New Route Magazine, December 1991
By Peggy Chapman
Matthew Sweet's luck is changing. His third album, Girlfriend, is out on Zoo Entertainment and already critics are giving their approval and listeners are taking notice.
All of this is great news for Sweet, who is not unaccustomed to bad news. "I can't imagine what I could go through that could really bum me out because I've been just about bummed out as I could possibly be," he states cheerfully. Along with having his house flooded, Sweet had to deal with going through a divorce, three record label changes and watching his new record hang in limbo before being released. And although critics recognized his talent on his first two albums, Inside (Columbia) and Earth (A&M), Sweet will be the first to admit they were not successful commercially. "I don't think it was ever a problem that a lot of people didn't like them as much as nobody heard them," he explains. People, however, are listening to Girlfriend. The reception to Sweet's album is promising, and Girlfriend is helping to erase certain conceptions.
"I always had people who recognized there was something good about what I was doing, but even then I think my big problem was I was being written off as this lightweight poppy thing. One thing that makes me happy is this record does have those emotional moments. It will help dispel that a little bit." It is evident that Girlfriend is a very important album to Sweet.
"I always achieved what I wanted to with other records, but I was still looking for something...trying to get beyond these concepts and with this record I got so excited during the making of it...and I was sure it was going to break some ground...I knew what I wanted the record to be like. It was a product of the passion I sort of felt at the time." It wasn't very easy to get Girlfriend released, however. At first, the record was intended for A&M, but its fate was undetermined so Sweet had to intervene.
"We went in and said, 'This is an important record for me, and if you guys don't think you'll have the resources to get behind it, then we'd wish you'll let us sell it to somebody.' After some debate, they said, 'Well, okay,' which totally shocked us."
So Sweet went through another record label transition. Although a label change can be a disheartening process, it wasn't a new process for Sweet. His first switch was from Columbia to A&M, when he followed his A&R man, Steve Ralbovsky. Sweet signed the deal at Columbia when he was 20. Although he had been a musician early on - from his teenage years in Lincoln, Nebraska, to his move (spurred on by friends from R.E.M. and such) to Athens, Georgia - he found the whole experience overwhelming.
"I know that major labels tainted my early development, sort of. They never forced me into doing things, but just the fact that I was there before I knew more..." But now, all the experiences, musical and personal, cultivated Girlfriend, which is one thing Sweet can be optimistic about.
Now that Matthew Sweet's third album is out of the way, you might expect him to be taking a break, touring or perhaps collaborating with friend Lloyd Cole. But if you go up to Matthew Sweet and ask him what he REALLY wants to do, he will tell you what he REALLY wants to do is to be able to make another record - which is lucky for us. But what about Matthew Sweet's luck? Even though he admits he is sort of fatalistic - (Girlfriend was originally called Nothing Lasts) - his luck is obviously changing. But no one needs to cross their fingers for Matthew Sweet. With his kind of talent, he's always been lucky.
Pulse!, December 1991, 51
Matthew Sweet makes a case for godlessness, girlfriends and good old live drums
By Marc Weidenbaum
Matthew Sweet couldn't have asked for a more appropriate last name. His is among the sweetest, most delightful pop voices this side of Paul McCartney's. Its timbre often undermines his darkest conceits, frequently brightening even his gloomiest songwriting. When he closes his new record, Girlfriend (Zoo), with "Nothing Lasts" - meant to be the final word on ill-fated relationships - his plaintive delivery flushes the lost love with so much emotion that it brings new hope for reconciliation. Tension invades the gap between what Sweet says and how he says it.
Ditto for Girlfriend's opener, "Divine Intervention," which plainly dismisses the existence of a bearded, omniscient good guy, though Sweet's singing could spark a sense of the spiritual in the most devout science-type. "It's just a general kind of godlessness song," says Sweet, "although some people see it more positive religiously, which I could never understand. I just thought it seemed kind of cynical." Perhaps his heavenly voice isn't the most appropriate vessel for a "God is dead" manifesto? Says Sweet, "I thought my mother, who's fairly seriously Catholic, would really be offended by that song, but she always really liked it. So I'm glad that it had some positive side to it., but my thinking when I wrote it was: How could there possibly be a God?"
What keeps Sweet's music exciting is that he's not entirely in control of it. Perhaps with that in mind, he acceded to heavy production on past solo albums (Inside on Columbia and Earth on A&M). But for the Girlfriend sessions Sweet purposely fostered a free-form atmosphere: rehearsing little, recording on the quick, all the while listening for heart and nuance in what we (as listeners) have taught ourselves to identify as sloppiness.
Called back from the Earth album were guitarists Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd, both veterans of New York's '70s punk establishment - Quine with Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Lou Reed and others (listen for him playing rhythm guitar on John Zorn's Spillane, holding his own against a monstrous Albert Collins); Lloyd with Television, one of the era's foremost "guitar" bands. Sweet ended up pushing the range of pop music on Girlfriend, which would have been a rock'n'roll record were it not for the marvelous, sugary haze of his vocals.
"It seems ridiculous to me that it had to be so novel just to have really simple, live playing," says Sweet. "But for some reason it is. I guess everything has just been so influenced by drum machines. I mean I was, just because I was born out of that porta-studio generation. I just programmed my drums because it was the easiest way for me to create my songs."
Sweet coproduced Girlfriend with Fred Maher, onetime Material drummer and a frequent Quine accomplice, whom he met during the '86 Inside sessions, for which Maher was hired to program some drums. The two have since become regulars with Lloyd Cole (who contributes some tremolo-heavy guitar to Girlfriend). Says Sweet "Earth was just the culmination of this plan we'd had for a long time: to try and make a record that had really good drum programming that seemed real."
The truest test of that realness came in the form of Quine and Lloyd's guitars. "On Earth, I got just a taste of what they were capable of," says Sweet of the two musicians, "and I sort of regretted that there wasn't more room that wasn't plotted out in advance."
Part of what distinguishes the new album is that its songs don't sound pieced together. So much of today's pop is constructed in the mixing stage, the "perfect" chorus and verse cloned and stiched together into a synthetic verse/chorus/verse patchwork. The cuts on Girlfriend sound like they were recorded straight through, which they were, and the result has more in common with Crosby, Stills, Nash and (especially) Young than with the current, pristine efforst of, say, Crowded House, the Odds or Jesus Jones.
"And that's another drum-machine/MIDI problem," says Sweet. "People structure things so much as a production for their impact, instead of as music for its impact. They just have one little space to put in a couple of guitar licks, or whatever. Nothing can touch anything else."
Of course, as human as the new album sounds, Sweet's initial dependency on the drum machine was itself deeply personal, rooted in the privacy of his art as a songwriter - you know: a sensitive guy alone with his guitar and his four-track, recording demos for himself (first in Athens, Ga., where he moved from hometown Lincoln, Neb., and later in the New York tri-state area, where he settled after getting signed to CBS).
Sweet says, "I'd played in bands, but it was a hard thing for me. I always felt like I was going to have a band, and I said, 'Oh you play this, you play that,' I'd be an asshole. And I really wrote songs for my own emotional needs or pleasures in the beginning, more than anything else. Even when I got my deal with CBS. I wasn't out of my shell entirely."
So he's tossed the drum machine, but don't label Sweet "retro" quite yet. In contrast with the popular period stylings of Lenny Kravitz or the Black Crowes, Sweet kept Girlfriend decidedly dry, with a lot of separation between the instruments. The album bears a hefty resemblance to mid/late-period Beatles, its "Day for Night" more than echoing Abby Road's "Oh Darling." The recording is crisp and, save for the layered vocals, unadorned.
"I love that about Beatles records," says Sweet. "If I had a Beatles influence, it was more like the way the record was mixed, than musically, even. I love the way on those records, if there's a lead guitar, it's just really loud, coming out of one speaker, or wherever. It has so much more impact. When I hear a modern produced record with a ton of reverb, or whatever, I'm just totally uninterested in it, now."
In mixing the new album, Sweet decided to play up the vinyl-freak image. Songs open with the sounds of the drummer counting down, guitars tuning up, mics being tested, amps buzzing. He went as far as inserting several seconds' worth of run-off grooves between the sixth and seventh tunes and again after the 12th cut, providing Girlfriend a "third" side.
The album has the rich sound of confectionery ease translated directly to tape - back to demo, as it were - with the help of a few friends. For a taste of Sweet's true demos, pick up the recent Yuletunes (Black Vinyl) Christmas album, which includes songs by the Shoes (who organized the compilation), Material Issue, Bill Lloyd, the Cavedogs, Sweet and others. Sweet recorded his sublime "Baby Jesus," a noodling little thing reminiscent of Brian Eno's early pop, all by himself in his home (his girlfriend sings backup). Also give a listen to the new Velvet Crush album, In the Presence of Greatness (Ringers Lactate/Caroline), which Sweet co-produced with the band (Crush's Ric Menck drummed on Girlfriend). The trio revs up guitars a la Sonic Youth, but keeps to its pure-pop vocals.
Bringing us to Girlfriend's "Winona," exemplary of Sweet's signature song-writing vein, which could be summed up as: "Hey, I like ya, would you be mine?" The Winona - actress Winona Ryder, the missing link between Paul Westerberg and Sassy magazine - has heard the song, which was passed on to her by Rolling Stone interviewer David Wild.
"That was enough to make me happy," says Sweet, "because I was a big Heathers fan."
But is the song about her?
"It's not about her. It's named after her. In fact, it existed for a while before it was ever called 'Winona,' and then it seemed great because it was a country kind of name. This was also before she was on the cover of every magazine in America; so it was a little more obscure, I thought. Then, I think maybe she was freaked out by it. And I started thinking, 'Does she think the song is really about her? Didn't [Wild] tell her?'"
There is that line in the song about her being your personal movie star.
"Yeah, I know. That lyric was a big deal at the time [I wrote it], because people would react really violently and hate it; and I was convinced it was really stupid, too. But then, I just didn't want to change it. There was something that added that total patheticness about it. Well, so then I started thinking, 'God, if she really thought this was about her and was listening to it, she would surely think I was going to come kill her or something.' Which then sort of made me happy, too [laughs], because I thought, sort of, 'She won't forget!'"
By Chris Roberge, Arts Editor
In a review I wrote for the 1991 WFNX Best Music Poll Concert in April, I said that the music of Matthew Sweet had "the potential to drag and fall flat." After I formed that opinion, two things that drastically changed my mind occurred. One was hearing the energetic first track of Sweet's Girlfriend, "Divine Intervention," and another was witnessing the brutally powerful delivery that Sweet and his band used to serve up all of the pleasures of the album that I had somehow overlooked. After taking a closer listen to Girlfriend, I now realize that this deeply personal and musically exciting collection of songs was one of the better albums of the last year and I welcomed the chance to speak with Sweet about his great work.
One of the greatest strengths of Girlfriend is the ability of the instantly memorable melodies, strikingly intimate lyrics, and exceptionally strong guitars to cut across generic boundaries. Sweet admitted that one possible reason for the disparity between his music's critical and popular successes is the difficulty of classifying what type of music Girlfriend actually is, saying "that keeps a lot of people from selling records, because radio is really what sells records. Most people just don't know about anything that doesn't get stuck right in front of them. And a lot of people listen to the radio, so I think that's a place where that segregation really occurs."
Radio currently places Matthew Sweet into either "pop" or "alternative" markets, and Sweet is quick to point out the misleading nature of those names. "To me it's kind of funny to call it alternative now because it seems really mainstream. So many of these records, like the Pearl Jam/Nirvana records, are selling millions of copies. That's mainstream. It's almost like it's not alternative anymore. Even the alternative radio stations are becoming more and more commercial."
With Girlfriend, Sweet has departed from a more refined and predigested sound that he achieved primarily through the use of drum machines. The rawness and spontaneity in his new songs have led many people to refer to them as throwbacks to the 1950s, a notion that scares Sweet. "I've never been into people who just wanted to be a revival kind of a thing, like the Stray Cats or whatever. That guy's a really good guitar player, but that was what turned me off to rockabilly -- that reviving a style and trying to recreate the past was something I've never been into. I've always wanted to live in my own time and because of that I used machines for a long time. And then I just came back to making as simple and organic a record as I did just because I finally found through making demos at home that that was just the way the music came alive for me."
The songs on the album alternately speak to the hopeless and the hopeful, with lyrics that deal with the pain of loneliness and godlessness and the joys of being in a relationship. The original title of the album was Nothing Lasts, before Sweet switched to the more upbeat Girlfriend. The duality exists even in the cover photo of actress Tuesday Weld, who was a screen beauty in the 1950s, but who later in her career "was so obscure she had killed herself in 1979," Sweet said.
Another song on Girlfriend with a link to loneliness and movie actresses is "Winona," with its plaintive chorus, "Won't you be my little movie star." "Actually, Lloyd Cole suggested I call it that," Sweet explained. "I didn't have a title for a long time and he knew that I liked the movie Heathers. He thought that we should call it `Winona' because I wanted a kind of a country title and at the time she was still a lot more obscure. First of all it didn't occur to me that there would be a lot of people giving attention to anything I did. And second of all it didn't occur to me that people would think that it was about her. Then by the time the record came out she had actually heard the song through a guy at Rolling Stone and supposedly liked it so I thanked my friend for sending it to her because at the time I didn't think the record was even going to come out. It was a really dark period and I thought, `Well at least Winona Ryder heard my record.' "
Sweet admitted that many people did think that the track was a love song written expressly for Winona Ryder. "When I'm writing songs I don't usually think about any sort of audience. It's always been more of a personal thing for me. I just write whatever I feel like at the time and it's usually governed very much by what kind of a mood I'm in, but usually not nearly as literally-based as most people think my songs are. I don't sit down and write a song to a specific person. For example the song `You Don't Love Me' seems like a really personal song, and it is in a way because it encapsulated a really unhappy feeling for me. But technically it wasn't that I felt unloved in the relationship that I was going through. So you have to take it with a grain of salt. The words are generally more pulled out of a hat than they seem. It's just that I write in a really conversational tone, giving the songs a more personal quality, and I think that's a strength of the music. But it does scare me when people think it's all exactly autobiographical."
After saying that his songwriting was a very personal process and not really geared toward any particular audience, Sweet, laughing, described his live performances in a similar fashion. "In live shows I just try to have fun, I guess, in a pretty selfish way too. We're really looking forward to doing club shows again because we've been doing a lot of opening dates at big outdoor places and it's only so fun. We want to turn our volume up loud and be messy and throw our guitars around. All of this looks kind of stupid when you're an opening act without a diehard audience."
Matthew Sweet will be performing in a completely selfish appearance at the Paradise on September 12, but chances are that the audience will get a good deal of satisfaction out of the show anyway.
Entertainment Weekly, April 17, 1992
By Elysa Garder
A Lot of sweat went into Sweet's music before he made his big break...
When Matthew Sweet picked a photo of the young Tuesday Weld for the cover of his latest album, Girlfriend, it was partly because "I figured I'd rather see that than my own face every time I have to look at my record." Sweet, 27, can afford to be self-effacing: With its buoyant pop melodies and wistful reflections on infatuation and heartbreak, Girlfriend has won kudos from critics and is climbing the charts.
The singer-songwriter grew up in Lincoln, Neb., and briefly attended the University of Georgia. After two albums for as many labels, Sweet struggled to get a deal for his breakthrough disc. "The noose was hanging from the ceiling," he jokes.
Reprieved, he now lives happily in Princeton, N.J., with the real-life girlfriend he met in 1989, after separating from his wife of six years (they divorced in 1990) and just before recording Girlfriend. "People say, 'This is your big breakup record--will you still be able to write good songs?'" Sweet doesn't worry: "I'm sure I'll be just as depressed at some other point in my life."
Puncture, May 1992, Issue #24
By John Chandler
I burst into the backstage "artist's lounge" with the subtlety of Elliot Ness raiding a bootleg operation. My quarry was nowhere to be found, but I was rewarded with a rare sighting of Robyn Hitchcock eating a sandwich. I decided on the direct approach.
"You're not Matthew Sweet," I accused. He looked me over carefully, as one might an escaped lunatic or a Jehovah's Witness.
"No," he replied, "but I'm close. I'm very close." I couldn't argue with logic like that (I learned later that Robyn's father had passed away that morning. The absolutely spellbinding performance Hitchcock put on that evening is a testament to his artistry and commitment).
I was crawling around the highways and byways at the University of Oregon, muttering photographer in tow, searching for Robyn's opening act. After a healthy number of listenings to Matthew Sweet 's new album Girlfriend (Zoo Records), I was prepared to find a morose, Shelleyan (Percy not Pete) introvert tearing at his own scalp. After all, his songs (always catchy as hell) are mostly about the fallout of relationships turned sour and about the tentative optimism of new ones. Not only that, but all the press I'd read on the album painted Sweet as someone who had struggled to find the strength to finish a very personal record during the breakup of his marriage.
Happily, the interviewee I found myself yakking it up with was a bright, amiable goof who could have been my fourth- or fifth-best friend from grade school. Protocol went out the window and we ended up chewing the fat over a variety of topics, including our mutual mania for The Ren & Stimpy Show. And too, Sweet spoke freely about his music.
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DUDE
The way I learned to write music was by using multi-track tapes, so in that respect I guess I'm different from most musicians. I never had a band to be creative with. I was creative by myself. But I was so shy, I'd never conceived of myself as a solo artist. Then when I was nineteen and living in Athens, Georgia, CBS Records approached me about playing solo. So I bought an eight-track and learned to write songs better. My initial reaction was, "Great. Now I can quit school and have money."
I always liked machines and technology, so it made sense for me to make the most of it. I wanted to live in my own time, and in a way I was reacting against the Athens scene. People would come up to me in clubs and say "You're not really gonna sign a deal are you? Just get a band together and tour all over." But I didn't want to be REM. (Sweet did play with two Athens bands, Oh-OK and Buzz of Delight, the former featuring Michael Stipe's sister Linda. Each band released an EP on the DB label.)
It took me a long time to get back to a more organic way of making music. The machines are great, but I think I pushed the limit of what they could do for my music. Playing with a group is much easier for a lazy person. I figure I've got it made, because when most groups get successful, they start investing in technology and turn into a bunch of computer eggheads, which ruins their music. I started out by ruining my music, and now I'm learning to make it better (laughs).
WHO DO YOU LOVE?
I don't consciously try to write "love songs." Many of my songs pop out relationship-oriented because that's a lot of what there is to life, and that's what I write about, as opposed to having scheming, calculated ideas about certain subjects. I don't worry about it too much, because I know in the future I'll write lots of songs about other things. If people have the idea right now that I'm a purely romantic songwriter, then they'll be disappointed or surprised or relieved later on.
I don't have a romantic viewpoint on writing songs about particular girls. I did when I was a kid, but not so much anymore. It's an awkward thing. On the one hand, I can't deny I have relationship songs and love songs, but on the other hand, that type of song gets a really bad rap--which is strange because almost every great song ever written was a love song. You're actually sticking your neck out more when you do something sentimental than when you do something cool and controversial.
MISCONCEPTION PART I
The Girlfriend album is not an exact autobiographical study of my life. The emotions that went into those songs are certainly genuine. I was really depressed when I wrote "You Don't Love Me," and I was stupidly happy when I wrote "I've Been Waiting," so in that way they are accurate reflections of my life. But the entire album was written over a long period of time. They aren't messages to a specific person. I've always written personal songs, even when I wasn't experiencing a big breakup in my life.
One of the most depressing things I went through was not being able to get anyone interested in the record, even after it was finished. It was exactly like it is now, but I just went nowhere with it. My two previous albums were on major labels, so this was an unwelcome new experience. I now find it totally amazing and great that the record is doing so well, because it sat around for so long and the songs are so old.
MISCONCEPTION PART 2
The song "Winona" (on Girlfriend) is not specifically about Winona Ryder. There is a reference within the song to the movie Heathers, which I really liked, so Lloyd Cole suggested I call it "Winona," because it was kind of a sad, country song, and that name seemed to fit the mood. The reference to the film reflects my life at that moment in time. It's a song about meeting a new person and not really knowing them, but having crazed and irrational expectations all the same.
PRAISE JESUS
I read articles about British bands like Jesus Jones coming over and saying "We're going to be number one," or "we should be bigger than REM." I don't know if Jesus Jones are good or not, but I just have to hate them, because their singer is such a moron. They talk about how they're going to save rock and roll, or how they're not really just a rock and roll band, and all sorts of shit.
WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE?
I find it odd that I've been successful in the "alternative" music market. I don't really sound like anybody else, and I'm not classically normal like most of what you hear on the radio, but I'm certainly not as out-there as a lot of alternative acts. Right now, with the success of Nirvana, alternative music is becoming more commercial, and more radio stations and more listeners are open to something new. Everywhere I go people talk about how much they hate AOR (album-oriented rock) radio, which leads me to believe it's going to die. I hope new, alternative stations will be there to replace it.
A lot of the old alternative and new-wave music is really mainstream now. Look at Richard Thompson--nominated for a Grammy for "Best Alternative Album"! He's a folk/roots guy, but this is like the only world he can run in. Nirvana's Nevermind is in the same category, so by definition, alternative music covers an awful lot of ground.
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME...
Yes, Matthew Sweet is my real name. The record company didn't pick out a dumb name for me--I came with my own. At least I didn't end up as Matt Cougar or something.
The Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner, August 14, 1992
Matthew Sweet: A study in not-so-overnight success
By Dewayne Wright
When Matthew Sweet was recording his album Girlfriend in New York City during 1990, Madonna became a peripheral factor. Depending on what was happening to the album, she served as either a good or bad luck charm. Sweet chuckles a bit when this obscure reference is brought up in a phone interview from his former home in Princeton, N.J. "Well, that's kind of a joke between (producer) Fred (Maher) and I. But it's based on a reality," Sweet said. "When we were recording the record, she was in the same studio for a couple of days working on bonus tracks for what would become The Immaculate Collection." A week before he found out she was in the studio, Sweet had a dream about Madonna. In the dream, he told her he was making a record and she should make one just like it, because people would enjoy it. "I couldn't believe she was really coming in (the studio)," he said. "I kept talking about getting together with her and getting her to sing on my record. Everybody was really snooty about it, which only egged me on further and so just to annoy everyone I kept going on about it." So Sweet wrote her a note and bribed the studio manager to give it to her. Sweet heard that she read the entire note and showed no reaction. He never heard from her about it. After Madonna left the studio, they found a piece of paper that she'd written Sweet's name on ("probably to have her security people check me out"). Also on the paper was some doodling. In the middle of the page she had written, "I am everywhere and nowhere." "We thought that was kinda cryptic," Sweet said. "We thought maybe that was the title of the record, but she didn't call it that." This Madonna-scribed paper became known as "The Madonna Document" and was considered a good luck charm. At least until Girlfriend looked like it was not going to be released. Then it became an albatross around the project's neck.
Sweet recorded the album while he was under contract with ARecords. He had the help of musicians like Robert Quine, who was a member of the Voidoids and Lou Reed's original guitarist. But he didn't have the support of the label since 1989's Earth had sold only 5,000 copies. So he asked to sell Girlfriend to the highest bidder. Acanceled his contract and the project lay dormant for almost a year until Sweet and his manager, Russell Carter, were able to find a buyer in Zoo Entertainment. Zoo even passed on the album the first time around. Sweet explained that the company's president, Lou Maglia, heard the sounds of the album coming out of the office of Bud Scoppa, vice president for artists and repertoire at Zoo. "(Scoppa) happened to listen to the tape when he was working out on Stairmaster," Sweet said. "They'd already passed on it, but he saw some potential in it." Scoppa decided to write a memo about the album in the form of a Rolling Stone review, according to Sweet. Maglia heard the tape emanating from Scoppa's office when he was preparing to write the memo. The project was back on, and at a hectic pace in order to get it ready for an October release. The Madonna Document flipped back to being a bit of good luck.
Since the album was released, it has been certified gold (sales over 500,000 copies) and landed Sweet the opening slots on some very choice tours (the Indigo Girls, Soul Asylum, Melissa Etheridge), as well as allow him to tour on his own. He has also released two well-received full-length albums (Altered Beast and 100% Fun) and an EP (Son of Altered Beast). The two albums released before Girlfriend, while critically acclaimed, were virtually ignored by the record-buying public. Currently, Sweet is getting used to this new appeal. His voice takes on an almost unbelieving tone when he talks about his recent success. "I never expected to have appeal in a mass way. I always felt that I was getting away with murder and my main goal was always to make another record for my own enjoyment," he said. "It wasn't the most disheartening thing to me that the records didn't sell, as much as just how hard it was to make the next one." At the time of this interview, Sweet was taking a few weeks off from his touring schedule. The break wasn't planned, however. He was originally scheduled to produce a record in Chicago, but that was postponed. "This is the first time I've been home this long year, so it's kinda crazy," he said. "I just hang out and be lazy. This used to be my normal mode of life, but I've just been touring and touring and touring." During the year that he believed the album was not going to be released, Sweet sat around and played video games at home. It was with the help of friends like Quine that he was able to get through the period. "He was really one of the most supportive people I knew and was really there for me," Sweet said. "When I had no money, he would buy video games for me and stuff. He was really great. He's a really cool person." Now that he's on the road, Sweet doesn't have the chance to play with his TurboGrafx or Genesis systems. "I have a handheld TurboExpress, that's really cool, so I can play that on the road. That's just another thing I can credit Japan for in my life." He also credits the country with japanimation, a form he used in his music videos and which he collects. He has a tattoo of a Japanese animation character on his arm. In the fall of 1993, Sweet and his band toured Japan. He had known his album was available in Japan and he was getting good offers for dates, but he was surprised to find out the amount of fan support in the country. "I did an interview when I was over in London last week (July 19, 1993) for a Japanese magazine and the woman said, 'You are very famous among young people in Japan for your videos and tattoos.' She was asking, 'Which animations would you like your fans to bring you'," Sweet laughed. "I was like, 'They can bring me anything'."
"Superdeformed" is the final thing Sweet credits to the Japanese. It's the name of his production company, a song and his band. It comes from a name on the sushi lunch box that Sweet owns. "It's sorta like a little storage box that I carry around with me. There's a popular, kind-of-robot, animated thing called Gundham in Japan and they do a version of it, called Superdeformed Gundham, that's like a weird, squashed-down, little mutated version of the big robot. And I have this box, SD Gundham series, Superdeformed Gundham," he said. During the making of Girlfriend (working title: Nothing Lasts), superdeformed became a catch-phrase. The musicians used it to indicate how things were working out. "If something were superdeformed, it was really great," he said. "And if we would question it, we'd be saying, 'Is it superdeformed enough?' " And often, the band has been billed as Matthew Sweet and Superdeformed.
Girlfriend is dedicated to Barbara Douglas, the mother of Sweet's friend and tour manager, Andy McCullough. McCullough and Sweet were friends in Lincoln, Neb., where Sweet, 30, grew up. Douglas was dying of cancer while Sweet was recording the album. He would send her songs as he finished them. She requested that "Your Sweet Voice" be played at her funeral. "This was three weeks after we finished the record and I was really touched by that," Sweet said, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. "I remember writing the song. I was really kinda depressed when I wrote it and it made me feel better. So the thought that it could give someone else that feeling was a really cool thing, so I dedicated it to her, because she seemed like the person who deserved it most. "It's funny, with everything that's happened with it (Girlfriend), it makes me think she's an angel up there guiding it."
Animerica Vol.1, Issue 2
By Trish Ledoux.
Sometimes, it takes...well, divine intervention to get played on MTV these days.
Singer/songwriter Matthew Sweet released his first solo album Inside in 1986, but it wasn't until his album Girlfriend came along five years later that he'd become one of MTV's most requested artists. Featuring lengthy animation sequences from artist/creator Buichi Terasawa's Space Adventure Cobra TV series, the title-cut video caught the fancy of both mainstream viewers and anime fans alike.
They weren't the only ones to sit up and pay attention. Sweet's been
written up everywhere from Pulse! magazine to New York's acclaimed (and
occasionally controversial) Village Voice. A recent Voice article refers
to Sweet as "the highest-profile otaku in the world," despite
Sweet's insistence that he does not consider himself to be a member of America's
otaku.
"I'm kind of newcomer to Japanese animation, so when fans come up to
me thinking I'm like this guru fan or something, it's difficult for me,"
Sweet says. "I don't really know that much about it, I just like it,
and there are certain things that I'm attracted to and collect. Especially
in the case of Lum."
Sweet says he first became interested in Japanese animation by watching Speed Racer as a child. Like many fans, it would be a long time before he realized that the animation was Japanese and not American. He finds it amusing that so many people think it's Speed Racer he's using in his "Girlfriend" video. "I guess to some people in America, all Japanese animation looks exactly the same."
Sweet readily agrees that Japanese animation was instrumental in getting air time on MTV, although he doesn't plan to keep using it. "I don't want to be known as 'the guy with the cartoons in his videos,'" he jokes. "The animation served its purpose by drawing the attention of people switching channels, who'd see this weird animation from Mars or something. And then, maybe they'd realize there was a song going along with it."
The idea to use Japanese animation to promote his music first occurred to Sweet when he saw a page of Terasawa's Cobra, first published in English by Viz. "There's something I like about the Cobra stuff. I mean, in a way, it's sleazier than a lot of other Japanese animation. The art is really cool-looking, and the people are very beautiful to me.
"The particular drawing I wanted to use was this kind of coffin flying through space with the Jane Royal character lying inside of it. It was like a cross-shaped coffin; it had this kind of religious vibe to it. It was sort of weird and fatalistic...kind of a sex-death vibe."
Difficulties with securing rights prevented the artwork from being used
as Sweet had hoped for his 45 rpm single "Holy War." It wasn't
until his first promotional single, "Divine Intervention," that
the Sweet-Tarasawa connection could at last be made.
Although it certainly wasn't the first animated video to be shown on MTV,
Sweet's "Girlfriend" video was the only one to use Japanese animation
so extensively. His next video, "I've Been Waiting," starred the
green-haired, bikini-clad Lum from Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura
series and became a causes celebre among anime fans around the world. Sweet
says he chose Cobra for "Girlfriend" because he wanted something
"a little more hard-edged, sexier, more rock 'n' roll than Lum,"
who to him is softer and more suited to pop music.
Sweet is so...well, sweet on Lum that during October of 1991 he tattooed her image on his left arm. According to a recent interview in Animage magazine, the tattoo has "completely become his trademark" in Japan. Everywhere he went, he tells us, he was greeted with cries of "Show me Lum!" from hordes of excited schoolgirls.
"Getting the tattoo was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing." Sweet laughs. "I mean, it's not like I was drunk or anything. I'd happened to have these Urusei Yatsura cassette covers with me. One of my guitar players and I walked into this tatto place on Sunset and I just started talking to the people. They were very nice and very normal, not at all what I'd thought they'd be like. A few days later I broke down and just did it-I got the Lum tattoo, much to the shock of everyone, the dismay of some, and the delight of others.
"I've never regretted it," Sweet says. "I just love the Lum character. She just...makes me happy. I thought of the tattoo as something that was different and neat and uniquely me. I didn't get it to show off to other people. It was something I did for my own personal enjoyment."
Does his mother know?
"It's a good thing there's laser surgery," she says.