Jimmy Eat World

The band's music is commonly classified as emo, in particular because of their emotional sound on their 1999 album Clarity. The album Clarity received little support in the United States from the band's label, Capitol Records. The band purchased albums directly from the distributor and shipped them independently to Europe, achieving success in Germany. Realizing they were not valued by their label, they left for DreamWorks.

Their next album, Bleed American, found much greater success stateside due to the catchy single and provocative music video 'The Middle'. The album's name was changed to Jimmy Eat World after the events of September 11, 2001 in order to avoid misinterpretation of the original title. Their latest album Futures was released in 2004.

The name Jimmy Eat World does not refer to Jim Adkins. Tom Linton's younger siblings, Ed and Jimmy fought constantly when they were younger. Jimmy, who was stronger and overweight, would usually win. Ed, at 8-years-old, as revenge, drew with crayons a picture of Jimmy shoving the entire world into his gaping mouth with the caption, 'Jimmy eat world.' The picture, and by extension the band name, may have been inspired by an episode of the cartoon show Tiny Toon Adventures, where the regulars put on a student film festival. Dizzy Devil's film, 'Dizzy Eat World', was a 5 second piece drawn crudely in crayon where Dizzy's gaping maw engulfed the Earth. The piece met with deafening silence from the toon audience.