How mad is Mad!?

 

 How mad is Mad!?

 

In all the promotional interviews for their new album, Mad! (2025), Russell Mael has pointed to the double meaning of the title word: both ‘crazy’ and ‘angry’, suggesting that it was an appropriate word for the times. In an interview with NME, he elaborated on this ‘everything feels like it’s completely out of control and the world is mad in all meanings of the word’. The exclamation mark in the title was specifically intended to reinforce that point. After the implicit and explicit political nature of songs on the previous album, 2023’s The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte, that I discussed in a previous essay in this blog, more of the same might therefore have been expected, given the almost daily worsening state of US and world affairs. So, how mad, in either sense of the word, is Mad!?

We can look in vain for specific references to events or name-naming. But Sparks have always avoided overt political comment and Springsteen-like political rants at live shows. However, in the NME interview, Ron admitted that contemporary events in the US have affected their work: ‘We don’t want to be lecturing or sloganeering, but if it can be done in a way that’s a little more subtle? Those events are hard to avoid everywhere in the world now, but especially in the US. …We try not to be directly influenced by outside events, but you can’t help but have it have some kind of effect on what you’re doing.’

Their views on contemporary society have nevertheless always been apparent in the characters and scenarios in their songs. In the case of Mad!, their approach seems to me to be even more subtle than in Latte, although some songs certainly reveal links with that album and, indeed, other Sparks’ songs.  However, the ‘prophets of fear and doom’ referenced in the last song on the album are, in fact, never far away. The focus, however, is on individuals’ fears and uncertainties and, in some cases, on their ways of surviving mentally without going mad.

Despite the dynamic self-assertion of the opening song, ‘Do things My Own Way’, there are a number of unhappy or bewildered characters in the songs on Mad!  One of the singles released prior to the album, ‘Drowned in a Sea of Tears’, for example, could be seen as the fate of the girl who was crying in her latte, now overwhelmed by an unnamed grief.  The young woman observed weeping in a café by a stranger, who can only hazard a guess that ‘the world is to blame’ when he sees more unhappy people taking her place, is here seen through the eyes of her partner. He is shocked to discover that she was not as happy in their relationship as he thought, that although she appeared bright and vibrant externally, she is in fact totally consumed by an undefined and perhaps indefinable despair which, despite his desire to help her, is clearly irreparable. The situation suggests a serious failure in communication between the couple, the private agony of the woman compounded by efforts to maintain a cheerful public face, her ‘greatest talent’. We learn nothing of her sorrow, the focus being on the speaker whose own sadness is that ‘I almost saved her, I was so very near’. In hindsight, he sees that he was blind in his inability to realise and ease her fears which makes the double tragedy more affecting.  In an interview with Variety magazine, a discussion of sincerity discourages the search for a Sparks -like cynical or humorous touch: the lyrics are intended as perfectly straightforward and sincere – ‘love sucking is twist enough’.  Ron says that ‘leaning into wit’ is something that sets them apart from other bands, so that writing the lyrics for a song like this is difficult (‘in the traditional definition of what sincerity is in a song, this is more that).  He adds: ‘So you try to make the lyrics as special as possible without kind of resorting to a slight escape into some kind of humorous direction’. ‘Drowned in a Sea of Tears’ then, according to Ron and Russell, is an example of a ‘lost relationship kind of song’, a common enough situation but seen in a fresh way, that hallmark of Sparks’ songs.  The video for this single, featuring theatre director and actor Tina Kronis, ends with her sitting weeping desperately in a car as it fills up with water, a scene that has an inherent touch of eery absurdity in its literal explicitness, but is nevertheless a painful one.

              The bold and uncompromisingly defiant nature, both lyrically and musically, of ‘Do Things My Own Way’, suggest that self-reliance and an energetic pursuit of your goals is a strong defence against being overwhelmed or oppressed. Russell has commented repeatedly that this has been their mantra throughout their career (‘a rallying cry we’ve kept to ourselves’), not succumbing to outside influences, and that in this case, ‘you can trust this narrator’.  Following on from Latte’s ‘It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way’ and ‘Not That Well Defined’, the singer rejects all authoritarian advice in favour of a sincere and confident autonomy: ‘unaligned, simply fine’. Surprisingly, a German review of the Berlin concert suggests that ‘Do Things My Own Way’ can be seen as a comment on President Trump’s governing style, an interpretation which I am inclined to feel would horrify the Maels.

  The character in ‘Don’t Dog It’, the closing song on side one of the LP, however, lacks this self-confidence, seeking help from both science and religion on how to cope with life: ‘self-reliance was my game/ Shunning all advisors/ Still I felt my life’s in vain/ Sought out those much wiser’. However, from a holy man and a ‘philosophic Prof’, he receives only the enigmatic advice: ‘don’t dog it’, (an expression which I interpret as meaning ‘don’t drag your feet and get on with it’) and ‘shake it thusly and you’ll see the light’. This confirms the sentiment in the opening song ‘My advice, no advice’, a favourite line for Russell who said that, during production, he briefly silenced the music to highlight it.  In fact, the narrator here seems to take the advice as he feels more in control and ‘I no longer dog it’.

A very specific way of forging your own destiny comes in another song released as a single ‘Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab’, a satire of the speaker’s attempt to impress a potential partner with a celebrity lifestyle. His pose is as false as the fake identity of the guy in ‘Suburban Homeboy’, as he lacks the necessary to support his extravagance, and ends up in prison for debt, still unrepentant ‘Worth it all’. This song contains one of Ron’s particularly memorable rhymes ‘ Fromage, living large’ and is a humorous portrait of a wannabe celebrity/influencer which reveals society’s addiction in an age of rampant social media to fame, material things and their supposed status as indicators of human worth. It has been suggested that this was inspired by the notorious case of Anna Delvey (Anna Sorokin), a wannabe socialite and con artist who, masquerading as an heiress, forged multiple financial documents to fund her lavish lifestyle in fancy hotels, and, like our narrator, ended up in Rikers, also seemingly unrepentant in her courtship of the media.

We are back in familiar Sparks’ territory with ‘In Daylight’, which contrasts the cheerful melody of the chorus, ‘everybody looks great at night’ with the speaker’s insecurity about his looks. Reminiscent of many Sparks’ male characters who find difficulties in establishing relationships, and particularly of  FFS’s ‘Johnny Delusional’, who memorably described himself as ‘borderline attractive from afar’, this guy fears ‘daylight reveals me’. A similarly typical Sparks’ frustrated and suffering male and an apparently heartless and enigmatic female appear in ‘JanSport Backpack’, in which the woman’s backpack becomes, as Ron stated in the Variety interview, ‘a metaphor for just turning your back on a relationship’, inspired by noticing how many young women in Japan were wearing backpacks as a fashion statement. This illustrates once again how Sparks’ songs use an emphasis on detail to create common situations in a fresh way.   However, as in most Sparks’ songs, there are layers of unanswered questions: is the woman being secretive or is he being jealous and suspicious?  Underlying the relationship is a lack of communication once again - she returns every night but doesn’t say where she goes or what is in her backpack and he doesn’t ask. His line ‘why do you always treat me this way?’ harks back to the uncomprehending hurt of ‘Please, Baby, please (can’t you treat me better)’.  In contrast, the delightful ‘My Devotion To You’ has generated a number of interpretations, from the deeply personal to a general statement that everyone needs something on which to lavish their devotion. (Russell has said that they are both devoted to Sumo wrestling!)  Is it a song about Sparks’ fans, or about the relationship of the Mael brothers towards each other and Sparks? The cynical interpretation that it is about unhealthy emotional obsessions is not borne out, in my view, by the cheerful whistling and layered vocals that suggest the singer is, for once, casual and confident in this relationship.

An everyday annoyance, rather than an existential threat, appears in the minimalistic ‘A Long Red Light’, the repetitive and discordant tune full of unsettling and humorous sounds of which portrays the frustration of drivers stuck in traffic. The curt repetition of ‘Wait, wait’ highlights the obedience required of citizens, and perhaps not only in traffic. It would be fun to establish whether the length of the song actually reflects the length of time a red light can last on American roads. It contrasts nicely with the preceding song on the album, ‘I-405 Rules’, described by Sparks as ‘a love song to the city’, which compares the interstate highway, full of happy drivers, to all the exotic rivers of the world as it flows through Los Angeles. 

              The song that links both meanings of the word ‘mad’ and the themes of unhappiness and frustration most specifically with the contemporary situation in the US and beyond is ‘Hit Me, Baby’. The speaker feels in the grip of a nightmare, a thinly disguised metaphor for the reality of the times, which is ever evolving and increasingly terrifying, generating disbelief and horror. The ‘nightmare seems so real, and yet/ It’s getting weirder, getting weirder yet’.  The chorus ‘man oh man alive, where are their heads at/ Man oh man alive, how could they think that’ does not need to name names for anyone who has seen any news at all in the last months. He begs his partner to shake and hit him to wake him up (‘I gotta wake up, this cannot be true,) but nothing makes the ‘nightmare’ go away (‘I can’t believe that this is where we’re at’). The song presents various other unsuccessful methods of shutting out the sounds and images of his thoughts as the vocals wobble fearfully: unsettling music and sounds (described on the official lyrics video as ‘heavenly choir and metallic chugging’) and the ‘la la la’ of someone with their fingers desperately stuffed in their ears. But he remains ‘sweaty and filled with fear’, unable to wake up, a situation that looks unlikely to improve any time soon (‘I sense an avalanche of missed alarms’).

              The album finishes with two songs that clearly reflect a response to this situation.  ‘A Little Bit of Light Banter’, depicts a positive personal coping strategy for surviving without going mad even if you are angry mad. The couple here deal with life by ‘keeping things light’ when they go to bed, refusing to engage with the ‘heavy subjects’ that thrive in the daytime or bemoan their plight, avoiding arguments and stress by keeping their conversation to lighter and pleasant issues as a prelude to sleep. This keeps their relationship on an even keel and makes life bearable amidst the horrors of everyday. In this respect it recalls the fantasy routine of the couple in Latte’s ‘Take Me For A Ride’.  The humorous dismissal of nosey neighbours, the teasing marching motif at the end and the bouncy melody themselves suggest a resistance to depression and despair.

This is followed by ‘Lord Have Mercy’, a delicious number as anthemic as ‘All That’ from 2020’s A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, itself written at an anxious time for humanity.  The singer here is also watching his sleeping partner and is deeply moved by the song she sings in her sleep, which flows ‘so gently from her lips/ As if the world were at its end’. Whether she is really singing or he is imagining it remains intentionally unclear, adding to the unique pathos of the situation.  Her song is a prayer for the calming of fears (rendered as ‘gentle breezes’ to ‘calm angry seas’) and for rescue from the ‘prophets of fear and doom’, a subtle way of highlighting existential anxieties. Although he recognises that ‘one song means nothing in the grand scheme of things’, the narrator’s tears flow, whether because he senses her suffering, unspoken when she is awake (as in ‘Drowned In A Sea Of Tears’) or because she articulates so well what he himself feels.  This song would seem to serve as a final reflection of Sparks’ feelings without any need for specificities. There is no doubting the sincerity of their response here, and it is no wonder that this featured as the last song on the set list, before the encores, for the recent Mad! tour.

              There is, of course, fun and joy in this album, not least in its musical brilliance, but it is also extremely moving and thought provoking in the subtlest of ways. The genius of Sparks is certainly something on which we can depend to lighten and comfort our fraught days.

Penny Brown

July 2025