Songoftheday 11/13/19 - Frustrated Incorporated well I know just what you need, I might just have the thing I know what you'd pay to see...
from the album Let Your Dim Light Shine (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #20 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8
Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock band Soul Asylum, who had last scaled the American pop Top-40 in the summer of 1993 with their plea to help teenage runaways with the song "Runaway Train". After hiring on keyboardist Joey Huffman and replacing their drummer with journeyman Sterling Campbell (Duran Duran, B-52's), and playing at President Bill Clinton's inauguration (take that, Three Doors Down), the band started out the following year with a song they gave to the soundtrack of the movie Clerks, "Can't Even Tell", which almost made the top ten on the Mainstream Rock chart at #11 and peaking at #19 on the Modern Rock list. Later in 1994 the band released their seventh studio album Let Your Dim Light Shine. The lead single, "Misery", written by lead singer Dave Pirner and produced by the band with Butch Vig (Nirvana, Garbage), seemingly turns moping into a business model, while the music video has footage from a CD making plant you can show millennials when there was a time you could own music instead of listening to what Spotify shoves at you...
"Misery" became Soul Asylum's second and final top-40 pop hit in July of 1995. The song was their biggest hit on rock radio, spending three weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock chart and four weeks at #2 on their Mainstream Rock format list. Internationally, the single peaked at #3 in Canada, and reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#21), Australia (#22), and the UK (#30).
The follow-up single was "Just Like Anyone", which missed the pop chart but did decently at rock radio, placing at #11 on the Mainstream Rock list and #19 on the Alternative Rock tally, thanks to a stunning video featuring actress Claire Danes. (It was also a minor hit in the UK at #52 and Canada at #54.) The third offering from the record, the ballad "Promises Broken", did a bit better, putting them back on the pop chart at #63, landing at #29 on the Mainstream Rock list, and gave them a second try at the "easy listening" format, peaking at #29 on the Adult Contemporary format tally. The Let Your Dim Light Shine album became the band's sole top ten entry on the Billboard 200 sales chart at #6.
Huffman left the band to join Matchbox Twenty by the time of their next record, Candy From A Stranger. That record's sole charting single, "I Will Still Be Laughing", got some exposure from the South Park creators' movie BASEketball, and while it missed the pop chart, it was a modest rock radio hit (#23 Mainstream, #24 Alternative). However, the album didn't even make the top half of the sales chart, and with Campbell departing, the band were dropped by Columbia Records.
Soul Asylum returned in 2006 with Silver Lining, but sadly with original bassist Karl Mueller passing away from cancer before its release (Guns N' Roses bass player Tommy Stinson completed the tracks that Mueller couldn't). They've released two more studio records since then, with 2016's Change Of Fortune Pirner's first without lead guitarist Dan Murphy. He carries on with former Prince drummer Michael Bland along with Winston Roye on bass and Ryan Smith taking over Murphy's role after Justin Sharbono played on Change Of Fortune.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the band performing on Letterman in 1995...
Next up, live in Germany that same year...
and lastly, at a show in Chile in 2018...
Up tomorrow: Louisiana rockers are, well, decent.
Comments