Hailing from New York City, indie pop trio AJR weaves barbershop harmonies together with electronic textures and assorted other genres to shape their wide-ranging sonic palette. The act generated early attention upon arrival, landing inside the Top 40 via the single “I’m Ready” from their 2015 release Living Room. Subsequent projects, beginning with 2017’s The Click, have kept the band inside the Billboard 200’s upper ranks; both 2019’s Neotheater and 2021’s OK ORCHESTRA also claimed the top spot on the Independent Albums chart. After inking a deal with Mercury Records, the group issued its fifth album, The Maybe Man, in 2023, which once more placed prominently on the Billboard 200 and Top Alternative Albums tallies.
The Met brothers—Adam on vocals and bass, Jack on vocals and guitar, and Ryan on guitar, piano, and vocals—launched the project in 2005. Raised in New York, they initially performed on city streets, interpreting material by Fun., Vampire Weekend, and the Beach Boys. A video link reached Australian pop artist Sia Furler, whose manager connected the trio with Steve Greenberg, the former Columbia Records president who later became their manager. Under that arrangement the three issued their first independent single, “I’m Ready,” in 2013. The well-liked track climbed to number 27 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart and surfaced on an early EP before appearing on the full-length Living Room in 2015.
In 2016 the band followed with “Weak,” which rose to number eight on the U.S. Billboard Dance Club chart and earned platinum certification; the song appeared on the sophomore album The Click the next year alongside “Drama” and “Sober Up,” a collaboration with Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo. An expanded deluxe edition of The Click arrived in 2018. The following year brought the buoyant single “100 Bad Days,” followed in March by “Birthday Party”; both cuts featured on the third album, Neotheater, which reached number eight on the Billboard 200 and topped the Independent Albums chart. After extensive touring, AJR returned in 2020 with the expansive pop track “Bang!” and spent the remainder of the year shaping a fourth studio album that drew on the unusual social and personal circumstances of the pandemic to pursue a more ambitious, experimental direction. The resulting OK ORCHESTRA appeared early in 2021, introduced by the reflective single “My Play,” and landed at number ten on the Billboard 200 while securing the band’s second straight number-one placement on the Independent Albums chart. Additional releases included the 2021 track “Record Player” with Daisy the Great and 2022’s “I Won’t,” the first single issued through Mercury.
Early in 2023 AJR appeared on Quinn XCII’s “Too Late,” then released “The Dumb Song” ahead of their major-label debut. Issued in November, The Maybe Man contained “God Is Really Real,” a song written in tribute to the brothers’ father, Gary Metzger, who passed away that July after a terminal illness. The album marked the trio’s third consecutive Billboard 200 entry, peaking at number 28.
