According to an article I found on Magnet magazine’s website, Jellyfish’s lead singer, Andy Sturmer, wasn’t afraid to sting people. “I was told that Jellyfish would be an equal three-piece, with us writing and playing everything,” said the band’s original guitarist, Jason Falkner. “That turned out to be a total joke. I felt like I was duped.” And keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., whose 2006 song “You Were Right” will never leave your brain once you let it inside, had this to say: “Except for Andy, we all speak to one another. Some of us make music together. But nobody is interested in working with Andy in a personal or creative capacity. It would serve no purpose, but I don’t say that with any animosity or sadness.”
Yeah, but it’s still sad, because the band’s second and final album, 1993’s Spilt Milk (an appropriate title, it seems), left me wanting more. Then again, a smart band is supposed to leave its fans wanting more.
Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Andy Sturmer, Chris Manning, and Jason Falkner, circa 1990
Even since Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus first realized that they had a knack for writing songs together, it’s been an accepted fact that there’s something in the water of Sweden which gifts the residents of this kingdom with the abilities to write inconceivably catchy pop hooks. I mean, I’m not saying anyone’s actually done any sort of chemical analysis – or, at least, I haven’t, anyway – but given the sheer hummability of the average Swedish composition, it seems like as good an explanation as any. As late as the mid-1990s, however, my knowledge of Swedish pop was limited to two groups – ABBA and Roxette – and neither were exactly the height of cool – but, then, neither was I, which is why I had ABBA’s 