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\n The song, now 25 years old, isn\u2019t back in the atmosphere \u2014 it never left.
\n Photo: Dave Simpson\/WireImage\n <\/p>\n
Mozart. Fried chicken. Tae Bo. The best soy latte that you\u2019ve ever had. \u201cDrops of Jupiter<\/a>\u201d is one of those songs that inspires as much love as it does snark. Twenty-five years after its release, though, it is time to accept that this one has become a modern classic. Its celestial metaphors and soaring strings have earned Diamond certification by the RIAA and been covered by everyone from Taylor Swift <\/a>to Luke Combs<\/a>.<\/p>\n But when Pat Monahan, lead singer and songwriter of Train, wrote the song in 2001 because the band\u2019s record label was worried their forthcoming album did not have \u201cthe song,\u201d he was not convinced he had hit the mark. Worried it was too long and too strange, he was pleasantly surprised to see the song slowly gain traction and eventually become the band\u2019s signature \u2014 and a time capsule of early 2000s culture.<\/p>\n Nate Sloan, co-host of Vulture\u2019s music podcast Switched on Pop, sat down with Monahan to discuss why he thought the song would flop, how Train is like a rom-com, and why he would rather his songs be more famous than him. You can hear their full conversation here<\/a>.<\/p>\n So 25 years of \u201cDrops of Jupiter,\u201d I wanted to put that in context a little bit. If \u201cDrops of Jupiter\u201d was a young adult, the song could legally rent a car. If you can think back to 2001, when you wrote, recorded, released the song, did you ever imagine it having this kind of longevity? Do you have a sense of what that spark is that people connect with? Or is it still kind of a mystery? And then I turned that into a love story and it took 15 minutes. Then I went to New York with a demo of it because the record-label president was about to tell me, \u201cYou gotta go write songs with professional songwriters,\u201d which was not a part of the rule in my band at the time. We can only write together, which was not a good rule, and it kept us from being better. And before he told me anything, I handed him a disc at the time and said, \u201cThis is probably nothing. I had a dream, but here\u2019s something I just wrote.\u201d Unlike a lot of pop songs, the choruses don\u2019t just repeat the same lyrics, right? So that was a bit of a negotiation? I feel like time has vindicated you. Those lyrics are some of the most indelible parts of the song today. Some of the most memorable parts of the song. There\u2019s also a lyric about Tae Bo. So those lyrics, like you said, they\u2019re very specific and they\u2019re very down to earth. Is it fair to say that\u2019s a characteristic of your music? That combination of something specific and something universal? There\u2019s something about hearing those strings in \u201cDrops of Jupter\u201d that gives the song, I don\u2019t know, a depth or a gravitas. When I think about other songs that came out in 2001, that one breaks the mold in a lot of ways. There was an SNL skit<\/a> almost two years ago about \u201cHey, Soul Sister.\u201d I guess there was a skit also on SNL over ten years ago with \u201cyou\u201d and Maroon Five<\/a>. When you are in the public like that and people are taking your work and doing comedic skits about it, what kind of attitude do you have to take? That seems like a healthy philosophy to have. I wanna go back to this idea of the song evolving. There\u2019s maybe a textbook way to write a song, which is the chorus just repeats as is every time. But something about \u201cDrops of Jupiter,\u201d the chorus evolves and then we get to the outro and we just have these wordless choruses. Some artists might have a negative relationship with a song of this success. Maybe even a little resentment. You know, \u201cI have to play this over and over again. I\u2019m trapped.\u201d But I don\u2019t sense that. I sense that you have a real love for this song. Subscribe to\u00a0Switched on Pop <\/p>\n Subscribe on:<\/p>\n Sign up for the Vulture Daily<\/p>\n An entertainment newsletter for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
No, not at all. When you write songs, you try to touch something in yourself that makes you go like, Oh, that feels like something. And I felt something, but it was like a three-and-a-half-minute song with strings, though, and nobody cared. It was not the era for that. It was a weird time.<\/p>\n
You know, so I can go back to the history of the song, which was, we were on Columbia Records \u2014 I still am \u2014 and at the time we had recorded an album that was called Something More, and the president at the time was like, \u201cYou don\u2019t have a first single,\u201d something that had to be a hit and get you excited. We didn\u2019t have any of those, and my mother had passed away and so I was not in a good place to write the thing that they were looking for. I worked for three months and one night I fell asleep and woke up with this dream, \u201cNow that she\u2019s back in the atmosphere.\u201d And it was my mother basically saying, \u201cYou don\u2019t have to worry about me. Like, go do your thing. I can swim through the planets and come back here with drops of Jupiter in my hair if I want.\u201d<\/p>\n
And by the time it went, \u201cPlain old Jane told a story about a man,\u201d he just goes, \u201cFucking song of the year!\u201d And we became a band that could travel all over the world.<\/p>\n
I say \u201cDrops of Jupiter\u201d one time in the entire song. So this was another problem at the time. That\u2019s why in the beginning, for the first 15 years, it was called \u201cDrops of Jupiter (Tell Me).\u201d If someone asks for the song, they\u2019re gonna say, \u201cDo you have the song \u2018Tell Me?\u2019\u201d \u2014\u00a0I say \u201ctell me\u201d several times but \u201cdrops of Jupiter\u201d one time. But it\u2019s a pretty memorable lyric, and so I think that\u2019s why it was able to hold up.<\/p>\n
Oh, there were many negotiations. Like, they didn\u2019t want \u201csoy latte\u201d in. The soy latte was, at the time, not very popular. It was said to me that it was a feminine drink. And to me, it\u2019s kind of the only thing. I didn\u2019t even drink coffee at the time, but I would drink a soy latte once in a while.<\/p>\n
Yeah. I\u2019m gonna look up indelible and I think it\u2019s gonna be great when I find out what that means. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a really specific thing for\u00a0me. I am originally from Erie, Pennsylvania. And Tae Bo was invented by a guy named Billy Blanks, also from Erie, Pennsylvania. It was a shout-out to my hometown.<\/p>\n
Yeah. I\u2019ve always felt that we are a romantic comedy. Like you should be able to laugh and cry while listening to what we do. Or come to a Train concert and have a specific, emotional moment, and then laugh at \u201c50 Ways to Say Goodbye\u201d because it\u2019s so ridiculous. Without those two things, I don\u2019t think music is that fun.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why for me it was like, This song\u2019s going nowhere. The first time I ever heard it on the radio, I was in Erie I heard it on a college-radio station at like nine o\u2019clock at night. I just remember thinking, \u201cThat thing took forever to finish.\u201d Because it was longer than any song these kids were gonna play the whole rest of the week. I thought, \u201cThis is gonna be tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
You know, if you\u2019re young, you can get your feelings hurt, and if you\u2019re not, it\u2019s like, \u201cKeep it going.\u201d Like, I remember the first time I heard someone speak negatively of us, it was Patton Oswalt. I heard him do a live performance and he talked about what a shitty band Train was and everything. And I was really bummed out because I was a Patton Oswalt fan. And then I realized, I\u2019m just gonna outlast it. And I promise you he wouldn\u2019t say that today.<\/p>\n
\u201cNah, nah, nah.\u201d You know, it\u2019s funny, I\u2019m a fan of Journey, and Steve Perry ended up calling Brendan O\u2019Brien, who was the producer on it, just to tell him how excited he was that there was another \u201cNa, nah, nah\u201d song \u2014 because Steve Perry\u2019s got several of them. So that was pretty fun. That\u2019s the sing-along aspect of the song. It\u2019s hard not to end the night with it. There\u2019s not really something you can follow it up with.<\/p>\n
And what a crazy thing to be upset about. No one has ever claimed that I\u2019m emotionally mature, but I gotta tell you, it certainly feels like I am. Because if I knew somebody who didn\u2019t wanna sing that song, because they thought, Why should I, I\u2019m better than that song, like, are you? I mean, I\u2019m not a famous guy, but I have famous songs. And that\u2019s a way better life.<\/p>\n