Dan Campbell - Other People's Lives (2021)

The Wonder Years’ Dan Campbell Goes Folk on Other People’s Lives. The Wonder Years vocalist does himself no favors by allowing saccharine ballads to take the lead on his solo debut.

Other People’s Lives, the new folk album from Campbell, is an attempt to recalibrate and move on from the sheer intensity of Sister Cities. During early quarantine, Campbell asked for stories and snippets of information about several people in his life and then attempted to translate that to a collection of songs. With this album, we’re given glimpses into the lives of strangers. From the portrait of a couple falling in love on “My Break in the Rain” to the nostalgic “The Kings of Halloween,” these songs’ universality makes them immediately appealing, but deeply vague. If the last The Wonder Years album occasionally drowned out some of Campbell’s most familiar qualities as a songwriter—his melodic sweetness and occasionally cloying lyrics, for one—then Other People’s Lives puts them on display for everyone to hear.

As if to explain what was intended with this album, the opener “Conversations with Other People” kicks off with plucked acoustic guitars and a carefully placed violin. Over that lethargic, folky background, Campbell sings lines like “I’ll carry what you taught me, I’ll hold it close until I’m gone” until hints of drums and harmonies attempt to make the soundscape more exciting. It’s the sort of drowsy, generic tune that Campbell could write in his sleep. What’s unfortunate about Other People’s Lives is that it mostly consists of similar songs. The intent behind these tunes is noble, but the production is lifeless, Campbell’s typical roar as a vocalist has been reduced to a passive mutter, and his lyrics have never been more saccharine. With a Wonder Years song, a giant chorus melody or an impassioned vocal performance would save a line like “It’s getting harder to find new words to describe the ways that I miss you all the time.” On this album, Campbell’s worst lines stick out like sore thumbs.