Most of the material off Aussie rockers Jet's new album, 'Shaka Rock,' was written following the band's year-hiatus after the end of the 'Shine On' tour. But 'She's a Genius' actually dates back to the end of the tour drummer Chris Cester tells Spinner. "I remember writing the riff and the melody of that song towards the end, during all the madness of the 'Shine On' tour, which was really unusual for such an up-tempo, upbeat song with that kind of message in it," he says. "It was really strange."

For starters, Cester and his brother Nic were dealing with the passing of their father, after a lengthy battle with cancer. "The personal things that were going on with dad and all that caused the big rifts in the band that just sort of created a whole spore of other problems," he recalls. "The last few months of the 'Shine On' tour for example I remember band members head-butting each other. It was just crazy. It just became this weird sort of circus and everybody was unhappy."

Listen to 'She's a Genius'

While the group was unaware of it at the time, their sabbatical helped keep Jet afloat. "We learned as we got back together and made 'Shaka Rock,' the downtime was actually necessary because we just needed to redefine what it was about what we did," he says. "And I think we really needed to get away from each other to just sort of recover. We weren't gonna bother continuing unless we were able to get that time to come back and mean it."

The group is also hoping the down time allowed fans a break from the Jet overexposure that came with the success of 'Are You Gonna be my Girl.' "There was one point during 'Get Born,' no matter where I was, every single time the radio came on I would hear 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl,' 'Cold Hard Bitch,' or 'Look What You've Done,' we'd be on video hits and you'd pick up a newspaper and there'd be a story in there," Cester recalls. "And it hit me, 'If I was a 16-year-old kid I would f---ing hate us right now.' There was no escaping Jet for a couple of years and that really just drove people insane. But then we went off the radar for our own reasons for a long enough time for people to sort of realize, 'Hey, that wasn't really our fault.'"

Jet Tour Dates
on TourTracker.com