Sweater weather is coming — and so is another Mayday Parade release. The pop-punkers have announced, Sad, the second installment of their 20th anniversary album trilogy, out Oct. 3. The band also shared reflective rocker, “Under My Sweater,” alongside a new music video.
“It’s difficult to sing about a sweater without invoking Weezer, but that’s part of what I love about this song,” Derek Sanders said in a statement. With its melancholy riffs and Nineties-inspired percussion, Sanders described the song as “a part of old school nostalgic emo” but with a modern twist.
Sad comes on the heels of the band’s first release of the three-part album, Sweet, which arrived in April. As the title suggests, this new installment serves as a counterpart to its predecessor with a softer, more introspective mood compared to the anthemic pop-punk vitality of Sweet. It seems especially fitting for the forthcoming fall season. Even with its contrasting sound, Sad brings back producers Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount into the fold.
Though a track list for Sad has yet to be released, a press release promises heartbreak, ballads, and loads of fall-time, Nineties nostalgia for songs like “Promises,” “One Day At a Time,” and “I Miss the 90s.” Album closer “I Must Obey The Inscrutable Exhortations Of My Soul” brings back Mayday Parade’s penchant for long, emo-inspired song titles and is set to be the band’s “most ambitious recording to date.”
The release of Sweet and Sad coincides with the start of Mayday Parade’s 20th anniversary tour, where the band will revisit their entire discography across several U.S. cities and celebrate their two decades together.
In an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year, the band revealed how the unconventional album trilogy idea came to be. As Mayday Parade went into the studio to record their first LP since 2021’s What It Means to Fall Apart, Sanders realized their 20th anniversary was coming up, and it inspired the band to change course. “We just thought, ‘What if we tried to do something bigger and more grand?’” he said, adding, “It’s kind of an experiment and feels like the right time to try something like this.”