We played a show in San Diego last Christmas, and they sectioned me off in a backroom with a security guard so I couldn't drink," says Andrew McMahon, the now barely of-age singer for pop rockers Something Corporate. Despite its youth and occasional indiscretions, the Orange County, California, band has found considerable success in the past year. The group recently released North, a piano-driven album full of pretty melodies and lovelorn poetry; its lead single, "Space," is receiving heavy airplay on Fuse and MTV2.

The band's keyboard-heavy style can be attributed to McMahon, 21, who's been playing the piano since he was nine. Although he and his bandmates grew up in California's punk hotbed and often get lumped in with the punk-emo crowd, the singer never really got into the scene as a kid. "I listened to the stuff my parents listened to, like James Taylor and Pink Floyd," he says.

McMahon met the rest of the group in high school, and later decided on the moniker Something Corporate as a joke (It was them being smartass about their pop appeal). But the group almost broke up when two of its members left for college; the band set up a farewell show. "We expected to have a few friends show up," says McMahon. Instead, they got more than 300 people. "It was the day before we left for college, and we were like, 'Wow.' Eventually we put on another show, at the House of Blues, just selling tickets out of our living room through the Internet."

After signing to Drive-Thru Records (home to punk bands such as New Found Glory and the Starting Line), the group scored a gig on the Warped Tour. "That was the scariest thing," McMahon says. "I remember being backstage throwing up for, like, twenty minutes before the first show. I would walk onstage and I'd be like, 'Yes, we are the biggest pussies here.' Fans threw bottles at us. But, you know, maybe there's something punk about pulling out an acoustic piano on the Warped Tour."

CHRISTIAN HOARD
(January 6, 2004)

Watch an exclusive acoustic performance from Something Corporate