When radio programmers have hammered the final nail in the coffin of the Used’s “Buried Myself Alive,” the band will move on to “Blue and Yellow,” the fourth single from its self-titled album.
The track is the group’s most melancholy and melodic. With its understated piano, vulnerable vocals and trickling, undistorted guitar, “Blue and Yellow” sounds like a relationship song, and it kind of is, but not of the boy-wants-girl variety.
“It’s a song about me and [frontman] Bert McCracken’s friendship,” guitarist Quinn Allman explained. “When the band started to really pick up and people started to really get interested, we were almost not being friends anymore because we were focusing so much time on the band and not on each other.”
Since they wrote the song, McCracken and Allman have reconciled their friendship, and in a way they even benefited from their period of instability. “It’s probably the best song we’ve ever written,” Allman boasted.
On June 19, the Used will hit the road on the Vans Warped Tour, which also features AFI, Rancid, Andrew W.K., Bowling for Soup, Glassjaw, Mest, Simple Plan, S.T.U.N., Taking Back Sunday, the Suicide Machines, the Ataris, Dropkick Murphys, Thrice and others.
Last year the Used played both Ozzfest and Warped but found the punk crowds of Warped more to their liking than the metal legions of Ozzfest.
“At Warped, the kids are really there to check out different bands,” Allman said. “And I think at a metal show people are there to see the bands they came there to see. And they’re just waiting for you to get off the stage. If your drummer doesn’t have a double kick pedal, or if you’re not wearing a mask, or if your singer doesn’t have a florescent dyed goatee, then you’d better not be up there. Warped has more of a unity vibe.”
“Blue and Yellow” goes to radio May 19.
