Songoftheday 11/14/19 - Looking around the house hidden behind the window and the door, searching for signs of life but there's nobody home...
"Good" - Better Than Ezra
from the album Deluxe (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #30 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11
Today's song of the day comes from the band Better Than Ezra, an alternative rock act from Baton Rouge, Louisiana that came together in the late 1980's. Fronted by lead singer/Guitarist Kevin Griffin, the group included bass player Tom Drummond, guitarist Joel Rundell, and drummer Cary Bonnecaze, all classmates at Louisiana State University. They released their debut album Surprise independently in 1988, but after two years of struggling Rundell sadly took his life in 1990. Almost stopping the band, they decided to go on as a band, recording a second indie album Deluxe in 1993 that would eventually be picked up by Elektra Records for a major release two years later. The lead single from the set was "Good", a sing-along alt-rock nugget written by Griffin that was produced by Dan Rothchild, who contributed needed extra guitar work. At first a huge rock radio hit, the song would cross over to mainstream stations, giving the band their first and biggest hit...
"Good" became Better Than Ezra's first and only Top-40 hit on the pop Hot 100 in July of 1995. The song spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart, as well as two weeks at #3 on their Mainstream Rock radio list. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in Canada at #26. Their next offering to radio, "In The Blood", wasn't released as a commercial single, but got enough radio airplay to reach #48 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart, as well as being a top ten hit on the Alternative (#4) and Mainstream (#6) Rock radio format lists. That was followed by "Rosealia", which got to #71 on the pop Hot 100, and stopped at #24 on the Alternative rock chart (both those two peaked in the 60's in Canada). The Deluxe album reached the top-40 on the American albums sales chart at #35, their best ever showing.
Griffin and Drummond dropped Bonnecaze to hire on new drummer Travis McNabb for their third effort Friction, Baby in 1996 (spawning a settled lawsuit from Cary). The first single from the set, "King Of New Orleans", again reached the top ten on both the Mainstream (#7) and Alternative (#5) rock radio charts, but lack of a widely released commercial single kept it from being on the pop Hot 100, only getting to #62 on the airplay component of that list. The second song promoted to radio, "Desperately Wanting", almost made the top-40 at #48, hit both rock charts at Mainstream (#10) and Alternative (#11), and even made the newly created Adult Top-40 list at #37.
The band returned in 1998 with the more nuanced How Does Your Garden Grow?. The big single from the record, "At The Stars", managed to peak at #17 on Alternative Rock radio while popping on to the Adult Top-40 list at #23, not enough to keep them from being dropped by Elektra (even though they had their biggest hit in Canada at #20). They moved to the British indie label Beyond and put out Closer in 2001, with single "Extra Ordinary" going to #13 on the Adult Top-40 list while topping off at #35 on the Alternative Rock chart (their most recent placing there). However their new label folded within a year, leaving them in limbo again until 2005 where Artemis Records released their next record Before The Robots. A reworked Closer track, "A Lifetime", matched their success at Adult Top-40 radio at #13, and was one of three hits on that format from the album. Their most recent album, All Together Now, has new drummer Michael Jerome (McNabb departed amicably to work with the crossover country act Sugarland); from it the single "Crazy Lucky", went to #38 on the Adult Top-40 list, their most recent chart appearance. A one-off single, "GRATEFUL", was released a year ago.
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and from around that same time on Hard Rock Live...
Fast forward to a concert in 2008....
and finally, doing the "Jam in The Van" series for Kabboo...
Up tomorrow: Moesha sings to her BFF.
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