The Tracklist Game

[robert]

Hi all,
I’m reviving on here a thread from an old forum, with one of my favourite games… creating our own tracklists of Lifehouse (and LH-adjacent) albums!

If you were the band or manager during any of their albums, and were in the room during the tracklist creation, how would you have approached it? How can rearranging an album or swapping songs change the mood, or bring out a different thesis from the body of work?

The rules are simple: any song that we know was written during or prior to a given session is fair game to include. For instance, we know Central Park and Sink or Swim were written on a 2007 songwriting trip to NYC, so they wouldn’t make it onto WWA but could have been on Smoke & Mirrors. Unless… you decide to push WWA back a year, in which case those tracks, FWYA, and the single version of Broken would all be allowed for inclusion. Hope this is clear.

Alright, I’ll go first:)

[robert]

I begin with Stanley Climbfall [Robert edition]:

Despite being one of my least favourites when I became a fan of the band, in recent years SCf has become one of my most-played albums by Jason & co. My big beef at the time was that it sounded too intense and harsh for the album thesis of ‘everything is happening in the world at once and it’s crazy and feels off the rails but all we can do it exist through it’. I needed a few more tender moments, but there was little respite from the brashness. Thus, in recent years I’ve reworked it (and adjusted the metadata in my iTunes library haha) to create a version with a few more ups and downs, which to my ears sounds just about perfect.

1. Spin
2. Wash
3. Am I Ever Gonna Find Out
4. Stanley Climbfall
5. Sky Is Falling
6. Anchor
7. Wish (acoustic demo)
8. How Long
9. Take Me Away
10. My Precious
11. Winds of Change (acoustic demo)
12. The Beginning

My first move was taking out Just Another Name, my least favourite song from these sessions, and replace it with How Long, which is my favourite. I revised the front of the album to bring AIEGFO and the title track up, and push back Sky Is Falling to be the ‘track five ballad’. Anchor ends the first half, where we dive from the heaviest-sounding song into the softest: the palette-cleansing Wish.

The OG demo version of Wish perfectly transitions into How Long, so that goes next, and after the acoustic outro of the song we have the epic Take Me Away. My Precious has grown dramatically on me over the years; now that Wish is here, it’s no longer the softest song, so it can really lean into its weird and cool production without having to handle the ‘most introspective song on the album’ duties alone.

Now that Jay has released the demo for Winds of Change, I felt it was perfect to go as track 11, another moment of stillness before The Beginning ends the album. I ended up removing Out of Breath and Empty Space – love them both, but they didn’t fit in this list and feel like they work well as bonus tracks here. I always thought the studio recording of ES was too hard-rock for the song anyway.

If anyone has these and wants to give this a listen, lemme know what you think! I’ve done this with many albums I have and will post more of them later. Would love to see others’ takes on this album, or another!

[robert]

Hi all,
Gonna try to post these on a weekly basis, as I have a lot of em:)

As we know, Jason wrote a wild amount of songs from 2002-2004. SCf came out in the fall of ‘02, but he had enough to make probably three or four albums between it and the yellow self-titled recorded in summer ‘04. As such, I sometimes wonder what would’ve been if the band had released an album in ‘03, and another in ‘04. I’ll start with the latter, which I call the Butterfly LP:

1. Today
2. Running Away
3. Butterfly (first single)
4. Along the Way
5. Through These Times
6. I Don’t Wanna Go
7. Better Part of Me
8. Midnight in Philadelphia
9. Willing to Try (second single)
10. Everybody is Someone
11. Ordinary Pain
12. Goodbye

It would’ve been released to CD in the summer of 2004, as the band was recording the yellow album (more on that later). Singles from this fictional album would include Butterfly and Willing to Try.

Playing with the final song titles of early Lifehouse records, we have “The Beginning” and “The End” from 2002 and 2005. This 2004 album closer would be “Goodbye”, while the 2003 album (next week) would be…

[snowfist]

That’s an excellent set of songs @robert. Would add Songs for Pete as a bonus track but not sure if the song is already written by then.

I’m gonna give this a try. I always feel Smoke and Mirrors had potential but let down by being too overproduced. Here’s my take on the album

1. Nerve Damage
2. Crash & Burn
3. Halfway Gone
4. It Is What It Is
5. Smoke & Mirrors
6. Near Life Experience
7. From Where You Are
8. In Your Skin
9. Don’t Wake Me When It’s Over
10. Best of Me
11. By Your Side
12. All That I’m Asking For
    *Here Tomorrow Gone Today & Wrecking Ball as bonus tracks

I took out Falling In and Had Enough because I always feel they’re the worst song there. Falling In is catchy I’ve to say but the lyrics is a letdown. Had Enough I feel like a Daughtry song feat Lifehouse instead of the other way around.

---

Anyway love this thread. Looking forward to the weekly entry

[robert]

This is soooo so so cool Snowfist:) I love this version! S&M was going to be an upcoming one of mine but I’ll give it a bit and settle into your version first - really like starting with Nerve Damage.

I agree with all your decisions here… All In, Had Enough, and Falling In are my three least favourites and I’m glad you swapped them out. Your list is very close to mine actually!

[robert]

Alright all, following up last week’s 2004 LP ‘Butterfly’ with a 2003 LP, titled ‘Twisted Lullabies’. Jason was working on a body of work with this title during the Dreamworks-Geffen transition, as he mentioned when he released Shiny Silver Beast in 2017. The phrase is in the lyrics of Never Going Back, and there are some rather lullaby-like songs from that era that fit together nicely.

I present my take on this decidedly dark album, to be released shortly after Stanley Climbfall in late 2003 or early 2004:

Twisted Lullabies

1. Ambien
2. What You’re Looking For
3. Never Going Back*
4. Room to Breathe
5. Penelopieces*
6. Read Between the Lines*
7. So Much to Lose*
8. Sleeping With the Lights On
9. Always*
10. Shiny Silver Beast*
11. Remember Me*
12. Goodnight*

The asterisk tracks have a lullaby feel to them, that makes me think they were contenders for this original EP/LP. Goodbye and Midnight in Philly were probably in there too, but I felt they fit the Butterfly album better.

I believe that these songs were written in 2003 or prior, as the yellow album was recorded in July 2004 and those tracks really feel like they were written during a different time. This group clearly has a darker tone than anything else the band had or has done to date, so I added Goodnight as an uplifting ending that I think really concludes the other songs well. This would make the ending tracks be The Beginning, Goodnight, Goodbye, and The End (but more on the yellow album next time).

Have a listen and let me know what you think!

[robert]

Hi all,
After much delay, I’m here to continue the tracklist game from a little while back. This time, it’s Lifehouse’s 2005 “yellow album”, which I title Into the Sun:

1. Come Back Down
2. All in All
3. Blind
4. You and Me
5. Better Luck Next Time
6. Into the Sun
7. Days Go By
8. We’ll Never Know
9. The Place That I Fit In
10. Walking Away
11. Chapter One
12. The End (Has Only Begun)

Given that they’ll have already released Twisted Lullabies and the Butterfly LP that primarily contain the b-sides from this record, this record sees only light adjustments. I’ve slightly reorganized the tracklist, bringing All in All up and pushing Days Go By a little further. Undone is removed, and The Place That I Fit In is slotted in after We’ll Never Know.

As for the title, I always thought that if the album were to be named after a song on the record, it would be Into the Sun. Perhaps just The Sun, but I made this cover ten years ago for fun and don’t have the editable file anymore, so oh well.

In a few days, I’ll post the 2006 follow-up, titled Who We Were. And yes, in my alternate timeline, I’ve cobbled together a release for every year. Some would be smaller no-singles records, while others might be mailing list freebies for fans. But nevertheless: more LH coming!

[robert]

Hi again – next up is the 2006 follow-up to Into the Sun.

Presenting, Who We Were.

1. If This Is Goodbye*
2. Crash & Burn [original with pre-chorus]
3. I Don’t Know [Time Machine, 2004ish demo]
4. What Happens Next
5. Chapter Two
6. Song for Pete* [Time Machine, 2003 demo]
7. I Want You To Know [live-style piano version]
8. Time to Let It Go [Time Machine, 2004ish demo]
9. Keep the Change
10. Good Enough*
11. Signs of Life

Definitely a darker record, this serves as the first half of the Who We Are sessions and precedes the hopeful optimism it brings. A lot of the late-2005 and early 2006-era Lifehouse songs seem to have been about the end of a relationship (Crash & Burn, WHN, If This Is Goodbye, I Want You To Know, and Keep the Change for sure). I included several yellow-era tracks to build the record out. Keep the Change and Chapter Two inject some energy into an otherwise more somber group, while Good Enough and Signs of Life (my two personal favourites) bringing a real humility to the album.

Sonically, this really bridges the gap between the '05 and '07 records. Some songs lean towards the pop of WWA (If This Is Goodbye), while others really lean into the Elliott Smith folk and adult alternative of the former (I Don’t Know, Chapter Two, T2LIG).

Had some fun with the cover for this one:) since this album would’ve had several songs from films soundtracks (marked with asterisks), it would intentionally have had no radio singles or tour associated with it. Y&M was still big on the radio in mid-2006. The CD would’ve been available from the band’s website, while the album would have been released direct-to-iTunes.

Lemme know your thoughts on this one! WWA coming up next.

[robert]

Hi all,
We’ve gone through Lifehouse’s 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 albums. Time now for 2007, lining up with WWA.

For this one, I took a lighter approach:

1. Disarray
2. First Time [single 1]
3. Who We Are
4. The Joke
5. Whatever It Takes [single 2]
6. From Where You Are [single 4]
7. Easier to Be
8. Make Me Over
9. Mesmerized
10. Bridges
11. Learn You Inside Out
12. Broken [single 3]

For starters, I always thought the European cover was more thoughtful than the North American version. The album is called ‘Who We Are’, and having it look like a poster for a circus or a show really plays into the idea of facades and authenticity that the title suggests (as well as on S&M a few years later). Super cool.

A few placement swaps, bringing Whatever It Takes to the fifth spot, and adding FWYA (the record would’ve come out in the fall to allow that song to be added). WWA and The Joke move up, and the record ends with Broken, which I think would’ve been a killer finale.

I took Storm out of the group here, because I’ve thought for a long time that it would’ve been better on NNF. Doing a little bonus tracklist for that record here too, to drive my point home:

1. Hanging By A Moment [single 1]
2. Sick Cycle Carousel [single 2]
3. The Edge [single 3]
4. Somebody Else’s Song
5. Trying
6. Only One
7. Simon
8. Storm
9. Breathing
10. Quasimodo
11. Somewhere in Between [single 4]
12. Everything

Cling & Clatter is removed, as is Unknown (that was a hard one, but The Edge would’ve made a killer third single). The Blyss-style Storm is added here, so that the 2007 piano and acapella version can make it onto an upcoming 2008 release. Stay tuned…

[robert]

Hi folks,
For anyone tuning in out there, we’re coming up to the end of the first decade in my Lifehouse-album-every-year alternate universe. I want to close it out all together, so below are three releases made from the 2008-2009 era, one of my favourites in the band’s live history.

2008: Lifehouse Live In-Studio (EP)

1. Everything (live in-studio)
2. Somewhere in Between (live in-studio)
3. Broken (radio version, live in-studio)
4. From Where You Are (extended version, live in-studio)
5. Storm (piano version)

This mini release would include the version of Everything that went onto the Deluxe CD of S&M, as well as FWYA’s extended rock outro and the WWA version of Storm. Broken is featured as a live version of the Radio Edit. Beyond this, it would feature my all-time favourite performance of SIB, from 2008.

Next, in 2009 as it was originally intended, we have…
2009: Smoke & Mirrors

1. Nerve Damage
2. Halfway Gone
3. It Is What It Is
4. Don’t Wake Me When It’s Over
5. Smoke & Mirrors
6. Here Tomorrow Gone Today
7. Near-Life Experience
8. By Your Side
9. In Your Skin
10. All That I’m Asking For

My list was quite close to yours, @snowfist ! Crash & Burn was on my ‘Who We Were’, so I didn’t include it here, and FWYA was on my ‘Who We Are’ so same thing. I love starting with Nerve Damage, and although it transitions into Halfway Gone well, I think your transition into C&B is amazing. Love it. We ended ours the same way too, with ATIAF.

Six months after S&M is released, we would then get the following:
2010: Collaborations EP

1. All In
2. Had Enough (feat. Daughtry)
3. Falling In (feat. Alyssa Bernal)
4. Wrecking Ball (feat. Bryce Soderberg)
5. Don’t Worry (feat. Jude Cole)

These songs would be showcasing co-writing, specifically with Daughtry on Had Enough, Bryce singing on Wrecking Ball, and Jude & Jason on the old song they cowrote in 2010 but didn’t get released until 2021 by Jude. Alyssa was featured live in late 2010, so I’d add her voice here too.

And that wraps the first decade! We’ll be moving into the Almería era over the next few posts.

[snowfist]

Been busy with life for quite a while but oh wow @robert really love your take on twisted lullabies and who we were tracklist. I even put it on my personal playlist and it’s really great, from start to end.

Here’s my take on the self-titled album.

1. What Happens Next (demo version)
2. Come Back Down
3. Blind
4. All in All
5. You & Me
6. Time to Let It Go
7. Better Luck Next Time
8. Into The Sun
9. Walking Away
10. Room to Breathe
11. Along the Way (old version)
12. The End Has Only Begun
13. Song for Pete (bonus track)

I feel like this has good mixture of the old and new Lifehouse sounds. Blind would be the first single, Better Luck Next Time as the second, and You & Me to finish it off.

There’s so many good songs from the self-titled era, and I wonder why Jason hasn’t put some love with these collection of songs on the Time Machine. Tracks like Days Go By, Walking Away and We’ll Never Know are some of the songs I believe could potentially have interesting new sound. Just some wishful thinking.

[robert]

Thanks so much @snowfist ! Your feedback is the coolest thing – Twisted Lullabies is probably my favourite set of the ones above too, maybe alongside my SCf. Been busy with life too, hope you’re doing alright.

Your self-titled is quite a strong mix of old and new sounds! Really a bit of everything sonically. I think it was one of the most intense eras for Jason’s writing – he wrote in so many genres and styles, and a ton of material too. Love the inclusion of Along the Way in there; imo the original is one of the most underrated songs in the LH catalogue. It’s so fun to see alternate takes on all of this, and I hope it does some Reimagine versions of those songs for us on the Time Machine one day. Walking Away Reimagine would be a trip.

[robert]

Back again, and I couldn’t figure out what to do for 2011 because so much had been released over the preceding decade. Almería would come out the following year, but in preparation of that, I figured a live album would be a nice change. Rather than one of their rock shows, I chose one of my all-time favourite sets. Presenting:
2011: Lifehouse Live Acoustic at the San Diego House of Blues

1. The End (Has Only Begun)
2. Sky Is Falling
3. First Time
4. Empty Space
5. Whatever It Takes
6. Broken
7. Storm
8. Everything
9. Falling In
10. You and Me
11. Somewhere In Between
12. Halfway Gone
13. Sick Cycle Carousel
14. From Where You Are
15. All In
16. Hanging By A Moment

This show is an actual concert from December 19, 2010, and part of a benefit show for a local children’s hospital. It’s available on YouTube (click the links above), and was a four-piece acoustic set with several great performances of deep cuts. Starting with TEHOB was so unique, and transitioning into SIF was cool too, especially hearing it full-band but acoustic. One of my favourite SIF performances ever… Jason’s vocals, the guitar solo, Ricky’s drum flips, Bryce holding down the fort with a strong bass line. Would love to have this show in high quality. Timing-wise, they had just released Falling In as a single, so I like to think this set works coming just after my “Collaborations EP”.

The band would be working on their follow-up to S&M by now, so let’s say this came out in the fall of 2011 as a charity release.

[snowfist]

Haven’t heard of the House of Blues acoustic set before this. Just listened to The End and it’s really good. Thanks for sharing man @robert. I also haven’t heard the From Where You Are (live-in-studio version) that you shared, and it’s great! But the best live performance of that song has to be this one. Raw, emotional and overall just amazing performance from everyone.

Speaking of live performances, would you share some of your fav live /acoustic/live studio Lifehouse performances? I had a ton haha. Thought it’d be fun to share.

[robert]

I looooove that FWYA performance!! Easily my favourite. Every time I see that thumbnail on YouTube I treat myself to it.

Not sure about too many full sets, but this is a great call. Making a thread about it now – care to share yours?

[robert]

Back again with Almería 2.0 – this might be a controversial one but I stand by it!

2012: Almería

1. Right Back Home (feat. Peter Frampton & Charles Jones)
2. Between the Raindrops (feat. Natasha Beddingfield)
3. Gotta Be Tonight
4. Moveonday
5. Slow Motion
6. Nobody Listen
7. Barricade
8. Aftermath
9. Black & Blue (feat. Jude Cole)
10. Rolling Off the Stone

Approach & introduction
I always felt Almería was a bit unpolished and lacked the consistency of previous LH records from lyrical, production, and mixing standpoints. Some tracks like BTR and Slow Motion were solid on all fronts, while songs like Barricade sounded muddy, and others like Lady Day felt like demoes half-written and poorly recorded. Then there was Only You’re The One, which for me was trying way too hard to be a pop song and felt so jarring in comparison to others during live sets (“and now it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, tonight”? Come onnnn haha).

This revised list solves a few things for me. It starts with the track that always should’ve started the album in my opinion – Right Back Home is just a stellar track sonically. That 31 second intro is a punching statement that we’re in for a very different experience than that of the Lifehouse we’ve heard before.

Song selection
Now some fans might balk at me here, but I’m a diehard Nobody Listen and Slow Motion apologist, so they stack the middle of this list. So many layers, such simple statements about the overwhelm and speed of the world, and so beautiful to be consumed in.

I wanted to make the record eleven or twelve songs, but Lady Day has just always felt so unfinished to me that I can’t include it without pretending it became a different song. OYTO is out, and GBT almost got cut but I think it’s sonically interesting enough that the simple lyrics work after BTR. Barricade and Aftermath carry us through the back half.

Here is where I think it gets most interesting. The Jude Cole song Black & Blue was recorded around the same time (2011-2012) and features Jason, so I bring that track in to add a sort of saloon bar band sound to the end of the album’s arc. Finally, we finish with Rolling Off the Stone, which has always been my favourite recording from the Almería sessions.

Cover
Lastly, I used a version of the cover that has a 1970s printed quality to it, bringing a little more depth (and it’s the green one, not the orange one).

Next project
You may notice a few tracks missing from this set (Where I Come From, Always Somewhere Close anyone?). Fear not – they’re part of a project that becomes the next release:)

[robert]

Aaaaand I’m just going to post it. Six months after the Almerìa release, we would get another group of five songs that really fit together well and tell a unified story.

Presenting:
2013: Satellites EP

1. Where I Come From
2. Satellites
3. Exhale
4. Breathe Easy
5. Always Somewhere Close

I remember Jason wrote about Breathe Easy that he wrote it alongside Where I Come From during the Almería sessions, during a writing slump. I’ve felt for a long time like both songs are about straying from one’s faith and ultimately remembering that whatever your north star is (religion, god, the meaning of life, your sense of purpose), it’s never fully gone.

I recently came to see that Always Somewhere Close is kind of about the same thing, and that none of those tracks feel like they should’ve been part of the Almería release. Putting them together felt right, and then it hit me: Satellites.

This was always a weird one for me. It always sounded a bit odd, the lyrics felt odd, and I couldn’t figure out why it was in the coveted second slot on Paper Cuts. Recently however, I had what felt like a revelation: satellites spin around you, tied to your gravitational pull. They can be things that shape you, like the moon around earth shaping the tides, or things that distract you from who you are. In one metaphor, he can refer to both the dishonest things keeping us separated from ourselves, and the deeper meanings and faith that pull us from those darker places and towards our better selves:

There’s a slideshow of who I wanna be
But it feels like lightyears away from me

Thus the Satellites EP is born. I added Exhale, which I believe was written and registered with BMI (erroneously as “Exhole”) around 2003 or 2004. For several years Jason stopped writing about faith the way he did on his earlier records, and while OOTW had a bit of that, these songs felt like a core group with a singular message.

Satellites, swirling around us, reminding us who we are, teaching us to exhale and breath easy, and reminding us that as far away from ourselves as we can feel sometimes, we’re always somewhere close. Had some fun with the cover on this one:)

[robert]

Resurrecting this thread with my long-awaited revision to the 2014-2015 era of Lifehouse. OOTW was several albums put together, and although it certainly worked, the sound varied a lot and several sonic directions the band was going got cut short as a result. I want to dive into those more deeply, and propose doing so by splitting the records into two: an album and an EP.

2014: Flight

1. Wish (revisited)
2. Paper Cuts [b-side to single 1, September]
3. Flight [single 1, September]
4. Clarity [single 4]
5. Central Park
6. Angeline
7. Alien [b-side to single 2, November]
8. Hurt This Way [single 2, November]
9. Après La Vie
10. H2O
11. Yesterday’s Son
12. Hourglass (feat. Jordan Whitlock)

We begin with the full-length, simply titled ‘Flight’. This would appear in the fall of 2014, as all of these songs were ready to go well ahead of that time.

We begin with Wish, revisited from the acoustic demo I included on my SCf tracklist above. The song harkens back to early Lifehouse, before thrusting the listener into the tension of the rebirth theme present through these songs with ‘Paper Cuts’. I hear this song remixed and remastered the same way Clarity was for OOTW compared to the original Jason solo version, and these changes would be welcome; I think it’s an awesome song with muddy production. Flight comes next as the centrepiece, with Clarity-Central Park-Angeline serving as a trio I love hearing back to back. Alien and Hurt This Way carry the upbeat needs of the second half of the album, with ALV, H2O, and Yesterday’s Son serving as a nod to Blyss-era Lifehouse. We end with Hourglass, as we should:)

This is one of my favourite collections of Lifehouse songs, and is pretty well the playlist I’ve listened to of these songs for the better part of the decade since they’ve been released. Hope you enjoy!

But what about the pop-rock hits!? Well, in the summer of 2015, we would get the following:

2015: Out of the Wasteland

1. Stardust
2. Hindsight
3. Firing Squad [single 2]
4. You Are Not Alone
5. Hurricane [single 1]

These five show a similar arc to the album, but are decidedly more radio-friendly and up-beat. They follow the same arc of shedding the weight of one’s past and overcoming challenges that the softer album does, and would become great concert additions for the summer tours.

One for the Pain was the first song I cut from the group; it’s one of my least favourite LH songs. So bitter and angry! Runaways almost made it into this group, but I’m actually saving it for a future release. The next few albums are where things get interesting, excited to share.