Growing up in Santa Cruz, California, in the 1980s—where the surfers were the jocks of the school and the Grateful Dead were newly resurgent—a young Adam Scott was doing what most of us were doing at a young age: figuring out his identity through music. His older brother revealed to him the myriad secrets of Led Zeppelin and R.E.M., while pop radio and MTV were shaping his nascent taste in obvious but important ways. It was the molding of someone who would soon become a real head—not just a Deadhead, though he tells me he did see more than a handful of Dead shows—but someone whose deep love of alternative music would live alongside his career as a dryly comedic actor of film and television.
If you’ve listened to his digressive, deep-dive music podcasts with comedian Scott Aukermen—U Talkin’ U2 to Me?, R U Talkin' R.E.M. Re: Me?, and, most recently, U Springin’ Springsteen on My Bean?—you know that Scott is a self-professed nerd about the music of his life. It was a joy to chop it up with him about how albums came into and stayed in his life, how it connected to his friends, family, and life as an actor, and how difficult it was not to pick an R.E.M. album for every five years of his life.
Scott is currently starring in Apple TV+’s sci-fi series Severance, whose Season 2 finale aired last night. Season 3 is on the way, too.
Cat Stevens: Teaser and the Firecat
That was around the time of my dad moving out, which I don’t really remember that well, but I do remember Teaser and the Firecat being a thing in those days. Later as a teenager, when I rediscovered the album, it was somewhat familiar to me. I even remember at one point getting into that album as a teenager and being like, “Whoa, this is cool,” and my mom later telling me that when I reapproached the album as a teenager and was playing it in my room, she tried to get away from it because it reminded her of a tough time. So that’s why I remember it. But they shielded me from any tough time and I just remembered the album itself being this warm, lovely thing.
I mean, there’s “The Wind,” which was used so well in Rushmore. But “Tuesday’s Dead” is the one where it really kind of expands, and there’s this mandolin solo, and it has the feeling of a live band kind of just finding itself through the song. These are objectively great songs. And if he’s too syrupy for you, I totally understand and I’ve certainly gone through stages of being like, “Ugh, what the fuck is this?” And not listening to Cat Stevens for 12 years or something and coming back to it and being like, “Oh my God, this is so good.”
Huey Lewis & the News: Sports
I mean, that was fucking it. I got to meet [Huey Lewis], and he’s a lovely guy, and we had him on the podcast and he was so cool. Just recently I went on a Huey Lewis YouTube jag and found concert footage from 1986 or something, and they were huge—like, arenas, just they were so huge. Sports is like Thriller or Born in the U.S.A.; there’s maybe two songs on it that aren’t hits. Just look at him on the cover of the album. He has the thin tie and they’re just in a bar. His jacket’s over his shoulder. He’s like, “Eh, take it or leave it. This is me. We’re just some guys.” It was perfectly calibrated marketing too. I mean, they really knew what they were doing.
They came to Santa Cruz and shot the video for “If This Is It,” on the beach and my stepsister is in the background of one of the shots. It’s amazing. Also, “You Crack Me Up” is the coke-iest, most insane song. That and Robert Palmer’s “Looking for Clues” might be the coke-iest songs of the ’80s.
Edie Brickell & New Bohemians: Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars
This is around when I discovered pot and beer and started hanging out with my friends. It’s also around the time that Grateful Dead sort of reemerged with “Touch of Grey” and my brother was like, “This is called Hotel California. This is Led Zeppelin.” He was a classic rock guy, but he also gave me R.E.M.’s Document for Christmas. That album was so sharp and loud, and I had never heard that before. At 15, so much is happening and you’re vacuuming up so much and figuring out who you are and what your tastes are. So, on one hand, I had the Document, and [Grateful Dead’s] In the Dark was really huge for me, but also Edie Brickell was a big thing; that album was everywhere. And [“What I Am”] was everywhere, and she was so beautiful, and their song was so catchy and their vibe—I was falling into the Grateful Dead thing a bit at that age, and Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians sort of had that vibe and dressed in that cool way. “Circle of Friends” was another big one off that album that you would put on every mixtape.
I remember my first girlfriend and I would listen to Edie Brickell and Sting’s Nothing Like the Sun. That was a huge deal, like, “Whoa, it’s a double album.” The lead single is so funny, it’s called “We’ll Be Together.” You know, Dream of the Blue Turtles is actually pretty great because it was going to be the next Police album. And Nothing Like the Sun is where he started thinking about the rainforest and growing his hair out and stuff. There’s really good stuff there, too, but it’s also where he started veering into lots of sax solos.
10,000 Maniacs: Our Time in Eden
At 20 years old, I was very into R.E.M. They were my band. And they also, at that time, happened to be the biggest band in the world. So I was into this band who was just hitting home run after home run. And then Automatic for the People came out and it was clear from the word go that this was their masterpiece. But the thing I was thinking about, it’s kind of like the Edie Brickell thing. If I’m really being honest about what I was listening to over and over and over again when I was 20 years old, if it wasn’t Automatic for the People, it was probably 10,000 Maniacs’ Our Time in Eden, which is their last album with Natalie Merchant, and there are some fucking bangers on that album.
Not only that, but the production on this album and the instrumentation on this album is beyond anything they had done before. As far as mainstream pop music, they were expanding and expanding. And you listen to that album and it’s hard to really grasp. I mean, there are the singles and stuff people know, but then there are some songs like “Stockton Gala Days,” which I think is the sort of crown jewel of the album that just has these just swells and builds. And, as a 20-year-old, it just blew my mind.
I remember me and my friends were extras in the R.E.M. video for “Drive,” and this was in the summer of ’92. It’s the video where he is being carried around crowd-surfing and lip-syncing the song the whole time. A couple hundred of us were all smashed together in this outdoor area, and, in between setups, Michael Stipe would sit up on top of a ladder with a bullhorn and just talk to everybody and answer questions and stuff. And this is the summer of ’92: He’s like Elvis Presley—or not Elvis Presley, but he’s the biggest rock star in the world.
And so somebody was like, “Hey, what about the new 10,000 Maniacs album?” This hadn’t come out yet. And I remember him being like, “Oh, listen, I just heard it and it is incredible. It’s going to blow your mind.” And so I remember diving for it when it came out. I don’t know how much that influenced and made me listen to it with renewed extra intensity than I usually would for a 10,000 Maniacs album.
Rilo Kiley: Rilo Kiley
They were our friends and they were just starting out around that time. I was at their first show at Spaceland, and then I used to go to their shows and sell merch. And they had panties with Rilo Kiley on them. And when my wife and I first met, I was like, “You got to come see my friend’s band.” And we would sell the merch together at those shows. And it was so fun. I knew [guitarist] Blake [Sennett] from Boy Meets World and then knew Jenny [Lewis] through Blake. And then Duke was a really good friend of mine, Pierre de Reeder, we call him Duke. But I remember getting their first record, and just being like, “You guys, these are world-class songs. You guys are writing really good songs. Like, holy fuck.” And they just little by little built their audience and made so many great albums. But, this first one, the sort of one that’s kind of designed, that cover’s designed like a John Fante book that was really special, not really produced all that heavily. It’s just sort of these raw songs. But they’re so good, particularly for a band just sort of getting their sea legs. And they get more sophisticated than this and their songs get better, but this was very much a snapshot of a place in time.
U2: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
I was in Hollywood and was about to get married and just honestly kind of, you know what, that year I was just struggling. It was hard. Every couple years, I would get a job that seemed like it could be the thing, and, with an acting career, you have [to live] one delusion to the next. You have to convince yourself that this is going to be the thing that helps you, and whether it does or not, you have to piece it together in your mind that you’re building and you’re getting there. And so I would get a small role in The Aviator, and I’m like, “OK, I’m working with Martin Scorsese. That must mean something.” And then it kind of doesn’t, and then it’s hard.
At the time How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb came out, I made the calculation myself (or read somewhere) that it was coming out at the exact point for the Rolling Stones when Steel Wheels came out. And you put that album up next to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb—this sounds like a band who are still at a peak of some sort. These songs are fucking good. “Vertigo” is undeniable; it’s catchy and aggressive. I mean, the album tracks like “Crumbs From Your Table” and “Original of the Species” are really catchy, expansive, but also the whole album has this feeling of them playing live in the studio. And for post-All That You Can’t Leave Behind, you would think they would go slicker or something, but they put out a bit of a rough guitar album. And you know, at the time, I was like, “Steel Wheels was bullshit and this is great.” Now looking back, I’m like, “Well, actually Steel Wheels is pretty good.”
R.E.M.: Accelerate
OK. So, in the post-Bill Berry years, as a loyal fan, I was sticking by them. Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun were the albums that came out, and Around the Sun just got shit on. And, with that, people kind of reevaluated Up and Reveal and just started shitting on those, too. And Around the Sun was a sluggish album that had some great songs in there, but they just didn’t sound like they meant it quite as much as they used to.
So it was kind of a drag how they were being perceived culturally, how they were just being dismissed. And I still thought they were an important band and still had great albums in them. So when this came out—and it was really good and sort of universally acknowledged as like, “Oh wow, these guys are writing great two-and-a-half-minute pop songs again”—it was just vindication as a fan. Even though it’s private vindication because nobody cared what I was thinking on the inside about this band. But I was constantly sticking up for them whenever R.E.M. came up and people rolled their eyes. It was like, “No, these guys are still great.” So, on our nerdy podcast, [R U Talkin’ R.E.M. Re: Me?], I put this in the top with their best albums. I think this is them at another songwriting peak. I think the first five songs are perfect. It’s like the best five-song opening.
There’s all sorts of new moves on the album, too, which is what’s so fun about it. They’re going after this sound that was never really theirs in the first place, so they’re reclaiming something that they never totally did before so it sounds new for them. But then stuff like “Hollow Man” and “Mr. Richards” don’t really sound like them. I don’t know of a more starkly mission-driven comeback album ever. They were going to make this work. They were going to show everyone that they could still do this and they definitely could.
Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
Getting older, physiologically, I don’t think you really dive into bands with the same fervor that you did when you were 19. But for me, the first Vampire Weekend album came out when we had our son. And they’re a band who kind of inspired that particular fervor. The reason I loved R.E.M. and U2 and these bands when I was 16 through 19 is it wasn’t just the songs, it was the way they dressed, the Anton Corbijn photos, the promotional materials, everything was considered and fucking cool. And Vampire Weekend were meticulous; I could tell they were going through everything with a fine tooth comb and making sure everything was presented in a particular way and it matched the music. The music was about a particular thing, so were the shoes they were wearing, and the guitar they were playing, and the echoes of Graceland and Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads were all like something I hadn’t really heard echoed in a lot of pop music in a while.
So that was what connected me to them from the outset. And then Modern Vampires of the City was this leap forward in maturation for them, and it sort of was their Automatic for the People in a way. It’s like death and growing up, and what came with it were all these new sounds and this new maturity, but it also fucking shreds, like “Diane Young”? Just fucking rad.
There’s a disillusionment which wasn’t in the first two albums. It’s disillusionment that comes kind of physiologically–I don’t mean to keep using that word—but turning 30, which I think is about where these guys were at the time. But also they got famous really fast and toured the world a bunch of times. And I would imagine there’s a little world-weariness that comes along with it, and it just sounds like they’ve been through it a bit on this, but they’re not holding back, they put it all in there.
Yo-Yo Ma / J.S. Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites
It was something my mom had and loved, but it’s just so beautiful and it’s so stark because it’s just him playing for a couple of hours and is one of the great musical talents that we’ve certainly seen. I’m not someone who knows enough about classical music to be able to tell you if this is the best version of the cello suites, but I know that this is the one that found me, and I find it incredibly moving, and I find it really centering too. It’s something I can just put on and focus and lower my heartbeat a little bit. I find it beautiful and inspiring, and I listen to it all the time. Sometimes I will put it on if I’m driving on a country road and I just want to feel like I’m in a car commercial. Or if I’m walking through the airport, or if I have to write, or if I have to focus in on just work. If I’m trying to just try and zero out the day and beyond all of that. It’s not like a meditation tape or something. It’s beautiful music, and it’s beautiful music that is hundreds of years old. One of the things I love about it is it’s listening to this music and knowing this is how it sounded 300 years ago. They’re trying to replicate and be as faithful as possible to this music that’s 300 years old. There’s something really just fascinating about that.
Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
I feel like that album just dropped like a bomb. This is some of the best songwriting I’ve heard in so long and just so beautifully rendered. I mean, holy shit. There’s something about her delivery to her phrasing that you really don’t doubt her for a second. And I think the bands in the artists that I’ve always gravitated to are the ones that you don’t doubt them. They’re not doing it out of the side of their mouth. They mean it, and their life depends on it. It doesn’t happen that often where an artist really kind of hits you in the solar plexus, and she did that for me. I just love it. I think it’s like Joshua Tree or Abbey Road. This is a really special album, and I think it will be one of those albums that people will be shining a light on in 25 years.
