I hired a car in Palm Springs back in 2018. The radio was on a station that needed you to subscribe to get “the full experience”, but they played a dozen tracks that were free, and therefore came back repeatedly. Missing You was one of them. If ever they played the wrong track to make me subscribe it was that one. It came back free of charge every hour or so ... and I couldn’t wait.
There are two vid links below. One leads to a surprise online chat the boys conducted with hardcore fans, to the great surprise of the fans, whose reactions are wonderful; the second leads to the album song as recorded.
I’ve never met any of these guys, of course; their general style is Busted, Blink 182, Five Seconds of Summer, Green Day. But what comes over in the video—yes, which is nonetheless a produced work of art in itself—is that youngsters trust them. That sounds gullible in a world of deception. But it’s precisely in a world like that that the young increasingly need role models in whom they can trust.
They’re growing to know that politics will let them down, that commerce will let them down, that their educational institutions may well let them down, and even that, ultimately, tech will let them down. Musical role models must work hard, to not let them down.
Missing You
Written by Alex Gaskarth, Jake Gosling and Christopher Leonard
Performed by All Time Low
From their 2015 album Future Hearts
There is a huge difference between those who rail at graffiti. And those who read it.