Something to Write Home About by Get Up Kids

Something to Write Home About, the Get Up Kids' second studio album, arrived on September 28, 1999, a joint release between Vagrant Records and Heroes & Villains, the imprint the band ran themselves. After a label courtship with Mojo stalled, the Kansas City band picked up keyboardist James Dewees, decamped to Mad Hatter Studios in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and co-produced the record with Chad Blinman and Alex Brahl.

Frontman Matt Pryor pointed to Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World and Wilco, and you can hear the band stretching past the harder edge of the debut: keyboards shading the guitars, choruses built for shouting back, heartbreak worn right out in the open. "Action & Action" led the way. It sold more than 100,000 copies, turned Vagrant into a serious player in the young emo scene (Dashboard Confessional, Saves the Day and Alkaline Trio followed them there), and is still held up as a cornerstone of emo's second wave.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.