You might be surprised Andy Grammer called his new album Monster. He was too. Long known as one of the most optimistic bright lights in the pop singer-songwriter sphere, Grammer found himself fighting demons and finding new corners of himself, places he hadn’t wanted to venture before. “Being happy, anger is my vulnerability,” he says. “I didn’t know how to deal with getting in touch with anger. I just pretended it wasn’t there.” Grammer embarked on a long mental health journey that mirrored an exploratory five-year interim between albums which, of course, happened to coincide with a particularly tumultuous five years for all of us. After everything, Monster, arriving October 4, became a document of someone walking through a fire they never wanted to even look at, and what happens when they emerge on the other side.
In the half decade since 2019’s Naive, Grammer lived a lot of life. There were heart-bursting highs, like welcoming his second child, and harrowing trials, including the rupture of an important relationship. During the bleak pandemic years, he sought therapy for the first time, and began realizing there were all kinds emotions he was just beginning to process for the first time. Originally, Grammer experimented with capturing an era dynamic with both struggle and growth in smaller snapshots: A host of steady singles across 2020-2023, as well as 2022’s The Art Of Joy EP. Back then, Grammer planned to collect the singles alongside a few new songs for his fifth album. Instead, he picked up a mandolin.
“Sometimes an instrument guides the way,” Grammer reflects. “When you find a unique sound you want to chase and sit with completely, then the album as an art form really starts to matter to me.”
Grammer wasn’t intending to make an album built around mandolin, but it happened. He wrote one song called “Bigger Man,” the genesis and skeleton key to what became Monster. It was an uncustomary track for him: grappling with anger, but striving to remain bigger than the darker sides of that emotion. Suddenly a new album began pouring out of Grammer. The folk pedigree of the mandolin proved inspiring. “There’s something about Americana and the twang that felt real to me when singing about struggle,” he explains.
“It was a color speaking to me,” Grammer continues. “My barometer is whether I’m doing something out of fear or out of joy. Sometimes you reach for a paintbrush because everyone’s using it, for fear of missing out. As I get older I ask myself why we’re reaching for a color. If it’s because it’s freaking cool and you’re excited to play with it, then go.”
Soon, Grammer had a whole batch of songs, but he knew he had to bring this new sound into the studio and meld it with his anthemic pop sensibilities. He carried his mandolin around LA, working with various producers. One partnership in particular helped shape Monster. Grammer took more of a co-production role on the album, building songs up at his home studio. Then he’d take these recordings to Adam Friedman, who provided drums, bass, and helped Grammer achieve the kind of sky-scraping singalongs he’s known for.
The same as the music came tumbling out of Grammer, so too did a lot of emotional reckoning in the wake of his therapy. “The word ‘monster’ has some bite to it,” he says of the moment when he realized it had to be the album’s title. “I began to realize getting in touch with my anger was essential. I began to make peace with it, and the monster got less scary.”
“There’s a relationship between artist and listener — like a close friendship, where you get to know each other better and better,” Grammer ventures. He knew Monster would be his most vulnerable album yet. There were moments of fear. If he was the guy who was always there to lift others up, how would people react to him opening up about difficulties? Grammer, instead, found listeners thanking him. “When you’re singing your truth, it will relate,” he says. “It was freeing, to be honest.”
Grammer struck a careful balance on Monster: He laid it all out there lyrically, but it’s not as if Monster is uncharacteristically heavy in aesthetic. Complex feelings were filtered through rousing instrumentals, reflective ballads and rejuvenating jams alike. Across the album, Grammer takes on a spectrum of human experience — the mandolin rippling alongside him, like old wisdom surfacing to lead him to some kind of answer.
Like a good therapy session, Monster excavates life from one angle after another. Lead single “I Do” features Grammer singing alongside country music duo Maddie & Tae, in a song written about Grammer’s wife Aijia that both playfully and thoughtfully depicts how the couple navigates the ups and downs of long relationships. “I sing ‘Even when I don’t love you, I do,’” he says. “Aijia and I have a standard of love for each other that’s bigger than the moment. We’re both committed to something larger.” The couple wrote and recorded other material for the record, including “Grey,” a song that mulls over whether love will survive as we age, and “Unforgivable,” an unflinching track influenced by a friend’s divorce. Pain and euphoria mingle freely. Grammer reclaims his “nice guy” reputation after getting stung in “Save A Spot In The Back”; playing on “nice guys finish last,” he proclaims “Save a spot in the back for me.” “Magic” surges forward like a classic indie-pop banger while reminiscing on loss and the unexplainable in life that, nevertheless, give it all its vibrancy. The song has an extra layer of poignance as the last composition Grammer wrote with his longtime collaborator Bram Inscore prior to Inscore’s tragic death.
Now 40, Grammer’s seen his fair share of real shit, and the songs on Monster capture it all — the ugly and the beautiful sitting alongside one another, each making no sense without its counterpart. From the hurt and confusion of the album’s opening, these songs trace Grammer’s process of re-centering himself with what really matters in life before concluding with “Friends And Family.” Grammer sings of all the wild turns his life has taken, but decides “It all means nothing without friends and family.” It’s a portrait of a man who has wrestled with parts of himself, and found what’s really important.
“I think people will understand the journey — from acknowledging the anger, leaving and experiencing things, and then coming home to realize you’re not able to be your full self without these things,” Grammer concludes. “And when we all end up singing it together at the top of our lungs — that’s what makes life explosive.”
