Robbed hit of the week 8/5/19 - Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You"...
from the album So Tonight That I Might See (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the alternative rock band Mazzy Star, who came together in the late 1980s when guitarist and songwriter David Roback, who had been in a series of influential alternative rock bands like Rain Parade, Clay Allison, and Opal through the decade, hooked up with singer Hope Sandoval when Opal's lead singer Kendra Smith left the band. Eventually re-christening themselves Mazzy Star, they released their first album together, She Hangs Brightly, on the seminal British alt-rock label Rough Trade in 1990. Although the set got some underground notice, it really didn't do much except on alternative rock radio, where the single "Blue Flower", a remake of an art rock piece from the group Slapp Happy, peaked at #29.
Rough Trade was having a rough time in America at the beginning of the 1990s, and Capitol Records bought them out, re-releasing She Hangs Brightly which would end up selling over a half-million copies. Three years after the release of that debut, the band returned with their sophomore set So Tonight That I Might See. The lead single from the set was a trippy love song that caught the angst of that particular year's youth in a way that bucked the male-dominated trends of the moment. "Fade Into You", written by Roback and Sandoval, became their breakthough hit and biggest success, causing the album to sell over a million copies...
While "Fade Into You" became an MTV staple and spent a week at #3 on the Modern Rock/Alternative radio chart in Billboard magazine, the song stalled right under the pop top-40 at #44 in November of 1994. The song also did the same in the UK, stopping at #48, and was a minor hit in Canada (#83) and Australia (#72). Instead of promoting another single from So Tonight..., Capitol and Mazzy Star released a She Hangs Brightly track, "Halah", as the follow-up, which went to #19 on the Modern Rock list at the start of 1995.
The following year, Mazzy Star put out their third album Among My Swan. But apart from scoring their sole British top-40 hit with "Flowers In December" right at #40, it got little love from American radio, and even though the set peaked at #68 on the albums sales chart, the duo found themselves dropped from Capitol shortly after. Sandoval and Roback went on to guest on different projects and occasionally reunite, but it wasn't until 2011, after another track from So Tonight That I Might See, "Into Dust", got them returned to the charts after being in an ad campaign. Various one-offs and shows led to a new "reunion" album in 2013, Seasons Of Your Day, which became their first top-40 album in the UK at #24 (almost doing it in America at #42). The pair got back again in 2018 for a series of concerts and a an EP, Still.
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Here's the group in concert in 1994...
and an acoustic version that same year from the studios at VH1...
And finally, the pair appearing on the Jools Holland show ..
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