The October Curated Issue - A Day To Remember – ‘What Separates Me From You’
There was a time when A Day To Remember seemed to represent an impossible proposition: a band that could make hardcore breakdowns sound like pop songs, turn mosh-pit aggression into enormous choruses and move effortlessly between screamed vocals and melodies built for thousands of voices.
By 2010, that proposition had become a remarkably successful formula.
‘What Separates Me From You', the Florida band's fourth studio album and third for Victory Records, arrived in November 2010 after the considerable success of ‘Homesick’.
Recorded between May and July at The Wade Studios in Ocala, Florida, it reunited vocalist Jeremy McKinnon and the band with producer Chad Gilbert, with Andrew Wade and McKinnon also involved in production. It was the first A Day To Remember album to feature guitarist Kevin Skaff, following Tom Denney's departure from the touring line-up.
The result is an album that sounds like a band that knows exactly what it is.
There is little experimentation for experimentation's sake. Instead,‘What Separates Me From You' refines the peculiar hybrid A Day To Remember had been developing since their 2005 debut, ‘And Their Name Was Treason’: pop-punk melody on one side, hardcore and metalcore aggression on the other.
What had once seemed like an unlikely collision had become their defining language.
And they had become very good at speaking it.
A Day To Remember formed in Ocala, Florida, in 2003, initially building their reputation through the DIY hardcore and punk circuit. Their early material was rawer and considerably closer to the hardcore scene than the polished, hook-driven sound that would eventually make them one of the most commercially successful bands associated with the post-hardcore movement.
Their first album, ‘And Their Name Was Treason,’ appeared in 2005. The band subsequently signed to Victory Records, releasing ‘For Those Who Have Heart ‘in 2007 and ‘Homesick’ in 2009. Victory's catalogue describes the band as deliberately refusing to settle into a single genre, instead combining pop-punk and metalcore.
That genre-blurring was crucial.
The band's secret was never simply writing heavy songs or catchy songs. It was understanding that the two could occupy the same song.
A verse could sound like a hardcore record. A pre-chorus could build like emo. Then the chorus would arrive with the kind of melody that could live on rock radio.
‘Homesick’ was the breakthrough. Songs such as “The Downfall of Us All”, “I'm Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of?” and “Have Faith in Me” pushed A Day To Remember towards a much wider audience, while their live reputation continued to connect them with the hardcore and Warped Tour world.
Then came the follow-up.
The challenge was obvious: how do you make an album that is bigger without making it blander?
The answer was ‘What Separates Me From You'
With the album debuting at No.11 on the Billboard 200, and reached No.1 on several specialist US rock charts and the UK Rock Album Chart.
More significantly, the record demonstrates just how completely A Day To Remember had mastered their particular intersection of genres.
Track-by-track
1. Sticks & Bricks
The opening seconds are deliberately brutal.
A low-tuned guitar riff, pounding drums and Jeremy McKinnon's screamed vocals announce that A Day To Remember haven't abandoned their hardcore roots. If anything, they've made them heavier.
Then the melody arrives.
That's the trick.
“Sticks & Bricks” immediately establishes the album's central contrast between aggression and accessibility. The verses are built for physical impact; the chorus is built for collective shouting.
It is a particularly effective opener because it doesn't gradually introduce the band's sound. It throws everything at the listener at once.
The production is enormous, but not shapeless. Every guitar hit, drum accent and vocal layer has its place.
For a band often accused of having one formula, the formula is remarkably well executed here.
2. All I Want
If “Sticks & Bricks” is the hardcore A Day To Remember, “All I Want” is the pop-punk version.
Released as the album's first single, it became one of the band's defining songs and eventually reached No. 12 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and No. 25 on the Rock Songs chart.
The song is almost ridiculously efficient.
A bright guitar figure. A tight verse. A rising pre-chorus.Then that chorus.
McKinnon's vocal is melodic without becoming polished beyond recognition, while the heavier passages provide just enough resistance to keep the song from drifting into straightforward pop-punk.
It is a masterclass in knowing exactly when to turn the guitars up and when to let the melody carry the song.
And perhaps more importantly, it became an anthem because it sounds like one.
3. It's Complicated
The third track brings the album's romantic frustration to the foreground.
“It's Complicated” is less concerned with aggression than with the familiar A Day To Remember theme of relationships collapsing under the weight of resentment, misunderstanding and emotional distance.
The song moves through the band's now-established clean/heavy dynamic, but its real strength is its melodic construction.
There is something almost traditional about the songwriting. The instrumentation may come from post-hardcore, but the emotional architecture belongs to classic pop songwriting: tension, release, repetition and a chorus that refuses to leave your head.
Released as a later radio single, it eventually charted on the US alternative-rock listings.
4. This Is the House That Doubt Built
Arguably the album's most sophisticated song.
“This Is the House That Doubt Built” slows the pace sufficiently to allow atmosphere into the record.
The guitars remain heavy, but they aren't constantly attacking. Instead, they create space around McKinnon's vocal.
The title itself provides a useful metaphor for the album's emotional world: doubt isn't simply something experienced by the narrator; it becomes the architecture in which he is living.
Musically, the song is more expansive than some of the album's immediate pop-punk numbers. There are layered guitars and a greater sense of dynamic movement, while the chorus arrives with genuine emotional weight.
AllMusic singled it out as an album high point, particularly for its guitar work.
It is one of the moments where A Day To Remember's seemingly contradictory identities actually fuse into something greater than either half.
5. 2nd Sucks
Subtlety leaves the building.
“2nd Sucks” is one of the album's most aggressively metalcore-oriented tracks, and its very title makes clear that there isn't going to be much emotional diplomacy involved.
The guitars are low, the rhythm is punishing and McKinnon's screams take centre stage.
It works because it arrives after the comparatively melodic “This Is the House That Doubt Built”. The album understands sequencing: heaviness has greater impact when it follows restraint.
The song also represents the band's relationship with hardcore culture. However commercially successful A Day To Remember became, they never completely abandoned the music's physicality.
There is still a breakdown here because, frankly, there is supposed to be.
6. Better Off This Way
“Better Off This Way” shifts back towards melody.
The song's emotional premise is familiar territory for A Day To Remember: the recognition that leaving a damaged relationship might ultimately be healthier than remaining inside it.
But where lesser bands might turn that sentiment into a generic breakup ballad, A Day To Remember give it momentum.
The guitars constantly push forward, creating the feeling that the narrator is trying to outrun the situation he's describing.
It's a recurring feature of the band's songwriting: even when the subject is emotional paralysis, the music is moving at speed.
7. All Signs Point to Lauderdale
Perhaps the album's most immediately relatable song.
“All Signs Point to Lauderdale” takes the frustration of feeling trapped in your hometown and turns it into a pop-punk escape anthem.
There is a particularly strong sense of place here. The song isn't simply about a relationship; it is about wanting to get away from an environment that seems to define you.
Its appeal is obvious: anyone who has ever looked at their surroundings and thought I need to get out of here has the emotional vocabulary immediately.
Musically, it's bright, fast and exceptionally catchy.
It also demonstrates how A Day To Remember could take the frustrations traditionally associated with punk and package them in a form that could reach a much broader audience.
8. You Be Tails, I'll Be Sonic
The title alone is pure A Day To Remember.
A reference to the famous Sonic the Hedgehog character pairing gives the song a playful surface, but underneath is another muscular piece of post-hardcore.
This is one of the record's more aggressive cuts, with heavier guitar work and an arrangement that repeatedly shifts between melody and attack.
It is also a reminder of the band's personality.
A Day To Remember never behaved like a band determined to make solemn, po-faced “important” music. Their records could be emotionally serious while their titles were deliberately ridiculous.
That combination became part of their identity.
9. Out of Time
“Out of Time” brings the album back towards melodic punk.
The song has a restless quality, driven by the feeling that circumstances are moving faster than the narrator can control.
The guitars are bright and compressed, the drums push hard and McKinnon's vocal gives the track its sense of urgency.
It's perhaps one of the album's less immediately distinctive songs, but that's partly because ‘What Separates Me From You' is so tightly packed with hooks that even its supporting tracks operate at a remarkably high level.
The band isn't reinventing the wheel. They're making sure the wheel spins extremely fast.
10. If I Leave
The album closes with its title-adjacent statement.
“If I Leave” is more reflective than the opening tracks, giving the record a sense of resolution without pretending that everything has been solved.
The heaviness remains, but the song feels less confrontational.
It's a fitting conclusion because ‘What Separates Me From You' has ultimately been an album about emotional separation in several forms: leaving relationships, leaving places, leaving behind versions of yourself and trying to establish where you belong.
The final track doesn't provide a neat answer. It leaves the question hanging.
And perhaps that's the point.
The original album contains 10 tracks and runs for approximately 32 minutes 52 seconds, an unusually concise running time for a 2010 rock release.
That brevity is important.
There is almost no fat.
A Day To Remember understood that their songs were strongest when they hit hard, established the hook and got out. There are no unnecessary seven-minute epics, no extended instrumental passages and no attempt to demonstrate technical ability simply for its own sake.
By 2010, the band's particular blend had become so recognisable that it was tempting to reduce it to a genre label: pop-core, easycore, post-hardcore, whatever happened to be fashionable that week.
But those descriptions miss something.
A Day To Remember were essentially solving a songwriting problem:
How do you make a song heavy enough for a hardcore crowd and catchy enough for everyone else?
Their answer was to stop treating those audiences as mutually exclusive.
A breakdown could sit next to a huge pop chorus.
A screamed verse could lead into a melody.
A song about heartbreak could contain one of the heaviest guitar riffs on the album.
That contradiction became their strength.
A formula which can be found in our classic album for this month from Hawthorne Heights, a peer, who had spent the early 2000s trying to create this same musical chemistry.
‘What Separates Me From You' is therefore less a radical departure than a refinement of the band's existing language. Contemporary criticism noted that the album retained the quintessential A Day To Remember sound while becoming somewhat darker and more serious than ‘Homesick’.
Kevin Skaff recalled that the band undertook pre-production with Chad Gilbert and former guitarist Tom Denney, while McKinnon said he deliberately wanted to retain the same team that had worked on ‘Homesick’.
That continuity matters.
The album wasn't made by a band searching for a new identity.
It was made by a band that had found one.
There is an interesting historical position occupied by ‘What Separates Me From You'.
It arrived just as the lines between underground heavy music and mainstream rock were becoming increasingly blurred. The internet had dismantled many of the old barriers between scenes, while festivals, social media and music games allowed bands from relatively specific subcultures to reach enormous audiences.
A Day To Remember was perfectly suited to that environment.
They could play a hardcore bill.
They could appear at Warped Tour.
They could headline increasingly large venues.
And they could write a chorus that thousands of people would sing back at them.
The album eventually went Gold in the United States, while “All I Want” also achieved Gold certification. The record was subsequently certified Silver in the UK.
Its influence is perhaps easiest to hear in the number of bands that subsequently attempted the same formula: metalcore breakdowns, pop-punk choruses, clean/scream vocals and lyrics aimed squarely at the emotional life of young adults.
Some copied the ingredients.
Few captured the balance.
That balance is the real achievement of ‘What Separates Me From You'. It isn't particularly interested in reinventing heavy music. It doesn't need to be.
Instead, it takes the conventions of hardcore, metalcore and pop-punk and makes them function together with extraordinary efficiency.
The album is aggressive without being inaccessible, melodic without becoming soft, emotional without entirely losing its sense of humour.
And, above all, it understands the fundamental rule of great rock records:
give people something to shout along with.
More than a decade and a half on, ‘What Separates Me From You' remains a remarkably clear snapshot of the moment when post-hardcore's underground vocabulary became a mainstream musical language.
The riffs still hit.
The choruses still stick.
And that peculiar A Day To Remember trick — making a breakdown feel like a pop hook — remains the reason the record works.
A key document of early-2010s post-hardcore's crossover moment and arguably the clearest distillation of A Day To Remembers signature sound: huge choruses, low-tuned guitars, breakdowns, pop-punk hooks and emotional directness compressed into a lean ten-track package.
A happy two stepping, high five throwing, head banging October from the RRC team.
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