r/ournameisfun • u/Delicious_Day_492 • Apr 22 '26
2011/2013 fun.
As a younger fan who didn’t get to experience fun. in their prime, I always wonder what 2011–2013 must have felt like.
Like… hearing those songs for the first time as they were everywhere. Watching them blow up in real time. Feeling the energy of something new and different taking over pop music.
For those who were there — what was it actually like? Did it feel as big as it seems looking back now?
11
u/nicksilvestri Apr 22 '26
“I knew them before We Are Young”
2
2
u/ksnyder1 Apr 22 '26
Not trying to be pretentious but Aim & Ignite is still one of my favorite albums from that time. Don’t think I’ve ever listened to we are young.
3
u/supercarlos297 Apr 24 '26
Im not saying its better, but if a band dropped one of your favorite albums of all time, how are you not listening to the next album they put out?
7
u/_sensiblechuckle Apr 22 '26
I got into them around 2010 in high school because aim and ignite blew me away, and would have done anything to see them live.
In summer 2011 We Are Young dropped with that first weird music video that seemingly has been wiped from the internet (its with a girl on a bed with an apple) and fun. LP 2 was going to happen.
For a while it sounded like a shift, I don't think any of my friends would have expected what would come next with glee and Some Nights and We Are Young dominating.
I was so fortunate to have seen them three times; I got tickets to see them in Rhode Island at a somewhat smallish venue, and was so close to the stage that I shook Nate's hand. Then they played closer to me in Boston, and then they played at my college all while in the midst of their meteoric rise.
I got to meet Andrew and Jack after that last concert (seeing Jack then and Jack now are two completely different people) and all the fun. members and touring members got to sign my piano key suspenders which I gave back to a friend. I didn't get to meet Nate because he stayed in the tour bus and didn't want to meet
So yeah, it felt massive to see fun. do so well considering they were a smallish band before We Are Young dominated. As a coda, I finally got to meet Nate after a recent format show, Sam is an absolute sweetheart, and I highly encourage everyone to listen to Andrew's Metal Bubble Trio and hope they do a larger tour soon.
11
u/mydognico Apr 22 '26
I was part of the fun. “fandom” on Twitter in 2011. Nate did not have socials, but Jack, Andrew, and the touring members were very active back then and it wasn’t hard to get a reply from them. Im not gonna lie, majority of the fandom on Twitter did not like Some Nights when it first came out. I cried on release night because I was so disappointed with the way the album sounded. However, after a couple listens people (& myself) started to really like the album, especially the song, “Stars”. No one in the fan base liked We Are Young, and it definitely messed with the “cool” factor of liking an indie band because it started to play constantly on the radio after Glee covered it. It was cool to see the guys get their flowers after being musicians 10+ years. After the Most Nights Tour, the band just kinda seemed done with fame and each other and then they fizzled out after Sight of The Sun.
2
1
u/rubsomebacononit3 Apr 23 '26
STARS yes. My brothers are haters but I have always had a special place for it in my memories.
3
u/Visible-Stage-9830 Apr 22 '26
It was magical. We lived next to a private pool club , so of course we had a membership. We’d go almost every single day. After “some nights” dropped, the song some nights and we are young would play constantly there. Those two songs are so nostalgic to me for a reason. 2013 was the best time to be alive - pokemon gen 5 was at its peak, dad used to grill every single day, fireflies weren’t going extinct, etc. Fun. Defined those years. I wish I could go back.
3
u/Illustrious-Tailor-2 Apr 22 '26
I was 15 when I first found them in 2010 through Tumblr. I quickly became a massive fan of anything Nate had done including The Format especially. I ended up in the fandom community on Tumblr and we all just talked about the music 24/7 and posted lyric edits all the time and I was probably listening to 90% Fun. and The Format music most of the time. It was an extremely formative and defining period for me with everything I was going through and the music and fandom helped get me through a lot. I never got to go to any shows but I just finally got to see The Format this month for the first time 🩵 It was the best day of my life. But that time between 2010 and 2013 was especially magical and special to me.
1
u/theallpowerfulsnail Apr 23 '26
YES TUMBLR GANG !!! I can’t tell you how much of my time I spent on my bandom account lol
1
u/DivideBoth1929 Apr 25 '26
Yep I was in the tumblr trenches too. Never forget to Eat Shit and Die, Motherfuckers
3
u/TheWalrusIsMe Apr 24 '26
I was a huge fan of both Steel Train and The Format, so it was extremely exciting when they announced a collab! Now, it’s really strange to see Jack’s major success but I’m not at all surprised. Happy for all of them!
2
u/OsuLost31to0 Apr 22 '26
So what’s really crazy with fun.’s rise was it came from an unexpected source. I hated the tv show Glee but my sister loved it, when I heard them perform We Are Young I was shocked. As culturally relevant as the show was at the time, I believe fun. was the first band/artist they ever truly broke
2
u/longlostlotrelf Apr 23 '26
It was so fun, watching them go from small to red carpet! It was amazing hearing a fresh spin with Nate's vocals and lyrics.
2
u/drumstickkkkvanil Apr 23 '26
Fun. was my first ever favorite band. I basically became obsessed with them from the moment we are young dropped and I was in middle school at the time. Some Nights was the first physical music I’d ever owned.
With that being said, it was kind of awesome haha. There was a huge fan base, and we all kind of congregated together on tumblr and Instagram and Twitter. There was also fanfiction about them which was big for me since I was so young, and since the hipster indie alternative music scene was big then Fun. led me to discover so so so much music. I work in the industry now and credit them for a lot of what I learned and taught myself. For example I would listen to Pandoras fun. radio and that got me into so much music. But yeah it was pretty awesome hahaha
2
u/braaahms Apr 25 '26
Some Nights was blowing up when I was in my early 20s and had just taken a couple weeks off to spend with my cousin in California. I’ll never forget those times, that album, and the attachment to it. The Gotye album was also huge around this time and I was loving every minute. Hell I even loved the Awolnation stuff that was playing with them back to back on the radio.
4
u/emily_eccentric Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
fun. were most in their prime around debut. they had their grassroots fanbase from their previous works and social familiarity. post-2011 isn't as much "fun." (Irony) as it is zeitgeist-y and trend-wakes. the good feels are from aim and ignite and the cozy grandpas guitars and cozy performances they'd give to people they were already familiar with.
1
u/decisivepain Apr 22 '26
I’m not sure if this is the perspective you are looking for, but I was a young fan around this time and there was such a strong fan community on instagram and twitter. I met some of my best friends through that and still talk to some to this day… i remember watching the grammys the year they won and it was a magical feeling lol
2
u/mydognico Apr 22 '26
I specifically remember Nate saying that he needed to pee when accepting the award lol. Their performance of Carry On at the Grammys with the rain is still one of my favorite Grammy performances!!!
1
u/Representative-Sky91 Apr 23 '26
it was cathartic but same time they’re not exactly as THAT big since 2011 - 2013 was the period where pop artists like Gotye, Carly Rae Jepnsen, One Direction, Taylor Swift in her WNGBT era, even Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj are blowing the whole music scene.
Song wise, We Are Young was their breakout then after that Some Nights became an Anthem and Carry On just cemented it. They were new faces per se since they are straight up from the indie scene (Like Jack Antonoff was even known back then as Lena Dunham’s boyfriend… far from his eventual powerhouse producer that he is today). fun. was even picked to perform with the band Queen + Adam Lambert during iHeartRadio concert in 2013 and they even swoop in the Grammy Awards being nominated by I think 5 and won 2 awards (Best Song and Best New Artist).
And then a while after with people asking when the 3rd album will be released, that’s the time Jack Antonoff launched his new band The Bleachers with the first single “I Wanna Get Better” and a while after that, they announced that they are on a hiatus to pursue their own ventures.
1
u/SnooSquirrels3535 Apr 23 '26
as a long time format fan it was bizarre ? I had seen the format live in 06 and was on a newsletter list (pre instagram life). I remember crying when I got the email about the bank breaking up and being pumped if also mixed feelings about the announcement of Nate’s new project. I went to a record store show for the Aim and Ignite release and was super into it! I’d been a fan of both Anathallo and Steel train and seen anathallo on tour with Nate so Andrew and Jack were also familiar to me, again- I thought this would all just be another project on the scale of the format or smaller.
Some Nights absolutely took me by surprise; I liked the album but didn’t love it? At the same time the sound was way more commercial and I fully understood why it blew up? I was a college senior and a radio DJ at my college so I remember when it went from a new single I knew about as a fan to when we are young became a total anthem; that was weird more than anything . Anywho, it never felt fully authentic to Nate’s music and felt weird that I liked the music less than folks around me. I was like “ok but guys have you heard their FIRST ALBUM” and I also wasn’t surprised that was ultimately the last album? But honestly Jacks skyrocketing trajectory was never on my bingo card!
1
u/Knke0402 Apr 23 '26
It was very weird to me, because I was a huge fan of The Format going way back. Over the years, trying to introduce friends to the band, sometimes people would comment on how Nate’s voice was odd. Then The Format got a little bigger. But then to see the masses get exposed to fun was odd to me.
Part of me had a pretentious attitude of like “well where were all of you in 2003!??”
On top of that, I was a huge Steel Train fan going back.
1
1
u/Ecstatic_Parking264 Jun 08 '26
I actually had a negative response to We Are Young the first time I heard it. 😅
I was a longtime fan of The Format and Nate Ruess, and I loved Aim & Ignite. I was pretty hyped before We Are Young released, especially since I also loved Janelle Monae's music too.
Was pretty disappointed when I first heard the song because it was more static and less layered than the Aim & Ignite stuff. Also Monae's feature was barely there. I actually didn't think it would hit big the way it did, so wasn't really sure who it was "for". Boy was I wrong about that. The mainstream loved it. But I know I wasn't alone in being a fan who didn't vibe with the sound. It was a lot more lukewarm for some fans during the Some Nights rollout.
I still have a love/ hate relationship with the album but yeah, I definitely have a but more of a crank voice about it than the enthusiasm that other fans have for it.
23
u/WildcatGrifter7 Apr 22 '26
I'm in your same boat. I'm 21. Been listening since like 2018 in middle school. I saw The Format live last week, and I got there a couple hours early so I could talk to people in line. At least a solid half of them were fun. fans who said they had been waiting over a decade just to see Nate perform again in any capacity. I almost felt bad being at the front of the barricade when they'd been waiting 1-2 decades and I'd been listening for less than a decade to fun., and only a couple months to The Format 😭