💜 M2M Fans Newsletter #4

The unofficial M2M newsletter!

Hello, everyone!

The tour truly has come to a Better Ending. For a moment there, I’m sure many of us thought that they’d keep touring indefinitely. After they announced new concerts in September, then a few more appearances in October… I genuinely thought they might tour well until 2026. However, México City has officially become the last stop in the Better Endings Tour.

Was this a Better Ending to the M2M story? I cannot speak for the band (or the fans) but the answer seems quite clear: an unequivocal yes. The tour proved without a shadow of a doubt that most of us were not over M2M, and we brought receipts: sold out concerts all over the world.

It seems to me that the breakup in the early 2000’s was so crushing that many fans never stopped listening to their songs and so this reunion has come to prove that if you stay true to yourself a Better Ending is possible.

With the tour over, there’s a looming cloud over M2Mland. Is this truly the Better Ending? What about new beginnings? Is there new music coming?

In today’s newsletter I’ll explore these questions, what I think they mean to the band, and what we can do as a fandom now that the tour is over.

Top: La Maraka, México City.

Bottom: The Rock Star and the Pop Star

📸 @fernando.writes.things

As always, please remember to check the official sources. As much as I enjoy writing this newsletter and adding more commentary to certain items, there is no substitute for following M2M on their official accounts here:

🎸 The Better Endings Tour

During the Better Endings Tour the band performed for 9 months and visited 10 countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, China, Taiwan and México. If I had to guess, the band played for an aggregate 100,000 people over the better part of a year. I’m sure their reach is 10-20x that with their official social media and all the fan accounts blasting content 24/7.

The tour is a momentous achievement for any band, let alone one whose last album came out 24 years ago! 💜

If you want to know what their concerts are like, I’ve already written about my experience at OverOslo here and about the Oslo Sentrum Scene concerts here. If you need the dopamine of amazing photos and videos, the amazing community of fan accounts, like @m2m_music, @m2m.mexico, @m2m.oslo, @m2mpurpleroom and @m2m.thailand (among others!) cover the concerts and everything in between. They put in a lot of work to get amazing photos, great videos, and fan accounts. You should give them a follow and enjoy their content.

Instead, I’d like to focus on a more complicated subject. One that cannot be dealt with in Instagram. I’d like to figure out what to do with the emptiness the band has left now that their reunion tour is done.

The not-so-secret questions of The Better Endings Tour

I was lucky enough to attend 5 concerts: OverOslo in the summer, the two concerts in Oslo in the Fall, and both concerts in México during the winter. Even as a biased observer, I saw the same thing at every concert: people reliving happy moments and the M’s enjoying their rekindled friendship. I’ve seen other famous artists in concert before and none of them had this electricity in the air. I’m grateful to have felt such an incredible feeling. The M’s pour their hearts on stage every time and the fans repay them in kind.

During the tour, however, I kept hearing the same questions over and over again: is the band back together for good? Will they release new music? Is there a documentary coming?

I shared the feeling behind these questions myself until very recently. I questioned why the band wouldn’t give answers or even hints to some of these. Of course there’s difficulty in predicting the future, but surely they must be aware that these questions would arise at some point.

Fans waited for answers for more than a year, but now that the tour is over and the band is getting a well-deserved rest, the fandom must now face the reality that a lot of these questions will remain unanswered for the (near?) future.

We don’t know if the band is back again for good. We don’t know if new music is coming. We don’t know if a documentary is coming.

I posit that these questions have no answers, not even from the band.

What was the tour about?

Back in the day, when M2M broke up, all we had to go around were rumors. These stories based on facts, embellished by either the media or the fans, painted a picture that I won’t rehash here. I’m certain they were careless about people’s feelings all for the sake of feeding the media and the fans.

That’s no longer the case today. Today, the band has the last word on who they are and what they do. If you’ve been paying close attention, you’re aware that they have told us everything. Not only have they told us how things happened—they’ve also told us what the tour is really about.

I’m sure some of you think the tour was about the band getting together to play one last time, and that’s not a bad answer. They have said it in several interviews. It’s literally the tour name.

I’m also sure some of you think the tour was about figuring out the future. If there was a million streams of their songs in mid-2024, did that mean M2M could make a successful comeback?

If you saw even a handful of the dozens of interviews Marit and Marion have done in the last year, the purpose of the tour should be crystal clear: the tour was their way of seizing back the narrative of who they are as a band and what happened back when they broke up.

Everything else is secondary.

I am certain the catalyst to playing as a band again was the renewed friendship along with the desire to sing together and to meet their fans in person. Perhaps the original plan really was to have this as M2M’s last hurrah. A way to close the chapter for good, not surrounded by executives and snakes but with fans singing songs from their youth.

They didn’t set out to make money although the concerts were a financial success. They didn’t set out to build a future although that would be the cherry on top. The tour was their way of sticking a purple flag in the ground and claiming M2M as Marit and Marion’s and no one else’s.

Their Better Ending

Once you distill the essence of the tour to them regaining the power to tell their stories, you can see why the band would not address any of the obvious fan questions concretely.

For example, is the band back together for good? Today, there’s no executives to answer the question. No managers. No stakeholders. It’s only Marit and Marion who get to decide and I’m sure they don’t know the answer if they’re back together for good.

The tour was successful and their chemistry on stage is undeniable, but I believe the tour’s success both blindsided them. Like any endeavor, you hope for success but what they got was a movement. Sold out concerts. Fans rabid for more music. I’m sure one or two fans a little too eager to get a selfie stalking them.

The success posed a difficult question: how much of the tour was fueled by nostalgia? If the tour was based on nostalgia, then it’s better to leave the extremely positive and sweet feelings as M2M’s last chapter. Right now, with nothing on the horizon, the tour lives up to its name. This is a Better Ending for all of us. No Atlantic mishaps. No toxic media pitting M against M. Just pure, unadulterated joy.

Even if nostalgia was not the driving factor behind fans showing up, we need to remember that each of them have successful careers in Norway. Undertaking another worldwide tour or composing new music means pausing their individual careers. Making new music together could mean making less music individually. These are all direct tradeoffs, even if we don’t consider their emotional consequences of each decision.

If you think about it, how could they answer the question? How could they answer any of these questions before letting the incredible amount of feelings evoked by the tour settle down. They need to look back and reflect on the tour. They need to sit down and have a calm, collected conversation with themselves to see if they want more or if closing the book feels right.

The band doesn’t know because, for once, they’re in complete control. What a thrilling notion it must be to finally stare down the path you always searched for.

What do we do now?

This means no new music is coming for now. No more tours for now. No more M2M for now. Collectively, we don’t have a lot of options other than chill. Marit and Marion are firmly grasping the wheel and they’re happy to take us wherever they’re going. Nowhere else.

This doesn’t mean we just sit on our thumbs and wait. The aftermath of the tour has been a new spring for the fandom: new fan groups like @m2m.oslo have led the way for old fan groups, like my dear @m2m.mexico to blossom once more. People have taken to writing like @ravnlarsenanthology’s deep dives into the duo’s lyrics or, you know, this very newsletter. The fandom is even abuzz with excitement with new accounts like @marionravenshair, @maritfingerheart or @marionravncapes (who was recently reposted by the Rock star herself 😆); ridiculous, beautiful, novel flowers in the M2M garden.

There’s also the Global Chat in Telegram and a WhatsApp group in México. I’m sure there’s many other groups out there I’m surely unaware of. These are buzzing with fans sharing images, videos, gossip (good gossip?). They’re forging friendships and generally having a good time.

So, while we wait for the band to forge their own destiny, I encourage you to make art! Write, comment, like, make videos, sing to M2M’s or Marit or Marion’s music. Spread the joy that the fandom gorges on. Spread the word and enjoy what the tour meant. Enjoy what the music meant.

Like the old adage says, “The best time to be an M2M fan was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” 😉

M2M at La Maraka

📸 @fernando.writes.things

That’s it for today’s newsletter. Thank you so much for reading!

Like I said, this is an unofficial, fan-made newsletter but if you liked it, feel free to share the newsletter with your friends, reply to this email, or reach me @fernando.writes.things.

See you soon 💜

– Fernando