Train

Monahan has watched his own twelve-year-old son fight through a School of Rock audition against classmates who all wanted the same song. "The one song... so many other people want to sing it is Going to California, which really inspired me to leave Erie, Pennsylvania and move to San Francisco," he told the Takin' a Walk podcast, naming the exact Led Zeppelin track behind his own cross-country move. That devotion runs deeper than nostalgia: in 2016 Train re-recorded Led Zeppelin II start to finish, note for note. "I'm honoring what I think is the greatest rock and roll band of all time," Monahan told SiriusXM.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1969

Whole Lotta LoveLed Zeppelin

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2016

Whole Lotta LoveTrain

listen forZeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" rides John Bonham's stomping backbeat into Jimmy Page's fuzzed-out riff and a psychedelic, echo-drenched breakdown built around Robert Plant's moan. Train's version, from the 2016 tribute album Train Does Led Zeppelin II, chases that riff and that vocal howl almost beat for beat rather than reinterpreting them — a band choosing exact reverence over reinvention, riff for riff and howl for howl.

Monahan traces a specific cassette to his own songwriting: Supertramp's Breakfast in America, worn thin in Erie when he was in third grade. "The record that meant the most to me as a kid was Breakfast in America," he told the Takin' a Walk podcast. "I couldn't believe that human beings were able to make something sound as beautiful as this album." That is the register Monahan chased once he started writing his own songs — witty, piano-driven character sketches dressed up as pop hooks — years before Train's own breakout single made the same bet.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1979

The Logical SongSupertramp

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1998

Meet VirginiaTrain

listen forSupertramp's "The Logical Song" turns an existential complaint into a bouncy, piano-and-Wurlitzer hook, Roger Hodgson's falsetto riding a jaunty verse-to-chorus lift. Train's breakout "Meet Virginia" runs the same trick on a different subject — a wry character sketch pushed along by a nearly identical piano-and-organ bounce, the exact pop register Monahan says he fell asleep to as a kid, three decades before he wrote his own version of it.

James Taylor is the first name Monahan reaches for, twice, when asked what he actually chose to listen to as a kid, apart from what his six older siblings played him. "Then when I found my own music I was drawn to James Taylor and the Guess Who, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder," he told Songwriter Universe in 2006; asked again by the Long Island Press eighteen years later, he led with Taylor once more. It isn't one dramatic story — it's a habit, the name that keeps surfacing whenever Monahan is asked about his own taste.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1970

Fire and RainJames Taylor

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2003

Calling All AngelsTrain

listen forTaylor's "Fire and Rain" carries private grief in a hushed, unhurried vocal that never rises to match its subject, guitar and strings staying spare beneath him. Train's "Calling All Angels" works a comparable register: a string-cushioned meditation on loss and hope sung like a secret passed at library volume — the confessional mode Monahan singled out as the music he chose for himself, before anyone chose it for him.