Songoftheday 10/10/17 - She never mentions the word addiction in certain company, yes she'll tell you she's an orphan after you meet her family...
from the album Shake Your Money Maker (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #30 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7
Today's song of the day comes from the Southern rock band the Black Crowes, who originally started with brothers Chris and Rich Robinson in Georgia in high school. Adding drummer Steve Gorman and getting signed to Rick Rubin's American label, the band (including guitarist Jeff Cease and bass player Johnny Colt) released their debut album Shake Your Money Maker at the start of 1990. The first single from the record, the retro-style blues rock of "Jealous Again", became a big rock radio hit, reaching #5 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart and landing at #75 on the pop Hot 100. That was followed by "Twice As Hard", which made it to #11 on the rock radio list. In the fall of that year, the band first released their cover of Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle", which would be their first to go to #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart and just miss the pop top-40 (it would later reach that mark). But it would be their fourth single from the album that would become their mainstream radio breakthrough. "She Talks To Angels", written by the Robinsons and produced by their mentor George Drakoulias, was an epic ballad that wasn't a typical "power-ballad" the metal genre was oversaturated with, but rather a hymn-like anthem that tells the tale of an addict they knew and her strife in a poetic yet tragic way. Chuck Leavell of the Allman Brothers provides the organ that dominates the track along with the strumming of the rhythm guitar...
"She Talks To Angels" became the Black Crowes' first top-40 pop hit in May of 1991. The single also climbed to #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart for a week. Internationally, the song nearly made the British top-40 at #45, and was a minor hit in the Netherlands (#56) and Australia (#79).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the Crowes appearing on MTV's Unplugged series in 1990...
Country singer Blake Shelton covered the song on his CMT Stripped appearance...
And finally, back to the Black Crowes in concert...
Up tomorrow: A quartet of soulful guys want to get down....
Comments