Matthew Sweet
Love You Life


In the early '90s there was a flash of mainstream interest for the singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet. His albums Girlfriend and 100% Fun gained critical acclaim and scored radio hits (title track "Girlfriend" and 100%'s "Sick of Myself"). Journalists put him into category with Teenage Fanclub and Big Star, bands he came to openly recognize as an influence. Sweet eventually saw the mills of the record industry treat him with the troublesome process of pressure and neglect. Always having quality songs, but not having "the song" put Sweet back into hiding. Not necessarily a one-hit wonder, he became that artist with one solid single off of each album that would go off air in a matter of months.

Last year, Sweet spent a stint with singers Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins in the CSNY-ish folk-rock outfit the Thorns. This project produced similar results. Although creatively free in terms of output and songwriting, the loot and interest dwindled from label heads of state.

In October, Sweet released two albums on his own Superdeformed label. He recorded most of the material during quick and loose home studio sessions with Girlfriend-era players. Kimi Ga Suki (pronounced Kimi-gah-skee) actually released in '03 as a Japan-only release. Kimi is raw, fun, and everything his early '90s material was. The guitars squeak, the hooks are solid, and drums fill perfectly…great. The other release, Living Things, is produced by Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks. It's more organic, driven by acoustic guitar, but incorporates a flurry of other instruments. The result here is as loose and free Sweet has ever been, leaving drawn-out studio jams in the final product.

To find out if the new formula is working, CREEM spoke with Matthew Sweet in Chicago, finding him excited and optimistic. He just has to find a way to keep making money, without the help of major label. Scary stuff to think about…here is some of our conversation…


CREEM: One of your new albums is called Kimi Ga Suki, what does that mean?

Sweet: It took me several years to get it right. It is made to have a weird effect on the Japanese audience. Kind of like how our English may seem strange to them. It is made to seem wrong in the translation.

CREEM: Kind of like '80s video games with wrong English?

Sweet: Right. The closest translation I can give you is "love you life." It is also a play on what fans say to us there which is "we love your live," like, "we love your live show."

CREEM: Why do you mix so well with the Japanese audience?

Sweet: They are very dedicated to the music they love there. You don't have to have a large audience there to create excitement. I've been into a lot of Japanese pop culture, Zen Buddhism; I would like to live there for a while. Most bands that have any kind of success here can find a serious interest somewhere in Japan. Even the journalists there really take things to heart. They tend to be really fair and thoughtful.

CREEM: You never seem to flaunt your "rock-star" side.

Sweet: I never really wanted to be that songwriter with a guitar on the cover; it seemed boring. I didn't want fame, but I wanted to be validated. I also wanted to get money to buy some equipment!

CREEM: It is possible to read a whole magazine talking about the Strokes in terms of what jackets they are wearing, what drugs they are on, what they are drinking…sex, drugs, and rock and roll…

Sweet: It's more about style. People don't understand what kind of monster you can be. When I was making Altered Beast (1993) I was drinking and turning into this whole other thing. I'm not a dummy. I found out over time that that stuff really fucks me up, and I can't play like that. I play much better now.

CREEM: So what made it possible for you to start recording on your own?

Sweet: I broke off from Jive Records, who was like Britney Spears' label, by adding a couple tracks to a best of. When I was successful on a major label, I was still a failure. I really wanted to make a record in my house, for one, and making a record for Japan seemed like such a way to break from the world I knew. It gave me freedom. During that time I wrote Living Things, and didn't think that it would be a record.

CREEM: How did you come about releasing it?

Sweet: I was up on a ranch with the guys from the Thorns and got really creative. I broke off and wrote eight songs in one night. I didn't know what the songs would be. I started talking with Van Dyke Parks and playing with him. Once he played on it, and Greg Leisz (guitars, mandolins) started playing on it we thought we would put it out.

CREEM: Living Things is really loose…

Sweet: It was free-form. I love the endings, and I let them go on forever and ever. There are a lot of things going on at one time. It is like the Thorns as far a being acoustic, but there is more of a free spirit to the album. My original thought was to go back and redo some parts, but the original takes all kind of went together, so I mixed it as is.

CREEM: Are the major labels ignoring your new music?

Sweet: I kept thinking that eventually some kind of new label was going to come up with a business model for sales, but it never happened, so I got a distribution deal. Even when I was with the Thorns, which was on Columbia, it was hard to get money. They thought our three-part harmony could sell well. We sold a couple hundred thousand but that was still considered a failure.

CREEM: Are you going to tour a lot now that you are free of other ties?

Sweet: I hope so, but that's the thing, I have to figure out how to make it work so that I can live off it. With the Thorns we spent a couple years doing really grueling radio-kiss-ass kind of work, but never saw any money. The good side to selling the albums myself is that I can sell less, but make more, and still do what I have always wanted to do. Last year, through the Indie Coalition, I released 3,500 albums on my own, and made more money selling those than I ever did with the Thorns. That made me say 'OK, I can do this.'

CREEM: How do you get the word out?

Sweet: We are talking to more grassroots publications; we are getting back to the people that really have an interest in the music, whereas the major labels will talk less with the smaller magazines and such. That gives me hope. If I can get connected on a grassroots level, my thing will still exist.

CREEM: So you've had some commercial success, and some indie cred. What is your favorite Matthew Sweet album?

Sweet: There is Girlfriend on the level that it was my breakthrough, and tons of fans that didn't know about me before could hear my music. It changed my life. I knew that I wanted to make records, but didn't know how far it could go. When you have the most success, your life is kind of the worst in terms of being a musician. The work is really hard, I drank a lot and felt frustrated, and it was weird. Now, with Kimi and my new music, I can really get creative.

CREEM: You seem pretty optimistic.

Sweet: I don't know why I am, because all signs say 'don't be,' but I am so happy to do my music free. I think I can do it, that's why I am so optimistic.