Exhausted after months of touring in summer 2004, Something Corporate’s frontman Andrew McMahon began penning his own songs, which diverged from the feel of many SoCo songs, and conflicted with the ideas of the band’s other songwriter, Josh Partington. Following the announcement of Something Corporate’s disbandment, Andrew officially announced his solo project.
Initially, the project was considered to be called The Mannequins, but the idea was discouraged due to the surplus of band names beginning with “the.” The project picked up its eventual name of Jack’s Mannequin from McMahon’s song “Dear Jack,” which ended up on the Dear Jack EP accompanying the 2009 documentary of the same name chronicling McMahon’s battle with leukemia. While many believe Jack’s Mannequin’s first album, Everything in Transit, addresses his battle with leukemia, in fact he learned of his illness while mastering the album.
After his diagnosis, McMahon later stated that “the band name became ironic–considering the Jack I wrote the song for & ultimately named the project after, suffered from childhood leukemia.”