After taking a personality test, mewithoutYou frontman Aaron Weiss realised it was time to shake up his viewpoint.
“The [category] that I fit the most squarely was ‘the perfectionist’,” he admits over the phone after a long day filming a new music video. “Somebody who’s always trying to make something perfect, or trying to make the world perfect – make their world perfect.”
Perfectionism for Aaron has always been a concern. His lyrics over the course of mewithoutYou’s career are overflowing with intricacy; in the past, he’s even sung in Arabic (‘The Dryness In The Rain’) and has a song that utilises French to reference artist Rene Magritte (‘Dirty Air’).
Now, he’s more than happy to show how this reflects upon his newfound inner-understanding.
“In my case [it’s] write the perfect song, or be morally perfect and pure. That may have its merits, but it can also be exhausting and have some negative repercussions.
“The personality type that I was most interested in becoming was ‘the observer’, and that’s somebody who’s able to take a step back; watch and listen and try to learn about what’s going on. When I saw that one, I immediately aspired to be like that.”
mewithoutYou are always pushing forward to better themselves, or at the very least, open their minds up to something new.
“I don’t know if we can change our personality types in any fundamental way, but I have to believe that we can make progress in a certain direction if we set our intention that way,” Aaron muses.
“I have tried to step back and rest, and to be more accepting of things as they are, and become more interested in learning about things as they are, rather than prioritising making something into something it’s not. Even if it’s a well-intentioned gesture to improve a situation sometimes, that can in itself be a burden.”
