Songoftheday 2/19/20 - It's hard to rely on my own good senses, when i miss so much that requires attention...
from the albums Friends (Original TV Soundtrack) and In Light Syrup (both 1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #23 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Hot 100 Airplay Top-40: 13
Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock group Toad The Wet Sprocket, whose fourth studio album Dulcinea had scored them their third official top-40 pop hit with "Fall Down", as well as a follow-up in "Something's Always Wrong" that came one notch from meeting that mark in the fall of 1994. In the next year, the band contributed a song to the massive hit sitcom Friends that would also appear in the band's release of odds-and-ends called In Light Syrup. "Good Intentions", written by their lead singer and guitarist Glen Phillips, was about navigating a romantic relationship and avoiding being dumped, while the video features Friends actress Courtney Cox inserted with special editing effects in this jangle-pop nugget. It would be the second big radio hit from the show after the #1 airplay/top-20 sales single "I'll Be There For You" from the Rembrandts....
Since "Good Intentions" wasn't released as a commercial single, the song was unable to place on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart. However the song got enough airplay to spend over three months on the radio component of the chart, peaking at the very end of 1995. The song was a big rock radio hit, charting on both the Mainstream (#22) and the alternative (#19) rock lists in Billboard. It also crossed over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format tally at #19, while topping out at #29 on the newly-minted Adult Top-40 chart. But the best rank the song made was at the Triple-A Rock (Adult Album Alternative, or "hipster rock") chart, where it went to #6. Internationally, the single went to #8 in Canada. The In Light Syrup collection managed to make the albums sales top-40, probably helped by a lack of single release.
Toad The Wet Sprocket returned in 1997 with their next studio album Coil. Lead single "Come Down", also not released as a commercial single, stalled right under the halfway mark on the airplay portion of the Hot 100 at #51. It did much better on Rock radio, reaching the top-20 on both the Mainstream (#17) and Alternative (#13) format lists, while also going to #35 on the Adult Top-40 radio countdown. Nevertheless, it would be their final charting single in America so far, and while the Coil album technically was their highest-charting album at #19, it sold much less, and the band ended up disintegrating after a greatest hits set in 1999.
Since then, besides Phillips releasing solo music, the band has sporadically reunited for shows throughout the 2000s, and officially came back together in 2009, releasing an album independently, New Constellation, in 2013 which made the top half of the albums chart at #97. Their most recent release was an EP Architect Of The Ruin in 2015.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the band appearing on Letterman to promote the single...
And in concert in 2016...
And finally, from a show back in 1991, when the song was meant to be on their breakthrough album Fear...
Up tomorrow: The grand return of the most important band in rock and roll. Ever.
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