Songoftheday 4/5/19 - Once there was this kid who got into an accident and couldn't come to school, but when he finally came back his hair had turned from black into bright white...
from the album God Shuffled His Feet (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 18
Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock band Crash Test Dummies, who came together in the midlands of Canada in the city of Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba in the late 1980s. Led by singer/guitarist Brad Roberts along with his brother Dan on bass, singer Ellen Reid, multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Darvil, and drummer Vince Lambert, the band was signed in 1991 and released their debut album The Ghosts That Haunt Me that same year. The record was a huge success in their homeland, climbing to #2 on the albums chart, while lead single "Superman's Song" went all the way to #4 on the singles chart, while crossing over to America's pop Hot 100 at #56. Two years later, after Lambert was replaced by Mitch Dorge, whose been mostly their drummer ever since, the band put out their sophomore effort, God Shuffled His Feet. Like the first, the record is anchored with Brad's extra-deep voice counterpointed by Ellen's harmony recounting stories in the lyrics, which in 1991 was a little too esoteric for America, but by 1993 when the alt-rock navel-gazing was getting in gear, it was a different story. The first single from the record was a collection of mini-stories of children full of irony told out in each verse, with the chorus and title of the song simply being "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm". Each verse featured a child with a shameful attribute, whether visible (the girl's birthmarks) or hidden (the third child's ultra-religious family). With the mumbling pseudo chorus, the song doesn't ask you to solve or figure anything out, just to observe. And the music video portrays each scene as kids putting on a play. By the end, the chorus of "ahhhs" feels like an ending to a church hymn...
"Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" became Crash Test Dummies' first and only top-40 pop hit in the U.S., climbing into the top five in April of 1994. The song spent one week at #1 on the Modern Rock chart in Billboard magazine, and crossed over to the Mainstream Rock list at #25. Internationally, the record actually didn't make the top ten in their native Canada, peaking at #14, but elsewhere it was huge - going to #1 in Australia, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. The single also made the top ten in the UK (#2), Ireland (#3), Austria (#3), the Netherlands (#4), New Zealand (#4), France (#5), and Switzerland (#7). "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" would be nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Vocal Performance, which they lost out to "I Swear" from vocal group All-4-One. The God Shuffled His Feet album was also nominated for Best Alternative Album, which went to Green Day's Dookie, while the band themselves were also up for Best New Artist, the year Sheryl Crow won the award.
Although the song didn't get into the top ten in Canada, the next two singles from the album did, with "Swimming In Your Ocean" getting to #6, and "Afternoons & Coffeespoons" peaking at #7. The latter, my personal favorite of theirs, did manage to climb to #13 on the Modern Rock radio chart and nick the pop Hot 100 at #66. "Afternoons..." also hit the top-40 in the UK (#23), Ireland (#23), Germany (#39), and Australia (#40). Finally, the title cut "God Shuffled His Feet" climbed to #14 in Canada.
In 1995, the band contributed a cover of XTC's "The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead", with Reid on lead vocals, to the soundtrack to the Jim Carrey movie Dumb and Dumber, which went to #4 in Canada and #30 in the UK, but stiffed in the States. And despite selling over 2 million copies of God Shuffled His Feet in the U.S., by the time the band's next album A Worm's Life came out in 1996, no singles hit any of the charts here (the album did manage to go to #78). But up north, the Dummies scored their highest-charting single when "He Liked To Feel It" topped out at #2. The same happened in 1999 with their fourth release, Give Yourself A Hand, with single "Keep A Lid On Things" rising to #5, followed by "Get You In The Morning", which even just missed the Canadian top-40 at #45 and was their last pop charting hit so far. Leaving their record label, the band has since released five albums independently on their own label, the most recent being Ooh La La! in 2010. All members except for Dan have put out solo records. And last year, the Roberts brothers, Reid, and Dorge (only Darvill missing) toured on the 25th anniversary of the God Shuffled His Feet album.
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Here's the band promoting the single on Conan O'Brien in 1994...
And again on Arsenio Hall...
And yet again in 1994 from a concert in Ireland...
That same year, parody king "Weird" Al Yankovic did his magic with "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm", transforming it into the song "Headline News", which was released as a single and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 in America at #104...
And finally Brad on South African morning TV promoting their reunion concert in 2018...
Up tomorrow: The Purple One finds his Aphrodite.
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