Songoftheday 6/19/18 - Nothing's so loud as hearing when we lie, the truth is not kind and you've said neither am I...

"All I Want" - Toad The Wet Sprocket
from the album fear (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 18

Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock band Toad The Wet Sprocket, who came together in the mid-1980s and named themselves from a fictional group used in a Monty Python sketch. Schoolmates from Santa Barbara, California, they initially released their debut album Bread & Circus in 1989. One of the songs from the set, "One Little Girl", reached Billboard's Modern Rock radio chart at #24. With that success they signed to Columbia Records, and recorded their sophomore effort Pale, which came out the following year. Again they landed a moderate hit on the Modern Rock chart with "Come Back Down", but it took until their third release, fear, that the timing was right for their pensive rock sound.

In 1991, lead singer Glen Phillips and Toad the Wet Sprocket released fear, with the big-sounded "Is It For Me" as the first single, but it failed to catch on. Waiting in the wings was the jangle-pop gem "All I Want" as the follow-up single. Written by Phillips with bandmates Todd Nichols, Dean Dinning, and Randy Guss, it gave them their first and highest-charting pop hit...

"All I Want" became Toad and the Wet Sprocket's first and biggest pop hit, reaching the top-20 in September of 1992. The song peaked at #22 on both the Mainstream and Modern Rock radio charts in Billboard, and crossed over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list. Internationally, the record just missed the top ten in Canada, spending a week at #11, and was a minor hit in New Zealand (#44) and Germany (#53).

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Here's the band performing "All I Want" on the long-forgotten Dennis Miller late-night show in 1992...