Only write what you could defend in front of a jury. Jack says to write something you could defend on the stand as truly how you felt, so regret and hate bounce off. He cannot defend Thirsty, a silly 2013-sounding song that countless TikTok trends call the worst song ever made, but he could defend the dog song.
Write for yourself first, then shape it for listeners. Ryan drafts only from how he feels in the moment; the next step is crafting it so people won't dismiss it as a narcissistic exercise. They see both "art only for myself" and only guessing what people like as dangerous.
Jack calls this balance his skill: listening from a stranger's point of view and from his own.
2Funny first, then a left turn into grief
The style is a laugh that turns into something that hurts. When Ryan's girlfriend first heard their music, she laughed at a funny line ten seconds in, then went quiet at a lyric about wanting to call his dad. That reaction showed them the style to keep.
Pixar is their model: a silly fish movie that ends up being about a dad learning to trust his kid. Ryan says much of what becomes your superpower started as your weakness, and their goofiness survived success when most artists button up.
A gimmick works once a character gives it an emotional way in. A Dog Song, written from their dogs' point of view, found its angle when the dog thinks he is protecting the family while the family is protecting him. It stays silly while carrying the grief of their father's death, including a verse where the dog asks whether the moving men lost him too.
Once a character has an arc, they say it starts telling them what happens next, as novelists describe.
Their own laughter and tears are the test of a draft. A song is ready when it makes the writers laugh or cry, ideally both, because that is the reaction they want from fans. Ryan texts Jack eye emojis when he is crying over a draft, and crying at A Dog Song told him it was true.
They use a comedy rule: a joke written to make people laugh dies, a joke that makes you laugh kills. Alone in a room, that shared reaction is the only feedback they get.
3The writer and editor split, and how World's Smallest Violin became a hit
One brother drafts from the gut, the other edits as the outside ear. Ryan builds the raw clay without caring what is cool; Jack, who studies what audiences respond to, says where a draft loses him. Ryan's first demo of World's Smallest Violin sounded extremely Broadway, and Jack's edits made it their biggest hit.
They quote Steve Martin: "your subconscious writes and your conscious edits," and cite partnerships like the Coen brothers. Jack's check on theatricality is whether his attention drifts, and he adds elements like a trap snare so demos feel like music now.
Cut lines that lecture and say the plain felt thing. An early World's Smallest Violin line, "that's the way it always is and that's the way it's always been," made Jack feel lectured at. They replaced it with something short and felt like "oh my god, that's so insane," and the song passed 170 million video views.
Flat drafts are copies of old hits; fix them with a real example or twist. Failed songs sound like "photocopies of photocopies of AJR songs," such as writing about being insecure right after writing about being weak. The Big Goodbye, built on an auctioneer sample, failed as a party song and as an observational song before working as emotional plus badass.
When a song isn't good they bin it at once and start over, calling it a great feeling; when one works they immediately talk about how it looks on stage.
Don't try to top the last album; take a left turn. Treating a new album as a competition with the last one, such as asking how to beat the previous overture, left them not wanting to write. They drop the element and do something that can't be compared, which they say has always worked so far.
They also skip repeats: none of the songs on their new EP use verse-chorus-bridge structure, and a third chorus gets swapped for a strange sampler outro because live crowds lean in to surprises like a ringtone remix.
Let the real theme of a project emerge midway. On Maybe Man, songs pointed in different directions until the title track, about not knowing who the real you is, became the arc. The final song, 2085, reflected what they learned about the end of a life as their father fell ill and died during the album.
At his bedside everyone talked about how nice he was, not about his architecture.
4Songs written backward from the live show
AJR treats the album as the soundtrack to the tour. They plan the opener, midpoint and finale and reverse engineer songs to fit, even leaving a pause for a bow. Touring, not streaming, earns most of their money.
Last tour, shadow puppets came to life, Jack duetted his own shadow, Jack skydived on a wire between two 3D video walls, and a final speech paid off an Easter egg from 45 minutes earlier, alongside a 50-foot animatronic Jack tied to something their dad used to say. They have no choreographer and design shows themselves.
Borrow from an art form other pop acts ignore. They grew up staging Broadway shows in their living room and still mine each show for one or two ideas for a mental bank, like a rotating stage. The shadow duet came from David Byrne's American Utopia.
They admire how Broadway can switch time signatures and characters and be as uncool as possible.
Show how a song was made, but tell it as a story. Every tour includes a making-of segment that builds a song on stage in the spirit of Penn and Teller, who reveal the trick but still deliver the thrill.
Their line: the artist stays slightly above the audience, "I'm not just like showing you my ProTools session. I'm telling you a story."
5The long game: a personal voice against trends and AI
A distinct voice built a slow, loyal fanbase rather than viral luck. AJR has over 5 billion Spotify streams and 8.5 million monthly listeners, yet World's Smallest Violin took about two years to take off on TikTok and early tours lost money. The long game now fills arenas.
They say being early takes nerve: Kanye was two or three years ahead on every album, most people first hear a new sound and ask "what is this garbage?", and it takes about six months to catch up.
AI will average artists, so lean harder into a point of view. Jack says AI can only blend Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus into a nebulous middle with no POV, and cannot predict the next shift in taste. They expect work to get more personal as it runs from the computer.
They used a voice tool only to hear a demo in the other brother's voice and draw the line at replacing people. For an album cover they rejected pieces that looked too AI.
Music should fit its moment without blending in. They see folk booming because screen-tired listeners want calmer, sparser sound, while EDM peaked from 2011 to 2015 when the iPhone still felt like magic. World's Smallest Violin fits the era but sounds like nothing else, a silly bluegrass-style dance song.
6How they built their taste
Write a thousand bad songs and copy influences until it bores you. Their first album included clear copies of Imagine Dragons and the Beach Boys, and Jack once made a full Frankie Valli song he can now hint at in new tracks. When a friend asks if you were listening to Arcade Fire, it stings, and you start on what only you bring.
Jack trained his ear in college by watching people: two near-identical songs could get people on tables or talking through, which he credits to a hidden "DNA" in music.
AJR Reveal Their Songwriting Secrets
The band has over 5 billion Spotify streams and 8.5 million monthly listeners. Writing embarrassing truths and staying unapologetic built a loyal fanbase slowly, and World's Smallest Violin, their biggest hit, took about two years to take off on TikTok. They write songs backward from the live show, and touring, not streaming, earns most of the money.
AJR grew its audience by writing embarrassing truths instead of party songs. Early dorm-room party songs worked a little, but people stopped showing up to shows. Attendance grew once they wrote vulnerable songs like Weak, Joe and Turning Out Part Three, and listeners wrote back that they had been through the same thing.
Their test for the next song is what would embarrass them most to tell a stranger or a best friend. Ryan says honest writing becomes addictive, and eventually a silly party song feels like someone else wrote it. Turning Out Part Three covers intimacy issues; listeners said nobody writes about it.
Asking what the brand would say dilutes the voice. Ryan and Jack call asking "what would AJR do" the death of creativity: it stacks one layer of voice on another until it goes thin, like a photo of a photo. They ask what is embarrassing or true for them right now instead.
When they tried to look cool, like wearing metaphorical sunglasses on stage, they looked like they were in costume. They say they cannot be cool like Drake, so goofiness became their voice.
A specific vignette connects where broad confession does not. They borrow the idea that you don't write about the brutality of war, you write about a child's burnt sock on the ground. Inertia became a fan favorite by listing small cases, like a friend who keeps saying he'll quit his bank job and a couple who keep saying they'll break up for 20 years.
They separate this from trauma dumping, which they see as self-centered: a songwriter picks one personal thing and trusts that others quietly share it. "The word love is not really interesting to us."
Only write what you could defend in front of a jury. Jack says to write something you could defend on the stand as truly how you felt, so regret and hate bounce off. He cannot defend Thirsty, a silly 2013-sounding song that countless TikTok trends call the worst song ever made, but he could defend the dog song.
Write for yourself first, then shape it for listeners. Ryan drafts only from how he feels in the moment; the next step is crafting it so people won't dismiss it as a narcissistic exercise. They see both "art only for myself" and only guessing what people like as dangerous.
Jack calls this balance his skill: listening from a stranger's point of view and from his own.
The style is a laugh that turns into something that hurts. When Ryan's girlfriend first heard their music, she laughed at a funny line ten seconds in, then went quiet at a lyric about wanting to call his dad. That reaction showed them the style to keep.
Pixar is their model: a silly fish movie that ends up being about a dad learning to trust his kid. Ryan says much of what becomes your superpower started as your weakness, and their goofiness survived success when most artists button up.
A gimmick works once a character gives it an emotional way in. A Dog Song, written from their dogs' point of view, found its angle when the dog thinks he is protecting the family while the family is protecting him. It stays silly while carrying the grief of their father's death, including a verse where the dog asks whether the moving men lost him too.
Once a character has an arc, they say it starts telling them what happens next, as novelists describe.
Their own laughter and tears are the test of a draft. A song is ready when it makes the writers laugh or cry, ideally both, because that is the reaction they want from fans. Ryan texts Jack eye emojis when he is crying over a draft, and crying at A Dog Song told him it was true.
They use a comedy rule: a joke written to make people laugh dies, a joke that makes you laugh kills. Alone in a room, that shared reaction is the only feedback they get.
One brother drafts from the gut, the other edits as the outside ear. Ryan builds the raw clay without caring what is cool; Jack, who studies what audiences respond to, says where a draft loses him. Ryan's first demo of World's Smallest Violin sounded extremely Broadway, and Jack's edits made it their biggest hit.
They quote Steve Martin: "your subconscious writes and your conscious edits," and cite partnerships like the Coen brothers. Jack's check on theatricality is whether his attention drifts, and he adds elements like a trap snare so demos feel like music now.
Cut lines that lecture and say the plain felt thing. An early World's Smallest Violin line, "that's the way it always is and that's the way it's always been," made Jack feel lectured at. They replaced it with something short and felt like "oh my god, that's so insane," and the song passed 170 million video views.
Flat drafts are copies of old hits; fix them with a real example or twist. Failed songs sound like "photocopies of photocopies of AJR songs," such as writing about being insecure right after writing about being weak. The Big Goodbye, built on an auctioneer sample, failed as a party song and as an observational song before working as emotional plus badass.
When a song isn't good they bin it at once and start over, calling it a great feeling; when one works they immediately talk about how it looks on stage.
Don't try to top the last album; take a left turn. Treating a new album as a competition with the last one, such as asking how to beat the previous overture, left them not wanting to write. They drop the element and do something that can't be compared, which they say has always worked so far.
They also skip repeats: none of the songs on their new EP use verse-chorus-bridge structure, and a third chorus gets swapped for a strange sampler outro because live crowds lean in to surprises like a ringtone remix.
Let the real theme of a project emerge midway. On Maybe Man, songs pointed in different directions until the title track, about not knowing who the real you is, became the arc. The final song, 2085, reflected what they learned about the end of a life as their father fell ill and died during the album.
At his bedside everyone talked about how nice he was, not about his architecture.
AJR treats the album as the soundtrack to the tour. They plan the opener, midpoint and finale and reverse engineer songs to fit, even leaving a pause for a bow. Touring, not streaming, earns most of their money.
Last tour, shadow puppets came to life, Jack duetted his own shadow, Jack skydived on a wire between two 3D video walls, and a final speech paid off an Easter egg from 45 minutes earlier, alongside a 50-foot animatronic Jack tied to something their dad used to say. They have no choreographer and design shows themselves.
Borrow from an art form other pop acts ignore. They grew up staging Broadway shows in their living room and still mine each show for one or two ideas for a mental bank, like a rotating stage. The shadow duet came from David Byrne's American Utopia.
They admire how Broadway can switch time signatures and characters and be as uncool as possible.
Show how a song was made, but tell it as a story. Every tour includes a making-of segment that builds a song on stage in the spirit of Penn and Teller, who reveal the trick but still deliver the thrill.
Their line: the artist stays slightly above the audience, "I'm not just like showing you my ProTools session. I'm telling you a story."
A distinct voice built a slow, loyal fanbase rather than viral luck. AJR has over 5 billion Spotify streams and 8.5 million monthly listeners, yet World's Smallest Violin took about two years to take off on TikTok and early tours lost money. The long game now fills arenas.
They say being early takes nerve: Kanye was two or three years ahead on every album, most people first hear a new sound and ask "what is this garbage?", and it takes about six months to catch up.
AI will average artists, so lean harder into a point of view. Jack says AI can only blend Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus into a nebulous middle with no POV, and cannot predict the next shift in taste. They expect work to get more personal as it runs from the computer.
They used a voice tool only to hear a demo in the other brother's voice and draw the line at replacing people. For an album cover they rejected pieces that looked too AI.
Music should fit its moment without blending in. They see folk booming because screen-tired listeners want calmer, sparser sound, while EDM peaked from 2011 to 2015 when the iPhone still felt like magic. World's Smallest Violin fits the era but sounds like nothing else, a silly bluegrass-style dance song.
Write a thousand bad songs and copy influences until it bores you. Their first album included clear copies of Imagine Dragons and the Beach Boys, and Jack once made a full Frankie Valli song he can now hint at in new tracks. When a friend asks if you were listening to Arcade Fire, it stings, and you start on what only you bring.
Jack trained his ear in college by watching people: two near-identical songs could get people on tables or talking through, which he credits to a hidden "DNA" in music.
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