Train’s sophomore album, “Drops of Jupiter,” and its eponymous lead single, both turn 20 in 2021! Two decades since they burst onto the scene, but Train is still rolling along, releasing a Greatest Hits album in 2018 and seeing their last studio album reach the Top 10 in 2017.
Front man Pat Monahan is a good friend of Craig Carton, and as long-promised, Monahan finally joined the Carton & Roberts Show on Monday – where Pat confirmed that he wrote “Drops of Jupiter” after waking up from a dream about his recently-deceased mother.
“I wrote the whole song in 15 minutes,” Monahan said. ““Honestly, maybe my mom wrote it, but for a boy who was close to his mom, who passed with little warning…it was traumatic. I woke up basically after having a conversation with her, where she was basically saying, ‘I’m okay here, go on and do your thing.’ Maybe it was her way of saying it was okay to move on.”
Drops of Jupiter became the first of four No. 1 hits so far for the band, and the album became their first of five to reach the Billboard Top 10 – and that almost didn’t come to fruition, until that dream.
“At the time, Columbia Records told us we didn’t have the single we needed to keep our career going. We had the album made, but they didn’t buy any of the songs as a lead single,” Monahan said. “One night I fell asleep, woke up, wrote the song, and then I brought them the demo, which wasn’t very good – but right away, they said, ‘this is not just the first single, this is the song of the year.’”
Many of the lyrics are indeed references to Monahan’s mother, including the “deep fried chicken” line, and there’s one that is a nod to the band.
“She was such a great cook, but we didn’t have any money – she could feed all nine of us on like six dollars, so that’s where deep fried chicken came from,” Monahan said. “And the soy latte…all the guys would go to Starbucks like some kind of cult, and they would get soy lattes, so I put that in there – and I was asked to take both of them out!”
With COVID restrictions loosening around the country, Train will be out doing some gigs to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album that put them on the map, but it will only be a small celebration before, hopefully, a full-blown tour in 2022.
“This summer we’re gonna do some basic stuff to get our feet wet, but not in a major way; we’ll wait until next year to do that,” Monahan said. “We’re talking to some bands we came up with to do that tour with us – there’s a big San Francisco band we want to try to get to come with us, which would be really awesome.”
Just throwing names out, but Counting Crows, for one, would fit that bill, although Monahan wouldn’t add any more specifics – but the last thing he did tell Craig and Evan is that “Drops of Jupiter” is one of two choices he’d make if, for some reason, he had one last song to sing before never singing again.
“It would either be Drops of Jupiter, or a song I once wrote about myself dying called Sing Together,” Monahan said. “Basically, it’s like, this is the last you’ll ever hear from me, but if you want to honor me, sing together. That's all you should do; it will bring you together and remind you of whatever I did on this planet.”
A perfect final stop for that Train?
Listen to Pat Monahan’s entire appearance on Carton & Roberts below!
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