Everyone praises the outlaw — the outsider, the rebel. But what about the underdog? It’s a less glamorous character. Less marketable, for sure. But it’s where Aaron Lee Tasjan digs in on his newest LP, Get Over It, Underdog, with inspiration from his mentor and consummate booster of the underdog, the late Todd Snider.
Tasjan had reached an impasse after releasing 2024’s excellent Stellar Evolution and snagging a Grammy nomination. Despite any accolades that may have come, the environment for an independent artist seemed gloomier than ever. Being an underdog in entertainment kind of just felt like being underwater.
So Tasjan reached out to Snider, his close friend (Tasjan produced what would be Snider’s last album, High, Lonesome, and Then Some), for advice. He encouraged him — in his very Todd Snider sort of way — to keep going. Snider became a sounding board for a set of 11 songs that meld Tasjan’s knack for off-kilter but truly humanistic storytelling with vibrant melodies that shift and shine: a little glam rock, a little sing-talk folk, a lot of empathizing for the kind of underdog that may not get a lot of attention but still has a whole lot to say.
Tasjan has always excelled at connecting live. Like Snider, he embraces the space between the songs as much as the songs themselves. On Get Over It, Underdog, he draws you in immediately using those same tools of engagement. “Science Fiction,” the album’s opener, finds him on a ramble through our own self-made state of discontent. “We can be pretty ugly and the world is round,” he sings, the strings letting everything sound a little more optimistic than we might actually deserve.
Lest things get predictable, Tasjan’s adept at letting the music battle with the lyrics in a way that hints at how any experience is far more complex than we are led to believe. “Lost & Alone” is driven by a chorus that is both peppy and Heartbreakers-esque, while still being pretty damn gloomy. And when Tasjan heads back home on “Ballad of an East Canton Lowlife,” he follows the kind of forgotten antihero who is far easier to dismiss than love. “I made it through the eighth grade,” he sings and slinks, “before I got a real job.”
Humor here, is key, but mixed with a real-world sort of sadness that only someone like Tasjan — and Snider — could bring. “She goes harder than Bea Arthur, she’s the golden one,” Tasjan sings on “Lydia’s Boots,” a song written after a Lydia Loveless concert. It’s partly an ode to the magic of a stage performance (and some great shoes), but there’s also a melancholy desire to dream and disappear in the life of anyone else.
Snider died before Tasjan could complete the album, and both his presence and his loss is woven throughout. On the tender piano ballad “The Dream Comes True” that closes Get Over It, Underdog, Tasjan is making amends with what it means to chase what you love, even when it sometimes leaves you broken: how it’s the little moments with the friends you can lean on that shine brighter than any marquee.
