The All-American Rejects Reflect On 'Dirty Little Secret'

(HAC) The All-American Rejects' Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler reflect on their up classic song "Dirty Little Secret" with Genius.com. In the feature they dive into how the song came together, why it took two years to get the record off the ground, how it marked their shift into the pop space, why a great bridge can make or break a track, and more gems along the way. Here are a couple excerpts:

On Fans' interpretations of the song: I don't know how many people have come up to us after the fact and said, I heard this in middle school, and I was really closeted, and this was my anthem for my sexuality and my awakening. It's just so surprising how something that was born inside you can be received in so many different, really profound ways.

On going from Alt-Rock to Pop: Looking back, this song really defined us. It's cheeky, it's catchy-it captures what we loved about the music we grew up on. It was also the moment we crossed over from alternative rock into pop. That's why we were hesitant about "Dirty Little Secret" at first. A lot of bands in our genre didn't make that jump. It felt like that moment in Field of Dreams when James Earl Jones steps off the field and says, "I'm a doctor now." Like, okay-we're a pop band now. And that hung over us for a long time, because in the mid-2000s, it wasn't cool to be a pop band. We were the band that left Warped Tour, played something like David Letterman, and then came back-and everything felt different.

Watch them go over "Dirty Little Secret" line by line on Genius.com here or on their YouTube channel.

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