“The Mixed Tape” by Jack's Mannequin

"The Mixed Tape" went out as a single in mid-July 2005, a few weeks ahead of Everything in Transit, the debut album Andrew McMahon made as Jack's Mannequin while Something Corporate sat on a break. He wrote it alone and produced it with Jim Wirt, whom he'd teamed up with after heading home to Orange County, California, and he plays piano, organ and bell himself, with Wirt on bass, Robert "Raw" Anderson on guitar and Tommy Lee on drums. Chris Lord-Alge mixed it.

It came out amid an ordeal: as the album's release slipped, McMahon learned he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and the months that followed brought hospital stays, chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant with his sister Katie as donor. The record itself is a sunny power-pop concept album about coming home to California and a long relationship falling apart, with Pet Sounds as its guiding light.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.