Bands I Miss </3: 2*SWEET

Best picture I could find, man it was weird back like seven years ago, right?

In the long tradition of bands from Chicago suburbs made of hardcore or metal kids who decided to play pop punk cause its funner, such as Fall Out Boy and a lot of other ones who broke up and never got famous, one of my old favorites is 2*Sweet, who were totally sweet. My first show at a shitty coffee shop involved them, and it was dope. They played Chicago a bunch of times at nice places so I would go see them and hang with my friends, and then someone would yell ‘How sweet?’ and everybody would yell ’2*sweet!’ and it was awesome and we had good times. Then they broke up or something, but let me reminisce about some of their best jamsss:

This is an A+ song from their demo, almost definitely the best song they ever did. Lyrics are about fucking your friend and not giving a shit about if its a bad idea or not, including a great Marvin Gaye line that introduces a breakdown. Even the six year old video seems fresh and solid all these years later. They changed up their style after the demo, probably cause they realized if they kept sounding like this they’d just release worse versions of this song. But they still played it years later and it was probably the last song they played at their farewell show that I missed, so at least they knew they struck gold when they did.

This is the first song from the their EP (after the sweet intro), and its probably the best one. But its close cause that EP was way solid, I played the fuck out of it. It was seven songs and they got noticeably heavier (without screaming eva), while still essentially playing pop punk. Really great EP tho, I even liked the piano ballad that the singer sounded way out of place on until the end when it picks up. Shit went hard but was wayyy catchy and covered in hooks. Luv it.

This is the first song off their full length, and it was pretty solid, one of the best on there. There were a few throwaway tracks, but overall it was more solid than filler, so I still back it hard. It was like 60-80% awesome, “Bury Me In the Lover’s Graveyard” (no full version on youtube :c), “Tarantula Perfume“, and “Speak of the Devil” were some of the other highlights. This video wasn’t as good tho, more zany and high budget, not as effective as the simpler older one. But they were big enough to get it premiered on AltPress, that’s impressive, how did they not get signed???

This is the last song on their only album, and I’d say the second best song they ever wrote. It was really the pinnacle of the formula they were perfecting on the album, plus its a fitting swan song for them. Makes me sad whenever it comes up shuffle, but its so good I forget to be sad. <3

So yeah, they were a solid band with a bunch of great songs and bunch of okay ones. They had this sweet Louis Vuitton rip off shirt I still wear all the time cause it just looks cool and not like a band shirt (black one on the left here, I also have the red heart shirt and a friend bought me the zombie shirt but I don’t think I ever wore it). They were like best friends with Fireworks dudes (singer bro featured on this song from the EP, its way solid) who are now like my personal favorite pop punk band, and 2*sweet singer bro does back up vocals and trumpets for Debello now, who are legit one of my favorite bands of all time. Latin pop if you into that, I’m still bummed they like never play shows, best band in Chicago. So yeah, they were before Spotify’s time, but you can play most of their EP and album on this bros youtube channel if you want. Way out of order but whoooo caaaaaares.

RIP 2*SWEET