After a quarter century of heartbreak anthems and existential hooks, Jim Adkins still sounds like he’s figuring out what love actually is—and maybe that’s the point. “People’s idea of what love is, is really kind of wrong in most cases,” the Jimmy Eat World frontman tells me. “It’s more about how much you want to contribute rather than how much you get back.”
That’s the philosophical core of “Love Never,” one of two recent singles the band dropped—unannounced, unbundled, and unconcerned with album cycles. “We just had a bunch of songs and our own studio,” Adkins shrugs. “We figured, let’s just put something out ‘cause we can.”
After years of major label grind and radio hits that still pop up in every Gen X and elder millennial breakup montage, the band is back to punk rock basics: no rules, no rollout, just songs. “It’s getting back to our roots,” Adkins laughs. “After the shock of the world died down from us releasing it, we realized that.”
The songs themselves circle back to love—the eternal Jimmy Eat World topic—but from a different altitude now. “When you’re younger, you just blurt out what comes to mind,” he says. “As you get older, it’s about nuance. Love Never is more about, ‘Okay, great, you’re in love. Now what? Did you win? Are you happy now? No? Then what were you chasing?’”
That’s Adkins’ thing these days: love as a verb, not a prize. “Until you want the work more than the reward,” he says, quoting his own lyric, “you’re not really there yet.”
But even with the romantic philosophy, there’s always a political undercurrent in Jimmy Eat World’s DNA—the remnants of a scene that believed songs could still start revolutions. “It’s tricky,” Adkins admits. “I want to exercise our freedom of speech in a way that’s effective. It reminds me of the Bush years—you’d read the news and think, ‘What’s the daily bum-out today?’ Only now it’s way worse.”
Still, he’s careful about when and how to speak up. “Anybody can get up on stage and spout off something that gets applause,” he says. “But I think it’s about choosing when to use your voice in a way that actually matters. You never really know what’s going to affect somebody. You just have to feel right about what you’re doing.”
It’s a grounded answer from a guy whose band helped define earnest emo for the MTV2 generation, even as they were never quite part of that crowd. Their punk ethos—quietly DIY even at their commercial peak—was more about intention than image. “I’ve met the most generous, accepting people through music,” Adkins says. “From sleeping on floors in the early days to now, it’s that same energy.”
That community is about to get nostalgic whether the band likes it or not. Next year marks 25 years since Jimmy Eat World’s first EP and debut LP—numbers that seem to mean something even to a band allergic to self-congratulation. “Zeros and fives start to matter after a while,” Adkins says with a grin. “We’ll probably have a party or something.”
Still, the word “legacy” doesn’t sit right with him. “We’re a current band,” he insists. “We’ve been working the whole time. It’s not like we took a break and came back. But I get it—people who were there at the start feel ownership over it, and that’s cool. It’s cathartic to share that.”
That self-awareness is a luxury most bands never reach. The original lineup is still intact, the crowds are bigger than ever (“We’ve played for more people in the last year and a half than maybe our entire time as a band,” Adkins says), and yet they’re still asking the same creative questions that got them here.
“Every album starts celebrating something now,” he laughs. “You just can’t let that trap you. We’re always writing, always planning an album—if we’re not making one, we’re planning to make one.”
So, what’s next? Maybe a new record sometime next year—“summer or winter,” Adkins shrugs—or maybe just another surprise pair of singles to remind everyone that Jimmy Eat World still lives somewhere between the past and whatever’s coming next.
“I don’t know,” he says. “As long as we keep doing what we’re doing and we’re stoked about how it turns out, I think the rest takes care of itself.”
And for a band that once made emotional melodrama feel like a civic duty, that sounds downright zen.
And an interview from 2010.
