Yourself or Someone Like You
album by Matchbox Twenty
Yourself or Someone Like You is the debut album by American rock band Matchbox 20. It was released on October 1, 1996, by Lava Records and Atlantic Records. The album has been certified 12× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Composition and release
The album features a sound similar to traditional rock and post-grunge. The album features themes of adolescence, adultery, loneliness, domestic violence, psychological abuse, humiliation, depression, anger, and alcoholism.
According to Rob Thomas, the album's title was originally to be Woodshed Diaries. However, that changed when Thomas and Paul Doucette were at a woman's musical performance at Café Largo when the singer said "this song is for you, or someone like you". They loved the phrase so much that they insisted on changing the album's title, despite the fact that 3,500 copies of the album with the original title had already been made. Their labels agreed; however, the name change resulted in the album's release being delayed.
The album sold a mere 610 copies in its first week; however, it eventually went on to sell several million copies in the United States.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Yourself or Someone Like You” as album by Matchbox Twenty. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as album by Matchbox Twenty. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2455103. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Yourself or Someone Like You” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.