AJR

AJR is an American indie pop band by brothers Adam, Jack, and Ryan Met, collectively a trio of vocalists, multi-instrumentalists, and songwriters.

The band AJR was incepted in 2005, and the brothers performed locally until 2012—busking, tap dancing, and singing covers around New York City—their hometown, birthplace, and also the same study place for them, the three Columbia University alumni. With over 100 songs recorded, AJR wrote the lyrics and the melodies and has released five studio albums: Living Room (2015), The Click (2017), The Maybe Man (2023), and the two US Billboard 200 top-ten albums Neotheater (2019) and OK Orchestra (2021). The 2017 electropop platinum album contained their first Billboard Alternative number-one song "Sober Up" (featuring Rivers Cuomo). The 2021 orchestral pop gold album spawned their first Hot 100 top-ten single and also the Billboard Music Award Top Rock Song, "Bang!".

AJR is a multi-platinum band for having eight platinum singles, including the two aforementioned songs, "I'm Ready", "Weak", "Burn the House Down", "100 Bad Days", "Way Less Sad", and "World's Smallest Violin". All these songs accounted for an estimated nineteen million certified units of their total digital single sales in America. The band has become one of the 100 top-selling touring artists in 2024 and has completed seven headlining tours.

Career

2005–2013: Street performing and breakthrough with "I'm Ready"

AJR, originally known as TB3 (Tapping Brothers to the Third Power), began street performing in the parks of New York City in 2005. Prior to releasing original music, they posted covers of popular songs onto YouTube, under the username of AJRbrothers. Jack revealed in 2017 that their cover of "Ho Hey" by the Lumineers later inspired pop singer Shawn Mendes to perform his own covers. The brothers briefly considered calling themselves JAR, as well as other variations before settling on AJR, due to how easily it flowed. In 2012, AJR self-released their first and eponymous limited edition EP in CD format.

In November 2012, Ryan tweeted a link to a video of their debut single, "I'm Ready", to about 80 celebrities, including Australian singer Sia. Sia told her manager about the song, and he contacted Steve Greenberg, former president of Columbia Records and current CEO and founder of S-Curve Records, who served as their manager. "I'm Ready", which features a sample of SpongeBob SquarePants repeatedly singing his catchphrase "I'm ready" from the eponymous animated series' premiere episode, was commercially released on August 22, 2013. The song was featured on their debut album Living Room, which was released on March 3, 2015, and reached number 20 on Billboard's Heatseekers Albums chart. The song was placed in regular rotation on Sirius XM Radio's Top 20 on 20 and Hits 1 stations, and they performed it on Good Day New York and VH1's Big Morning Buzz. The official music video for "I'm Ready" premiered on VEVO on October 15, 2013. It was certified Platinum in America and three times Platinum in Australia.

2013–2015: EPs and Living Room

AJR released their second EP, 6foot1, on December 20, 2013, later being re-released as the I'm Ready EP via Warner Music Group on March 25, 2014. They were named Clear Channel's "Artist on the Rise" for the month of October 2013. By 2014, the band was named iHeartRadio's Artist of the Month for Top 40 in January.

The band's third EP, Infinity, was released on September 22, 2014. It contains 5 tracks, including the lead single "Infinity". A lyric video directed and produced primarily by AJR was released for the single. The EP was released instead of their debut album, Living Room, which was pushed back to a release date of March 3, 2015. The band expressed the delay in their debut album was because they wanted to add some of their newer music to the project. On October 23, 2015, they released the individual single "Let the Games Begin".

2016–2018: The Click

On September 16, 2016, AJR released their fourth EP, titled What Everyone's Thinking. It was preceded by "I'm Not Famous" as a single earlier in the year, the EP also yielded their second Hot 100 single "Weak" and with that expanded their popularity to global mainstream, which charted in the Top 30 in over 25 countries worldwide and received Platinum certifications in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US, additionally generating over 250 million streams on Spotify within its first year. All five tracks from What Everyone's Thinking were included on AJR's second studio album, The Click, which was released on June 9, 2017.

The album, on the AJR Productions label, was released by S-Curve Records in the United States, Ultra Records in Canada, and Black Butter Records in the rest of the world. "Drama" was released prior as the album's third single, while "Sober Up" became the fourth single upon the album's release. The latter featured Rivers Cuomo and became AJR's and Cuomo's first chart-topping song apart from his band Weezer; atop Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart for two weeks in 2018.