The problem for Nate Ruess, frontman of Fun., is that he hears elaborate new songs in his head. He doesn’t play an instrument, so he has to figure out how to translate them to his band. “I’ll say something like, ‘It sounds like the sun shining off the moon onto the road and there’s a tree across the street,'” he says by phone from a tour stop in Boulder, Colo.
Fortunately for Ruess, guitarist-keyboardist Andrew Dost and drummer-guitarist Jack Antonoff, have cracked his code for the band’s second album, “Some Nights.” (It contains “We Are Young,” the sweeping pop anthem that has been No. 1 for four straight weeks.) “It’s really tough,” the singer says. “I can be a bit of a pill from a songwriting standpoint. But from this album, it was awesome. They’d been through that process with (Fun.’s 2010 debut) ‘Aim and Ignite.’ … If I said, ‘There’s going to be a gospel choir,’ the sooner they adapt to it, the sooner they can explain it to our producers. They can speak my language.”
For “Some Nights,” Ruess’ agenda was to pull back on the complex sound effects, horn sections and, yes, gospel choirs he’d masterminded for “Aim and Ignite.” He hit the right balance — “Some Nights,” “It Gets Better” and “Carry On” are big and broad, like Queen or Styx, with an emphasis on chorus and hooks rather than studio tricks and sonic clutter. “With this album, we try to take a ‘less is more’ approach,” Ruess says. “I do the French horn in ‘We Are Young’ — I don’t think you can hear it, but it’s there. But I didn’t want to be as crazy as maybe I had in the past. With this album, I tried to be more to the point.”
And yes, he has heard the comparisons to famously controlling Beach Boys singer Brian Wilson, who also heard fully formed pop anthems in his head. “I’ve read a few Beach Boys books in my day,” Ruess says. “That’s what I wanted to take into the studio — that insane work ethic. But I’m learning to be a bit more moderate about it.”
Just after it came out, “We Are Young,” co-starring soul singer Janelle Monae, landed on both hit Fox TV show “Glee” and a car commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. As Ruess’ distinctive high pitch sings, “Tonight! We are young! So let’s set the world on fire/ we could burn brighter/ than the sun,” stuntmen kick-flip, bungee-jump and sky-dive in the car — and Chicago rockers OK Go inexplicably show up, navigating an obstacle course of pianos.
“The first time I hear that song in the commercial, that’s embedded in my brain — you’re always going to think about cars falling from the back of an airplane and stunt drivers and risk,” says C3 Metrics Chief Operating Officer Jeff Greenfield, a branded-entertainment expert. “It wouldn’t surprise me if this song becomes a crazy drinking-type song on college campuses, some anthem that people scream out. For a brand, that’s kismet.”
When Ruess first watched an early cut of the commercial, he wasn’t sure if it was the type of kismet he wanted: “A car doing kick-flips or whatever the heck it is — if we had heard that was going to be the case, we probably would have said, ‘No way.'” But he quickly began to enjoy it, especially how the “epic” ambience of the ad matched the feel of the song. When it aired during the Super Bowl, his main focus was waiting for his parents to call. After two hours, he couldn’t stand it and texted them. They texted back, “Good job!”
“I maybe had four people text me about it, but everybody else said their phones were blowing up about it,” recalls Ruess, who regularly tells interviewers he’s an introvert and a pessimist. “I’m glad I didn’t get that level of contact — but I could have used a text from my parents, at least!”
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Ruess, 30, first ventured into the music business about 10 years ago with a friend, Sam Means, in their Phoenix-based pop band, the Format. They signed to major label Atlantic Records, put out a few singles and opened for larger bands such as Yellowcard, but the label went through a reorganization and abruptly dropped the band. The Format broke up in 2008, leading Ruess to begin collaborating with Antonoff (of Steel Train) and Dost (of Anathallo) in Antonoff’s living room.
Even during the lowest points of his career, at the end of the Atlantic phase, Ruess never abandoned his ambitions as a pop singer. “I always thought that I was a singer. I had an uncle who was on Broadway, so I thought it was inherent in me,” he says. “It was weird, because all throughout high school, people were telling me, ‘You can’t sing, you can’t sing,’ but I was like, ‘No, I’m a singer.’ I had family members telling me I can’t sing. I live for that, I live for people telling me I can’t do something. I turn around and really try to just show them.”
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When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield Ave.
Tickets: Sold out; 773-472-0449 or jamusa.com