Jack’s Mannequin will be releasing their third album titled People And Things on October 4th. In a new interview, Andrew McMahon from the band discusses co-writes on the album with Matthew Thiessen of the Relient K and his thoughts on co-writing in general. Read the full interview here and a snippet of it below by clicking “Read More”.

You were co-writing some songs with Matt [Thiessen] from Relient K. Which of those made the record?
It’s “Platform Fire,” “People, Running” and “Amy, I.”

It’s such an interesting shift these days: So many fans are almost upset when their favorite artists use co-writers. Like, it’s not the same as it coming from their brain. Is that something you were worried or concerned about?
Well, I think I kind of held that opinion for a lot of years myself. Not necessarily of other artists, but of my own art. I thought, “Well, if I’m exploring this territory with another human being, then it’s not 100 percent me.” Again, as you get older and write lots of songs, and you record lots of music, it’s very easy to become stagnant. It’s very easy to not push forward and think differently and stretch yourself, and that was really the name of the game on this record. I had named the record before most of these songs were written, and I was like, “This record is about a universal perspective on this moment in my life, and my friends and the people around me.” And I started writing music with other people before I started working on this record. I had done a track with Will [Beckett] from The Academy Is… That was one of the first things I had ever written with anybody else. And I loved it.

And then I have these friends of mine who were working on records, and they would ask me to come in and co-write with them. I found it to be such a stimulating process. I don’t really know how else to explain it. It’s just the idea of, “You can sit in your room and beat your head against the wall and work on a song,” which, of course, I did on the majority of this record. But you can also have this other experience, which is so beautiful, where you’re in a room with somebody you’re close with and you have a conversation about something real. It’s not like I called Diane Warren or Kara DioGuardi to write a song on the record. You know what I mean? These were guys who I had kind of come up with who were friends, who are in similar places in their lives. We got together and as friends had conversations about serious topics and wrote about them.

If somebody has a problem with that, then that’s completely their right to do so, but for me I think it really pushed my songwriting. I think if you listen to those songs, they’re some of the better songs on the record. I think they are, because there was a spirit and an energy and a vibe. My wife walked by when Matt and I were writing “Platform Fire,” and we were downstairs in my house in L.A. We sat down for dinner afterwards, and she was like, “It was awesome to hear you guys, because you sounded like a couple of kids playing when they’re five years old playing with their trucks in the living room or something.” We were giddy, we had a blast.