'What Are We Scared To Say?': AJR On 'Betty' and 'What No One's Thinking'

Newsweek

09-07-2025

Multiplatinum trio AJR has been burning the house down lately.
Composed of brothers Adam, Jack and Ryan Met, the trio of musicians grew up in New York City, where they made a name for themselves through busking and tap dancing. In 2016, they released their acclaimed EP What Everyone's Thinking, a collection of songs that amalgamate a range of sounds from electronic to hip-hop. The EP spawned the hit single "Weak," and those five songs would go on to find their place on the band's second album, The Click.
Ryan and Jack spoke with Newsweek about their new single, "Betty," which comes as the lead single for their recently announced EP What No One's Thinking, set to release on August 29. While not working on music together, the group is performing around the world, having just traveled to China and Italy.
"This is probably the most we've traveled, in like the most the amount of countries we travel in the shortest amount of time, most time zones we've hit in a week," Jack said.
But that's not the entirety of their collective commitments.
Musical trio AJR (from left) Olly, Adam Met, Jack Met and Ryan Met
Musical trio AJR (from left) Olly, Adam Met, Jack Met and Ryan Met
Busy On and Off Broadway
The busy brothers carve out time during flights to "lock in" on their other duties, including working on a Broadway production.
"We're doing a Broadway adaptation of 'Harold and the Purple Crayon.' And so it's originally a children's book about a baby that has a magical purple crayon. And we have this idea about five years ago, it takes so long to make a show, but we had this idea to sort of age him up and kind of show what happens to you when you're an adult, and you sort of can't draw your problems magically away when life gets too real," Ryan said.
"We've been working on it for about five years, and we have a writer and director and putting it all together. It's a fun, different challenge from the AJR stuff, because we're just constantly putting ourselves in someone else's shoes, putting ourselves in the dad character's point of view. What is he feeling? What is a 60-year-old who has deferred his dreams in life? What is he feeling right now? Sort of totally opposite from us writing the AJR stuff, which is so inward, which is so 'How am I reacting to the world around me right now?'"
Beyond that, the artists are set to head out on tour once more with their upcoming "Somewhere in the Sky Tour" with a swath of their favorite bands in tow. The tour includes a stop at the legendary Hollywood Bowl, a first for the group.
Regardless of their location, though, hitting the road is a key part of the brothers' experience.
"Touring is our favorite thing to do. We consider it sort of equal to the music. It's not really like the cherry on top for us. We've always said that we make the music as almost like the score to the Broadway show, which is our tour," Jack said.
But that's not the only connection between Broadway and the brothers' touring efforts.
"Broadway influence is like, so, so big in our live shows. You know, you leave a show in New York or on Broadway going, Wow, they did this, and they did this, and there was this up moment and down moment, and they use these special effects. And there's so many things that you can think about for the next, like month," Jack said.
"And you know, when we first started touring, we were like, 'Why can't that also be a live concert? Why can't people also leave feeling like that with a show?' And then from then on, it's been, you know, we do play all our songs and all the, you know, the fan favorites, but we really try to work in as much crazy production and magic and Broadway elements and unpredictable moments as possible. So people really leave going, 'Oh my God, that was really an experience.'"
The Met brothers of AJR. From left: Ryan, Jack and Adam Met.
The Met brothers of AJR. From left: Ryan, Jack and Adam Met.
AJR/Kyle Berger
What's In a Name?
When it comes to EP names, it's easy to imagine a grand plan that's existed for as long as the project has been in the works. For the Met brothers, this one was a bit different.
"We didn't have the name 'What No One's Thinking' the whole time we're writing the EP. Actually, we came up with it basically toward the end, when we had four out of the five songs done. I think it feels very much like a successor to we had a EP 10 years ago called 'What Everyone's Thinking,'" Ryan said.
"That EP, I think, really put AJR on the map in a lot of ways, because the first album we made was just kind of like us experimenting, 'Maybe we're like Billy Joel, or maybe we're like this, or maybe we're like this,' and then with 'Everyone's Thinking' EP we were like, 'OK, we're the band that is not afraid to say a lot of these embarrassing things that no one's saying but everybody's thinking.' And that really jump started our career in a lot of ways, and really allowed us to have a voice and a point of view in the music industry that we felt like no one else had."
Things, however, change over time; just ask the trio about that.
"Now we're just at a different place in our lives, for whatever reason, our level of confidence or how much we've been through now, we're very much about less trying to appeal to 'This is what everyone's thinking.' And more like, 'What are we scared to say?'" Ryan said.
"I think me and Jack were really obsessed this time around with making music that you felt as opposed to thought about. And it's kind of an interesting distinction. It's probably just where we're at in our lives right now. I think in the past, we've loved these kind of clever ideas of like, we have a song called Inertia that we love, but it's like 'Here's a scientific concept applied to a bunch of different scenarios in life.' That's all very like cerebral, like, 'I need to think about it to enjoy it.' This whole EP for us was like, 'Even if the grammar is wrong, even if it's a little messy, if I'm feeling something that I never knew I could feel before.'"
Facing Real Fears
One of the fears the AJR is ready to tackle? Commitment.
"'Betty,' specifically, we had a lot of conversations about, sort of the idea of committing forever, whatever that means where we're at in our lives. Whether it's relationship or job or just grappling with the idea of this choice I'm making now is for the rest of my life, that's your late 20s and your early 30s, and not everybody's ready to do that. And me and Jack specifically are very not ready to do that. We're very young in a lot of ways, so this was kind of a song us talking to our significant others. It's just something we really felt in the moment," Ryan said.
"We've been through a lot in the past few years. We've suffered a big loss. Family stuff, with friends, stuff with our career, and it's been a lot. And we realized we weren't really talking about it much. We definitely weren't talking about it in our music. And I think just through working, we realized, 'Oh my god,' like 'Betty' specifically, it kind of just popped into our head, like, 'Wait, I've been feeling this, like overwhelming sense of fear about commitment. And about the idea of forever. How are we not writing about that? That has to be it,'" Jack added.
The "Somewhere in the Sky Tour" kicks off July 18 in Sparks, Nevada.