RAMBLE ON: "The Outfield" by The Night Game

Martin Johnson is the frontman of Boys Like Girls, one of many emo-pop also-rans who lit up the mid-to-late 2000s with high-pitched vocals and lyrics about getting out of “this town.” Kirin J. Callinan is a musical shitposter from Australia most famous for “Big Enough,” the source of that meme with the screaming cowboy shrieking across the Australian landscape. Together, they are The Night Game… maybe. This is definitely not the kind of high-profile act I usually talk about, so I have scarce info since they’re not a very buzzed-about band (or even a band at all, from what I can tell; Callinan has since left to focus on his own career, leaving The Night Game as a solo project in all but name.)

But it might interest you to know that in the thirteen years since Boys Like Girls bit the dirt, Martin Johnson’s day job has been as an on-demand songwriter who has made some middling to decent radio hits, including such highs as Elle King’s “America’s Sweetheart” and such lows as Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty.” So he’s a music machine hack who used to be the singer for the poor man’s All-American Rejects. What music could he possibly make with Kirin J. Callinan, a wild and wacky artist who performs in his boxers and who I instinctively group with 100 gecs? Where do these two men intersect?

The Night Game proved itself as Martin Johnson’s baby immediately, because their first song was extremely commercial…. or at least, would have been once upon a time. Styles that are too mainstream often go unnoticed and unnamed, and thus the sound that The Night Game hearkens back to has no label. It’s related to new wave but it’s not new wave; it was self-serious, yearning, filled with glittering synths and clean guitars. Stereogum’s Tom Breihan once described the purveyors of this non-genre as men in “artfully billowy trench coats and lightly floofy haircuts” who “wanted to be Sting but had to settle for […] being vaguely reminiscent of Sting.” And indeed, Martin Johnson seems to have altered his singing style away from the ‘00s emo whine and towards a keening Sting imitation – or more accurately, an imitation of a Sting imitation. The Night Game’s first album sort of reveals them as a poor man’s The 1975, but The 1975’s nostalgia settles around a hipper brand of crossover ‘80s alternative, bands like Tears for Fears and INXS. “The Outfield” reminds of a more anonymous, much less cool scene, filled with nameless and forgotten bands like the Cutting Crew, Glass Tiger, and of course, The Outfield. The name of the song surely can’t be coincidence – not anymore than Mariah Carey jacking the entire vibe of “Best of My Love” by The Emotions and naming the song “Emotions.” It’s not like the song has a lot of baseball metaphors beyond the title. The guy from Boys Like Girls straight up made a loving tribute to The Outfield, of all fucking bands.

The Outfield’s most (and only) famous song, “Your Love,” may be the least interesting beloved song of the ‘80s. I run a whole show about one-hit wonders and I’ve never once considered covering it on there, even though I love that song just as much as everyone else. VH1 did not put it on their list of 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, and when they narrowed the scope to 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of just the 1980s, they only put it at #59. “Your Love” is dated but not quite dated enough to be retro; it has no gimmicks, no particularly noteworthy lyrics, not much of anything that makes it a part of any nameable trend – it’s just a fucking bop and a half. I first heard it as a radio staple on the variety stations like Bob or Jack FM, a nice little tune that sounded catchy on the radio but merited no further thought. And yet, as ‘80s nostalgia overtook the world, “Your Love” slowly but surely surpassed the flashier hits of the decade like “I Ran” or “Too Shy” in people’s hearts.

The main thing that “Your Love” does really right, the reason it became such a big hit, is those soaring harmonies, and that’s something the Night Game nails here too. Really, it’s the thing that marks “The Outfield” as an Outfield homage and not just a song with the same name – the second you hear those wild and free background vocals shouting “Far awayyyyyyyy…” you know instantly what they’re going for. (By the way, those background vocals come from another legendary one-hit wonder, Gotye, in case you were wondering where he’d gotten off to. So Gotye, the guy from Boys Like Girls and the guy who made the screaming cowboy meme are all on a song together, and somehow no one knows about it.)

If it’s not clear, “The Outfield” by The Night Game fucking kicks ass – maybe my favorite discovery of the past few years. You can take it as just a regular pop song and as such it’s superb – immaculately produced, one of the best hooks I’ve heard, a perfect lyric tied up with longing and frustration just like the many songs that inspired it. (The chords never resolve, a surefire way to convey emotional blue balls.) But that’s the thing – the first thing you notice is those songs it’s copying, not the actual lyrics. It’s trying to evoke a style long dead and one that, give or take a few gems, mostly sucked. Why would any band in 2017 want to sound like Mike and the Mechanics?

Part of it is that Johnson is older himself – he can’t hit those screamo high notes like he did when he was eighteen – so naturally he has turned to a style which was distinctly performed by men and not boys (his “whoa-ohs” sound very much like Sting indeed). And of course it’s a vein of ‘80s nostalgia yet to be strip-mined, which are increasingly rare. But part of the reason is that this sound deserved to be resurrected. One of the things I really love about music is how time turns garbage to gold. This was a sound too stodgy to be new wave but not mature enough to be music for adults, not memorable enough to name. It was the middlebrow normie version of something that was actually cool. It was a Members Only jacket turned to sound. And slowly time strips away all but that small handful of gems.

Martin Johnson said he started the band because he just stopped enjoying making music for other people. It was work. The Night Game is for himself. It will probably never take off; Callinan has moved on, and the Night Game has not garnered much attention. Johnson will probably not be quitting his day job anytime soon (and indeed has not; last year he co-wrote Elle King’s “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home).”) Fitting that the band aping new wave’s sellout successors should wind up in the 1975’s shadow. And yet someday, like The Outfield, “The Outfield” will too see a second wind as people recognize for the brilliant song that it is.