Matthew Sweet

Sick Of Myself

Dec 28, 2022

Good Morning!

Today we’re listening to “Sick Of Myself” by Matthew Sweet

Few musicians in the 90s can lay claim to knocking it out of the park for three records in a row. Matthew Sweet did just that with 1991’s Girlfriend, 1993’s Altered Beast, and ‘95s 100% Fun.

Very broadly speaking, the trio is an arc: new love…lost love…bitter fallout. You live, you learn. 100% Fun is often seen as the weakest of the three, but a lot of that’s down to the high bar the first two records set. At any rate, it’s my favorite of the lot.

The lyrics can skew toward the cynical- I mean, “Sick of Myself” isn’t exactly a daily affirmation— but the pop hooks and sugar-sweet vocals make it go down smoother.

For this record, Brendan O’Brien (a star in his own right at the time) was behind the boards. O’Brien has worked with just about everybody and was the perfect match for Sweet, whose influences led him to sound a little bit like, well, everybody.

Listen to him for more than a minute, and you’ll hear everyone from Marshall Crenshaw to the Beach Boys coming through your speakers. When done right, this can be magic—and Sweet gets it right here. O’Brien does well to corral all of the different sounds (grungy guitar, an almost bluesy solo, and self-deprecating lyrics) into a delicious final package.

“Sick Of Myself” became one of his biggest hits (peaking at #2 on the Modern Rock charts) and is still a favorite when played today.

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I would have made demos for those songs, but I didn’t have a demo for “Sick Of Myself.” I came up with the idea right before I traveled to Atlanta. There was a night when Brendan had to go out and do something with his family, and I asked if I could stay behind and do a little bit of record. I wanted to try that song out and make a demo of it. So Nick and I worked on it, and Brendan came back and gave it a listen. He really liked it and said I should sing on it. So it became this thing that we did pretty quickly, and amazingly it got some traction on radio. One of the things that makes me happy about that experience is that “Sick of Myself” was the single, the song that people knew. It got on the radio, yet it’s a really crazy sentiment for a radio single. It has a real internal weirdness, and I remember being pleased that a song like that could be so successful.

“Sick Of Myself” by Matthew Sweet| 100% Fun, 1995

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