You probably remember the scene. Natalie Portman, wearing a neon green hospital smock and massive headphones, looks at Zach Braff and says, "You gotta hear this one song—it’ll change your life; I swear."
The song was "New Slang."
In that moment, a generation of indie kids found their anthem. But if you actually listen to the lyrics the shins new slang famously features, it’s not exactly the "life-changing" rays of sunshine you might expect. It’s actually pretty dark. It’s about being stuck. It’s about a relationship that’s rotting from the inside and a town you can’t wait to see in your rearview mirror.
The Albuquerque "Saturn Return"
James Mercer wasn’t a rock star when he wrote this. He was in his late 20s, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and feeling like a total failure. He’s often referred to this period as his "Saturn Return"—that astrological window around age 29 when everything feels like it’s falling apart so it can be rebuilt.
He was working a job he hated. He was in a five-year relationship that was slowly dissolving. He was living as a "hermit," obsessed with recording demos in his bedroom while the local music scene felt increasingly alien to him.
The line "Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth" isn't about dental work. It’s about his talent (the "gold teeth") and his resentment (the "curse"). He felt he had something to say, but he didn't know how to say it without offending everyone he knew.
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Albuquerque, at the time, was dominated by a "macho" punk and heavy rock scene. Mercer was making jangly, melodic, pensive folk-pop. He felt like an outsider in his own home.
Decoding the Weirdest Lyrics
Let’s talk about those bakers.
Godspeed all the bakers at dawn / May they all cut their thumbs / And bleed into their buns 'til they melt away.
It sounds violent, right? It kind of is. Mercer was looking at people with stable, routine lives—people who got up at 4:00 AM to bake bread—and he felt a weird mix of pity and spite. He couldn't imagine being that "content" with a routine, yet he was jealous of their stability. The "bleeding into the buns" is a visceral image of being consumed by your own work, losing your identity to the grind.
Then there’s the "king of the eyesores."
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And I'd 'a danced like the king of the eyesores / And the rest of our lives would 'a fared well.
This is pure regret. It’s Mercer saying that if the person he loved had truly accepted him—"taken to me like a gull takes to the wind"—he wouldn't have cared how ridiculous he looked. He would have been happy to be a fool for them. But they didn't. So he stayed in his "tree," isolated and "old and bony."
The "Garden State" Effect
It’s impossible to talk about lyrics the shins new slang enthusiasts love without mentioning Garden State. Before the movie, The Shins were a respected indie band on Sub Pop, but they weren't a household name.
Zach Braff heard the song while working on Scrubs and became obsessed. He literally wrote it into the script.
When the film hit in 2004, the song exploded. It won a Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack. Suddenly, this quiet, acoustic track about Albuquerque angst was being played in malls and at weddings.
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Mercer has admitted it was surreal. He went from being a guy who couldn't afford to get married or have kids to someone who could move to Portland and make music for a living. The song actually did change his life, just like the movie promised.
Why does it still sound fresh?
A lot of 2000s indie rock sounds dated now. It’s too "twee" or too overproduced. "New Slang" survives because it’s structurally perfect.
It uses a simple, descending chord progression that feels familiar, almost like a lost Simon & Garfunkel track. But the lyrics are "oblique." They aren't literal. They allow you to project your own boredom and your own "dirt in your fries" onto them.
The Legacy of the "New Slang" Lyrics
The Shins would go on to have bigger hits on the charts, like "Phantom Limb" or "Simple Song." But "New Slang" remains the DNA of the band.
It captures that specific "quarter-life crisis" feeling. That moment when you realize you aren't a kid anymore, but you haven't quite figured out how to be an adult.
Actionable Insights for Music Lovers
If you want to dive deeper into the world of James Mercer’s songwriting, here’s how to do it:
- Listen to "Oh, Inverted World" in full. Don't just stick to the hits. Tracks like "The Past and Pending" carry the same melancholic weight as "New Slang."
- Compare it to "Caring Is Creepy." This is the other Shins song on the Garden State soundtrack. It’s much more psychedelic and shows the range Mercer was playing with at the time.
- Read about the Albuquerque "Flake Music" days. Before The Shins, Mercer was in a band called Flake Music. Their album When You Land Here, It's Time to Return is a faster, power-pop version of what would become the Shins' signature sound.
- Watch the music video. Directed by Lance Bangs, it’s a series of homages to classic indie album covers (like Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime). It perfectly captures the "indie-record-store" culture of the early 2000s.
"New Slang" wasn't meant to be a hit. It was a goodbye letter to a town and a version of himself that Mercer was outgrowing. The fact that it ended up changing millions of lives is just one of those weird, beautiful accidents of pop culture history.