Career[edit]
The Met brothers initially began writing, producing, and mixing their own material in the living room of their Chelsea apartment, focusing on DIY indie-pop music.
The Met brothers began performing around 2005, busking in Central Park and Washington Square Park. They began by performing covers,[4] but now compose original music influenced by musicians such as The Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Vampire Weekend, Imagine Dragons, Kanye West, Macklemore, Twenty One Pilots, and Fun.[5]
In Spring 2013, AJR's Ryan Met tweeted a link to a video of their song "I'm Ready" to about 80 celebrities, including Australian singer Sia Furler.[4] Furler told her manager about the song, and he contacted Steve Greenberg, former president of Columbia Records and current CEO and Founder of S-Curve Records.[6] He acts as their co-manager.[4]
AJR's debut single, "I'm Ready", which features a sample of SpongeBob SquarePants repeatedly singing his catchphrase, "I'm ready," from the eponymous animated series' premiere episode, was commercially released on August 22, 2013.[7] The song was placed in regular rotation on Sirius XM Radio's Top 20 on 20 and Hits 1 stations,[6] and they performed the song on Good Day New York and VH1's Big Morning Buzz.[8] The official music video for "I'm Ready" premiered on VEVO on October 15, 2013.[4][9]
AJR released their debut EP, 6foot1 (later renamed I'm Ready), on December 20, 2013. They were named Clear Channel's "Artist on the Rise" for the month of October 2013. By 2014, the band was already named IHeartRadio's Artist of the Month for Top 40 in January,[10] and a Myspace "One to Watch" in February,[11] while "I'm Ready" officially impacted pop radio in April. There are now over 20 million YouTube views for "I'm Ready," many thousands of singles sold each week, features in Billboard and the New York Post, while climbing the Top 40 chart. "I'm Ready" hit #1 on Next Big Sound's chart in May 2014. The band performed the song on The Today Show (NBC) on July 29, 2014. "I'm Ready" has been certified Platinum, Canada and Platinum in Australia.
The band's second EP, Infinity, was released September 23, 2014. It contains 5 tracks, including the lead single "Infinity".[12] They released a lyric video for the single. A majority of the work for the video was done by AJR, including directing and producing.[13] The EP was released instead of their debut album, Living Room, which was pushed back to a release date of March 3, 2015. The band expressed that the delay in their debut album was because they wanted to add some of their newer music to the project. The brothers released their third EP, titled What Everyone's Thinking, on September 16, 2016, which features the lead single "Weak". "Weak" has been certified Platinum in the U.S., Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Belgium, and Gold in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Australia. It has over 280 million streams on Spotify.
The band released its third studio album, The Click, on June 9, 2017, featuring the singles "Weak" and "Drama". The album also contains the track "Sober Up", which features Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, who cowrote the track.
They have opened for Hoodie Allen, Lindsey Stirling,[14] Train, Fitz & the Tantrums, Andy Grammer, We the Kings, Ingrid Michaelson, and American Authors.
