Mad Season (studio album) by Matchbox Twenty

Matchbox Twenty's best album surprisingly didn't take off considering the big radio hits If You're Gone and Bent.

The production and instruments are much more varied here than on the debut and the core songs are better and more creative.

Maybe the cover art turned people off.

Songs like Last Beautiful Girl, Rest Stop, Bed of Lies are uniquely creative considering their blue collar straightforward pop rock affair of their debut.

They are most often compared to Third Eye Blind. I like the band Third Eye Blind better, but this album is the best song for song that either band made.

Crutch is great lyrics.

Black and White People, The Burn are only average filler songs here. The Burn is at least catchy.

Leave pulls on the heartstrings.

Mad Season is as artsy as Matchbox Twenty get. They revert back to their mainstream pop/rock to follow

Matchbox Twenty ruled American Pop radio, VH-1 & the hearts of many of the teenage girls that I went to High School with from 1996-2000. It seemed like any teen that didn't truly enjoy music would claim to LOVE this band. "If You're Gone" was inescapable. Pop radio would cycle that song thru every 45 minutes just to make sure that people were listening. It was horrible. It took 13 1/2 years for me to even touch this thing. The verdict: It's actually ok. At least Matchbox Twenty can play instruments (live), harmonize & construct pleasant melodies. This just doesn't happen in pop music now. I'd glady take Matchbox Twenty over Macklemore any day of the week. Try "The Last Beautiful Girl" or the title track. It's not worth buying, but it is worth hearing if you're trying to familiarize yourself with pop music from the early 2000's.

From benpaco 07/31/2013 21:45

Probably my favorite MB20 album, actually. I see it's certainly not a common opinion but I really liked this. Black and White People was pretty different sounding and If You're Gone is my favorite song by them.

From junodog4 05/10/2013 18:56

Maybe they tried to make their sound different, but it's still bland. Listenable and tolerable, but nothing to get excited about.

Disappointment compared to their first album. Still a very solid album, and better than most second albums.

im sorry, i might have been a bit to harsh on you, but i dont think that their albums have been as bad as you think they have, they have become more poppier but they still have good songs, and this album is when other band members started writing, the Paul Doucette song "stop" on this is my favorite of the album, when the band work together they make amazing music, like the covers they have done,as well, they are making music, how they want it to sound, not what you want it to sound like. if you want to make music the way you want it to sound, then go start your own band and make music like that, i like the way they sound, and i might not have liked everything, but at least its good and listenable not like a lot of other stuff.

From pearljammer13 02/23/2013 21:02

If this is in response to me than you're way off base. I never said a thing about songs sounding the same. Their first album was awesome, I like every single song on it. I can't say that about any that came after, though this one was the closest. I commend them for using more instruments and expanding their sound on this album, which is why I still think it's pretty good. However, I don't commend them for letting their sound become more watered down with every album after this. It's extremely obvious they were just out to score mainstream radio pop hits, and that's just not the music I enjoy. Their first album had a bit of an edge to it and the songwriting was sharp. This one still had good songwriting, and only a couple throwaway tracks. But after this the best they could do was a couple good songs per album in my opinion. I think the corporate side of the business got the better of them. I just heard their newest song this morning, it's god awful.

I don't think they went down hill after their first album, i think the album was better than their first, why do people say that it was worse than the first? was it the introduction to the piano on the album, or the additional instruments that they used on the album like the brass or strings, i didn't mind that they used them, they are not the first band to use these instruments on songs, the Beatles used a lot of different sounds because you don't want to be listening to the same instruments over and over and over all the time, because that becomes boring after a while, you want people to want to listen to your music, not turn them into mindless zombies doing it in the process, if you want to listen to an album that every song sounds the same, listen to owl city, i cant remember the name of the album because it bored me out of my mind or nickelback because every song they released to play on the radio sound the same as the previous one. If you like everything to sound the same, tell me that you like that because every song sounds the same, there is no way that anyone likes an album where every song sounds the same. Thats what Matchbox Twenty do, they don't want to make every song sound the same they want them all to sound different, and they have succeeded in doing so.

From pearljammer13 11/24/2011 02:12

This is a band that started out pretty well and went way downhill with every subsequent album. This one was still decent but it was the last worth hearing by them.