Robbed hit of the week 6/3/19: Live's "Selling The Drama"...
from the album Throwing Copper (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #43
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the alternative hard rock band Live, who came together in central Pennsylvania in the early 1980s with lead guitarist Chad Taylor, bass player Patrick Dahlheimer, and drummer Chad Gracey hiring on lead singer/guitarist Ed Kowalczyk in the mid-decade. They shuffled through band names until settling on Live in time for their third release and second EP, Four Songs in 1991. From that extended play release the song "Operation Spirit (The Tyranny Of Tradition)" found a home at rock radio, climbing to #9 on the Modern Rock format chart in Billboard magazine. The hit would go on to appear on the band's first full-length album as Live, Mental Jewelry. Like Four Songs the album was produced by the Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison, and the next single from the album, "Pain Lies By The Riverside", climbed to #24 on the Modern Rock list and got major airtime from MTV, which was my introduction to the group.
With Harrison back on board producing, Live returned in the spring of 1994 with their second studio set Throwing Copper. The lead single, and only one released from the record physically in America, was "Selling The Drama". Written by the entire band, the song marked an evolution of their sound to something between the jangle pop of the Gin Blossoms and the post-grunge of Pearl Jam...
While "Selling The Drama" was a massive success on rock radio, spending three weeks at #1 on the Modern Rock chart in Billboard magazine and crossing over to #4 on their Mainstream Rock radio tally, the single stopped just short of the American pop top-40 in July of 1994. Internationally, the single made the top-40 in the Netherlands (#15), New Zealand (#25), and the UK (#30), while also just missing the top-40 by one notch at #41 in Canada and not much more in Australia at #49. The band would promote four more songs to radio without releasing physical singles in the U.S., with three of them reaching the airplay top-40 (they'll be future SOTD's).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the band at Woodstock 94...
and from their MTV Unplugged gig...
...moving on to Woodstock again in 1999...
And finally, from the spring of 1994 only a couple of weeks after the release of the album, with an acoustic take on the classic from a live appearance on MTV's 120 Minutes...
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