Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
In 2009, lead vocalist Matt Scannell said he "still experience[d] joy" singing "Everything You Want" because he knew "it came from a true place". The song deals with unrequited love, and Scannell explained its background in a 2010 interview:
I was in love with this girl, and she was just a broken person. She kept turning to everyone except me for love and acceptance, and I wanted so much to help her. I wanted to be the one to give her everything she wanted, but I couldn't. She just couldn't accept it from me, and it was that pain, that led me to creating the song.
Scannell later elaborated on its meaning in a 2024 interview, stating that it was also about being stuck in a friend zone:
"Everything You Want" is really about a woman. We were young and trying to figure out what love meant. And she was continually looking at what I thought and continued to think were the wrong people. She would come and sort of cry on my shoulder when they inevitably treated her poorly. And the whole time, I was pining for her. I just loved her. I wanted to be there for her, to be with her, to be more than a friend for her, and it just wasn't in the cards. I could see it in her eyes every time we would talk. I was very much in the friend zone with her. So the only way that I could talk about it was by writing a song about it. I actually believe that she doesn't know that that song was written about her. I'm perfectly happy with that.
In 2009, lead vocalist Matt Scannell said he "still experience[d] joy" singing "Everything You Want" because he knew "it came from a true place". The song deals with unrequited love, and Scannell explained its background in a 2010 interview:
I was in love with this girl, and she was just a broken person. She kept turning to everyone except me for love and acceptance, and I wanted so much to help her. I wanted to be the one to give her everything she wanted, but I couldn't. She just couldn't accept it from me, and it was that pain, that led me to creating the song.
Scannell later elaborated on its meaning in a 2024 interview, stating that it was also about being stuck in a friend zone:
"Everything You Want" is really about a woman. We were young and trying to figure out what love meant. And she was continually looking at what I thought and continued to think were the wrong people. She would come and sort of cry on my shoulder when they inevitably treated her poorly. And the whole time, I was pining for her. I just loved her. I wanted to be there for her, to be with her, to be more than a friend for her, and it just wasn't in the cards. I could see it in her eyes every time we would talk. I was very much in the friend zone with her. So the only way that I could talk about it was by writing a song about it. I actually believe that she doesn't know that that song was written about her. I'm perfectly happy with that.
