Stories Behind the Songs: Never Enough

She’s got all that she ever wanted and more, perhaps a little more than she bargained for
They say she’s all the pretty things that you see in magazines, yet she always looks a little bit bored

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sometimes the people who seem to have it all together are the ones who are the most miserable.  Sure, you’re thinking, “I’d love to trade problems with some of those people.” I sometimes think that too, but the fact of the matter is we all have the same basic needs, and what they have isn’t the cure for our deepest problems.  More than the status, we all want to be loved, to be accepted, to know that no matter how ugly stuff gets that we have somewhere, someone to run to.  We want to find happiness.  And more often than not we look in the wrong places to get it.  I mean, that’s why we want the status in the first place, right?  We think it’s a package deal.

We’re all guilty of buying into what we see at face value.  But as the narrative in this song explains, there’s more going on under the surface than what we see.  Everyone thinks this girl who “has it all” is insane for being unhappy with her life.  But success, possessions, popularity… they don’t always equal happiness.  You don’t have to look far to see it.  Check out this quote from a press release I found on VH1.com: “Rock star Bret Michaels tried twice to find love by filling a mansion with gorgeous women and having them compete for his heart.”  There you have it.  Brett’s looking for love, Paris can’t find the perfect “BFF,” and how many celebrities have you seen wreck their lives chasing after more stuff to keep them happy?  But it’s not just in Hollywood.  It’s the rich suburban kid down the street who has everything you ever wanted as a teenager and yet took his own life, or the guy with the gambling problem that loses everything because he can’t stop chasing the next big prize.

Because we put so much value on success, fame, fortune, popularity, and link it to happiness, it becomes our ultimate goal.  And when we get a little taste, we see what it does.  It doesn’t satisfy us, it only makes us less content.  We want more of it.  Just listen to the guys being interviewed on the X Games this week and what they’re saying about their sport.  People get a taste of the thrill and it only leads to raising the bar: make it faster, more dangerous, take it to the next level.  These guys being interviewed are admitting it’s getting out of control and that they’re insane.  Or as the song says, “Everything she wants… everything she needs… it’s never enough.”  This song is a call for us to think about what’s more important.  To realize that there’s more to life than just making it look and feel good.  There’s more.

Mark, our bass player, actually came to us with this idea, a quirky guitar riff that to me sounded like something off an old school Cake record or something.  That’s kind of what inspired the vocal styling on the verses: sort of half-talking, half singing.  We worked and worked on this tune.  It was super tricky.  The guitar part was super cool and the drum groove was killer, but filling in the spaces took some work.  That’s where Dustin’s genius came in with his synth stuff that was almost reminiscent of stuff you’d hear on No Doubt’s “Keep On Dancin.”  We tweaked the chorus over and over and finally got it to a place where it was one of our favorite ones to do live.  Sonically, it’s one of my favorites on the album.  And for the record, it’s one of my wife’s favorites.  Oh, and when my three-year-old (who loves to play daddy’s cd’s in his room while he’s playing) hears this track come on you’ll usually catch him wiggling his hips back and forth and saying, “shake your booty!”  We hope that’s your response, too.