Yahoo!Xtra Music News

Say Anything aims to break out of the pack

(Reuters, Saturday October 31, 10:16 AM) NEW YORK (Billboard) - In a way, the story of Say Anything is really a meta-story about the music business. The band, led by founder Max Bemis, has a few things that set it apart, most notably Bemis' public struggles with bipolar disorder and drug addiction.

But those issues aside, Say Anything is almost an any-band. It has a decent size and committed -- though not massive -- fan base. Its 2005 album, "Is a Real Boy," sold 230,000 copies; the follow-up, the 2007 "In Defense of the Genre," sold 119,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It played the Vans Warped tour and toured with contemporaries like Dashboard Confessional and Hellogoodbye. And as Bemis and company prepare to release a third, self-titled album Tuesday on RCA, all involved parties are wondering the same thing: How do we break out of the pack?

Plenty of bands spend their careers selling a few hundred thousand copies, content to be big but not huge. But Bemis makes no bones about wanting to cross over to the mainstream. "His goal is to be big on a Blink-182, Foo Fighters level," manager Jordan Kurland says.

Say Anything has recorded a series of acoustic concerts for various online outlets, and Bemis dutifully tweets and blogs up a storm. A single, the cheerfully titled pop-punk anthem "Hate Everyone," was promoted to modern rock radio Sept. 15, and Kurland says progress has been slow and steady.

"Every week we get messages that one or two more stations have added the song," he says. "We know that this is a crowded time, and we're hoping to make a bigger impact in the new year."

Kurland, who has been working with Say Anything for six months, speculates that the band's lack of a hit single has kept it from breaking through. Its highest-selling digital single, a track called "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too," was released in 2006 and has sold 237,000 downloads.

In the meantime, RCA is focusing on licensing tracks from the self-titled album, a fairly new strategy for Say Anything. "In the past, (Bemis') songs were so specific and pointed that they didn't really work for commercial use," RCA senior vice president of marketing Aaron Borns says. "But the lyrics on this record are more open to interpretation, and we've had a better response."

Bemis says that the more general lyrics represent his recovery from mental illness and drug problems. "The songs are still very personal, but I can see more broad themes and social issues, too," he says.

And if the album doesn't take off, Bemis has a fallback plan.

"For the past few years, I did this thing called Song Shop, where I did custom songs for $150 each," he says. "I've seen the effects of the industry falling apart, and these songs are something you can't pirate. I've written songs about a third-grade class; I've written songs about dogs. I figure I can always go back to doing it."

(Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters) (please visit our entertainment blog via www.reuters.com or on http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)