“I can’t believe how many of his songs kill me,” I text Matt, as my son Cole and I walk home from the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts.
Matt and I listened to Matthew Good in university. Matt had The Last of the Ghetto Astronauts, and I had Beautiful Midnight. He probably did too. Everybody had that album in 1999.
Since then, Good left his band and has released nine solo albums, with a new one currently in the works. The hits didn’t hit as hard as they did at the end of the century, but the playlist he rolls out in 2026 makes clear that some of his best work came during his solo era.
I mention the show to a few people as the week progresses, and the common response I get is, ‘Oh, I loved so many of his songs, but I forgot about Matthew Good.’
It happens. I’m staring down 50. It has been 27 years since Beautiful Midnight. The world has gotten noisy, and Good hasn’t been in the headlines. CanCon might get them to play you once, but it doesn’t make them play you again when the new wave comes.
I’ve recently brought my old CDs out of the basement. I bought a new device to play them on and turned Spotify off. The gambling ads did it for me. I couldn’t have Dylan tracks interrupted by casino spots anymore. This week Matthew Good was in heavy rotation, but it didn’t feel like nostalgia. It wasn’t like those weeks when I put on Better Than Ezra or the Gin Blossoms and pretend as they matter. Good matters. His songs feel prescient, like he saw this X-rated future first, and tried to warn us. But it wasn’t just that.
Good is a writer. He always seemed to try to do more than tell us the obvious stuff. At the concert, he lamented a lyric he wrote as a young man — a line about coming back from an amusement park accident. He laughed about how hard he once tried to sound cool, without understanding he’d have to sing those lines forever. But those swings he took in his twenties were rarely whiffs. He pushed back against what was coming. He struggled out loud. He tried to place himself within the noise. In his first massive hit, Apparitions, he laments us being stuck inside our own machine. In 1999, it wasn’t how it is now. I got my first cell phone in Dublin from my head chef Gordon. It was a beautiful black brick with a duct-taped antenna that couldn’t do anything but receive calls. He wanted to be able to send me across the street to the bar to watch the football and call when it was time to mop up. He was a wonderful guy. But that wasn’t a machine we were lost in.
I brought Beautiful Midnight with me to Dublin for those years. The CD. There wasn’t even a hint of streaming or iPods at that point, so if you wanted your music, you had to carry it. I washed dishes at Auriga restaurant, which was right on top of The Bad Ass Cafe, and I’d bring that CD to listen to as I mopped. We all brought our tunes with us. In that kitchen, I fell in love with The Smiths and was introduced to Ian Dury and The Blockheads’ New Boots and Panties. I don’t think I’ve listened to it since, but as it was one of Gordon’s favourites, we played it every day. More than once, while cleaning those disgusting dishes, I heard Good sing about getting some good grades and working the night shift.
His music came with me. It was a part of my thinking.
But yes, the people I talk to say they have forgotten about him. He was a big, shiny tune that they didn’t listen to again after the first million times. I knew almost every song he played at his weekend concert. He added a string section for the tour, and it made some of the older songs almost kill you; they were so beautiful. Halfway through Omissions of the Omen, which was on the album Matt had but I didn’t, Good hit a line about arming ourselves for the fight, and I turned to Cole and whispered, “I can’t believe how good this still is.” He is sixteen, and the world is now his. He agreed.
And Good seemed healthy and happy at the show. He chatted with the crowd and was quick and self-effacing and funny and real. Good has been through wars with his health, so for us old guys, seeing him like this is a huge win.
If I’m going to be honest, Good hadn’t been in heavy rotation for me either over the past few years, but there are songs I always go back to, and a few newer ones come with me wherever I go. His most recent album has a track called Sicily, with a verse I keep in my pocket:
Oh, Sicily
I, I feel so obvious
Maybe I’m just bad at things
Maybe I’m just better off camera
’cause I feel everything
And you know, maybe it’s time I oughta
That’s part of what you missed when you forgot about Good. Some of the prescience and anger has turned inward. Some of the reaching has turned to healing. It happens. The world doesn’t shift so you need to.
So, yeah. Matthew Good matters. Dig up those discs and catch up. If you don’t know where to start, here are some songs, old and new, you might have missed. And go see a show. He sounds great, and Good is always better on camera.
- Sicily
- A Silent Army in the Trees
- Born Losers
- Fearless
- Omissions of the Omen
- Weapon
- How It Goes
- Load Me Up
- Prime Time Deliverance
- Running for Home