5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Mark O’Connell of ME.

Name  Mark O’Connell from the band ME.

Best known for be  Drummer, Taking Back Sunday.

More from Spin:

• Horse Lords’ Heaven Can’t Wait
• Deep Cut Friday: “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” by Rush
• The Strokes Set Massive Queens Gig In October

Current city  Long Island, New York.

Really want to be  Hanging out with my girl and kids in London and playing a show with ME.

Excited about  All Good Things, the album by my new band ME., and easily the best music Eddie and I have ever written in our entire lives.

My current music collection has a lot of  Calvin Harris/pop.

And a little bit of (Genre): Face to Face/punk.

Preferred format  I’ve mostly been streaming lately because my daughter has been obsessed with Huntrix, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and Katseye. Honestly, I love it too. They know how to write a hit song.

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Abbey Road, The Beatles

This album helped shape my identity.

The first record I ever bought was a Beatles record, and around seventh or eighth grade, while I was discovering punk rock, the Beatles remained the one constant. Every punk kid knows that once you discover punk, suddenly nothing that isn’t punk is cool anymore. But somehow the Beatles survived that phase. Actually, they transcended it.

I knew then what I still know now: The Beatles are the greatest band of all time.

What fascinates me most about Abbey Road is how ambitious it is. I’ve always thought of it as two different albums. “Come Together” and “Something” feel like standalone masterpieces. But once “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” starts, the record never stops moving. Every song flows into the next in a way that had never really been done before and, honestly, has never been done quite as well since.

It’s this incredible piece of musical storytelling where every song feels connected to the larger journey. People talk about concept albums all the time, but Abbey Road feels bigger than that. It feels alive.

And Paul McCartney? He’s the king of all kings.

I still talk about Abbey Road almost every day. To me, it’s the greatest album ever made.

2

…And Justice for All, Metallica

Metallica had a calming effect on me and made me feel heard during my youth. It became part of my identity. You wanted to be on their team, and you felt lucky they were on your team. I think that’s what Metallica did for a lot of people. It gave people like me a place to belong.

Like a lot of people, I didn’t have the easiest upbringing and at that time, I didn’t realize why I was so angry. Then I got this album and played it constantly. I’d play drums along to it for hours. It was the perfect outlet for that anger.

The slow build of anticipation into “Blackened” felt like the heaviest thing ever created, especially in the late ’80s. Nobody was doing anything like that at that level. I remember putting that tape in my boom box and immediately feeling like I had found my people.

And here’s an unpopular take: I love Lars. I have always loved Lars. I will always defend Lars. That’s a hill I’m more than willing to die on.

The drumming on those records is out of this world, and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. So let me go on the record right here in SPIN magazine and say that Lars Ulrich is wildly underrated and way too often discredited. Cut it out. The guy is one of the greatest. Basically, I am to Lars Ulrich as Chris Crocker was to Britney Spears.

The angry inner kid in me will always appreciate the space Metallica gave me during a time when I desperately needed it, even if I didn’t know it yet.

3

Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses

Guns N’ Roses wasn’t just a band. It was a way of life for me and all my friends, especially me and Neal Amiruddin, who now plays bass in ME.

The second we discovered Appetite for Destruction, everything changed. We started wearing denim jackets covered in pins and patches. Neal had this giant Guns N’ Roses back patch with the skeletons on it. Representing Guns N’ Roses was pretty much the hardest shit you could do in second grade.

We all had mullets because our moms wouldn’t let us grow our hair on the sides and Neal had the dopest mullet by far. After hearing this album, our entire identity became rock and roll.

I still remember seeing the artwork, opening the cassette, smelling the tape, looking at the drawings inside, and feeling like I had discovered something dangerous. The artwork was wildly inappropriate for a kid, but it really was a different time back then. There was a sense that these guys were dangerous, maybe even dangerous to themselves, because they were as rock and roll as rock and roll could possibly be. And I absolutely loved it.

It’s another record that I played drums to over and over and over again. I can still play that album front to back without thinking about it.

Steven Adler was the perfect drummer for that band at that moment. His parts were simple, solid, and impossible not to move to. They taught kids like me how to play in a rock band.

Recently I was on the “Fully Vented Podcast,” and after we finished recording, I ended up talking Guns N’ Roses with the hosts. One of them, Evan, works closely with Duff McKagan and was kind enough to put Neal and me on the guest list for the Guns N’ Roses show this summer.

It’s one of those incredible full-circle moments. Two kids who built their entire personalities around Appetite for Destruction are getting to go see Guns N’ Roses together all these years later.

4

Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty

I was eight years old when Full Moon Fever came out, and I played drums to that record nonstop. Every song. Front to back.

I had one of those little tape players with the awful button headphones that barely worked, and I’d sit there trying to play along to the entire album. I knew every word and every drum fill.

The ending of “Runnin’ Down a Dream” absolutely blew my mind. It felt so heavy to me as a kid, and honestly it still does.

I used to steal my brother’s guitar, lock myself in my room, and pretend I was Tom Petty. I even gave fake interviews to an imaginary Daisy Fuentes about the Full Moon Fever tour. It was a hell of an accomplishment for an eight-year-old.

But all jokes aside, this record followed me into adulthood. Every night I sing “Alright for Now” to my daughter before bed. One of the first things Casey (ME.’s manager) and I bonded over was realizing she used to sing that same song to her daughter. And “I Won’t Back Down” has become an anthem in our house. It’s a reminder of who we are, what we’re capable of, and how we try to approach life when things get difficult.

Tom Petty is hands down one of the top five greatest songwriters of all time. This isn’t just one of my favorite albums. It’s one that’s been with me for almost my entire life.

5

Insomniac, Green Day

I listened to this album every single day on the way to school and then came home and played drums to it for hours. The neighbors complained. The lights would start flickering. Everybody in the house had heard enough drums for one lifetime. I, however, had not. I would’ve kept going forever if somebody hadn’t eventually made me stop.

The mix on that record absolutely blew my mind. Everything was loud. The guitars were loud. The bass was loud. The drums were loud. The mastering was loud. It almost sounded like a metal record disguised as a punk record, and I loved every second of it.

Tre Cool was one of those drummers that made you want to run downstairs and immediately start hitting things. So that’s exactly what I did.

Like every other kid my age, I didn’t just listen to Green Day. I wanted to be Green Day. I dyed my hair. I wore Converse. I thought Billie Joe Armstrong was the coolest human being to ever walk the Earth. Ninth grade was a little rough because no matter how hard I tried, I was basically Fat Billie Joe Armstrong. But I was committed to the cause.

The “Walking Contradiction” video was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Honestly, I still think it’s cool. Even now, when I see those three guys together, they don’t feel like a band. They feel like superheroes. They’re timeless.

Years later, I got the chance to play a show with Green Day and talk to Tre Cool for a minute. I was psyching myself out because we had played to like 120,000 people or something crazy like that in London. He said something that has stuck with me all these years that I will never forget: 

“You’re here because you deserve to be here.”

It sounds simple, but it stuck with me. As a kid, Green Day was one of the bands that made me want to be a musician. Getting to share a stage with them was one of those moments where reality somehow exceeded the dream.

What’s exciting now is that I’m looking at it from a completely different place. I’m building something new with ME. from the ground up.

Hopefully we’ll find ourselves sharing a stage with Green Day again someday. I think it would mean more this time around than it did the first time.

The first time felt impossible. The next time will feel earned.

There’s something really beautiful about getting a second chance at a dream you thought you’d already lived.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Name  Mark O’Connell from the band ME. Best known for be  Drummer, Taking Back Sunday. Current city  Long Island, New York. Really want to be  Hanging out with my girl and kids in London and playing a show with ME. Excited about  All Good Things, the album by my new band ME., and easily the best music Eddie and I have […]Liza Lentini{authorlink}https://www.spinmagazine.com/feed/SPINMusic News, Album Reviews, Concert Photos, Videos and Morehttps://static.spinmagazine.com/files/2023/08/cropped-logo-spin-s-340×340.png