The Academy Is... Hit the Studio for "Santi" Follow-Up LP

"I would compare it to starting over," the Academy Is... singer William Beckett says of working on the band's third full-length album. "The way we felt on [2005's debut] Almost Here." Beckett, along with drummer Andy Mrotek, bassist Adam Siska and guitarists Mike Carden and Michael Guy Chislett entered a New York recording studio this week to begin production on the follow-up to last year's Santi. Armed with an estimated 20 tracks in "final form," the Chicago band will now determine what Siska calls "the best of" for the album's tracklisting.

While Almost Here leaned towards a poppier rock sound, Santi incorporated heavier guitars and a grittier edge thanks to the contributions of producer Butch Walker (Pink, Avril Lavigne). For their still-untitled next LP the Academy has paired with S*A*M and Dave, a.k.a. Sam Hollander and Dave Katz, who have worked with labelmates Gym Class Heroes on "Cupid's Chokehold" and Cobra Starship on "Snakes on a Plane" along with American Idol runner-up Blake Lewis. While the band is hesitant to assign a sound to the record, which is due at the end of the summer, Beckett maintains, "What we do is write songs, and we're going to stick to it."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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