Songoftheday 2/18/20 - Has our conscience shown? Has the sweet breeze blown? Has all the kindness gone? Hope still lingers on...
from the album Collective Soul (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 24
Today's song of the day comes from the rock band Collective Soul, whose self-titled second album had scored them a second top-40 pop hit with "December", as well as an airplay-only single "Gel" that made the top half of the pop radio chart. While the former hit was meandering on pop radio in the summer of 1995, rock stations started to play the album cut "Smashing Young Man", so much so that the song climbed to #8 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart, and went to #19 in Canada. That fall, the band released their next single from the set, the mid-tempo introspective ballad "The World I Know". Written by lead singer Ed Roland and lead guitarist Ross Childress, the song illustrated by the music video shows the despair of life but also its redeeming qualities as the protagonist gets a spiritual save from a pigeon...
"The World I Know" became Collective Soul's third and to date last top-40 pop hit on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in America in March of 1996. The song topped both the Mainstream Rock radio chart and the Triple-A (Adult Album Alternative) radio list for four weeks, while peaking at #6 on the Alternative Rock tally. It also crossed over to the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list at #31, as well as the newly-minted Adult Top-40 chart at #18. Internationally, the single topped the Canadian chart for a week, and made the top-40 in New Zealand (#25) and Iceland (#33). A fifth selection from the Collective Soul album, the grungy-pop of "Where The River Flows", spent two weeks atop the Mainstream Rock list, but missed the pop Hot 100 entirely. While the album didn't go higher than #23 on the chart, it was a steady seller, eventually racking up over three million in sales.
The band returned in 1997 with their third release, Disciplined Breakdown. While the record would go higher on the albums sales list at #16, it was definitely a letdown from their last album in terms of pop success. Despite two of its songs topping the Mainstream Rock radio list with "Precious Declaration" (four weeks) and "Listen" (five weeks), those two singles stalled out in the bottom half of the pop chart at #65 and #72 respectively (the former went to #5 in Canada, the latter a respectable #39). Two years later, Collective Soul put out Dosage, which still sold over a million on the strength of the massive rock radio hit "Heavy", which remained on top the Mainstream Rock chart for fifteen weeks, a record at the time. It also went to #5 in Canada, followed by "Run" which made it to #9. The latter song put the band back on pop radio, with the song spending a half year (26 weeks) on the Adult Top-40 chart, peaking at #12. Meanwhile, on the pop Hot 100 the pair were their last chart hits with "Heavy" at #73 and "Run" at #76, with the latter going to #1 on the Triple-A Rock list.
The new millennium brought the band's fifth studio album and last for Atlantic Records, Blender. Lead single "Why, Pt 2" spent seven weeks at #2 on the Mainstream Rock list, but only managed to "bubble under" the pop Hot 100 at #111. The record also included a duet with Elton John, "Perfect Day", that went to #10 on the Triple-A Rock radio chart and #29 on the Adult Top-40 list. After a greatest hits set, the group lost Childress and drummer Shane Evans to be replaced by Joel Koschke and Ryan Houle. The first album on their own El label, Youth, sported the top ten rock single "Counting The Days" (#8). Its follow-up, the insanely catchy "Better Now", hit the top ten on both the Adult Top-40 (#9) and Triple-A Rock (#10) format lists, as well as #35 on the Mainstream Rock tally, but "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #117 (criminally). Their next album in 2007, Afterwords foretold a trend when the Target and iTunes-only set was barred from the albums sales chart for being an "exclusive" to one physical outlet (it made #25 on the all-inclusive list). Nevertheless, the album spun off another top ten hit, this time the Triple-A Rock #8 "Hollywood". The band released a second self-titled album under the Roadrunner label in 2007, with lead single "Staring Down" climbing to #18 on the Adult Top-40 list and #15 on the Triple-A tally. The follow-up, "You", went to #35 on Adult Top-40, their most recent hit at that format.
In 2015, with new guitarist Jesse Triplett and drummer Johnny Raab, Collective Soul released See What You Started By Continuing, their most recent top-40 album at #25, despite the lack of radio hit singles. Last year, they came back with their most recent studio set Blood, with the single "Right As Rain" that made it to #32 on the Mainstream Rock Radio list, proving they are still a viable act.
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Here's the band with the Atlanta Youth Orchestra with a lush performance of the song from 2005...
In 2008, American Idol winner David Cook performed "The World I Know" at the final, and the resulting recording went to #28 on the official Hot 100 chart in America...
and here's the Roland brothers on a radio stint in 2015...
and finally at the Paste Studios in 2017...
Up tomorrow: Another alt-rock band has the best of thoughts.
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