Robbed hit of the week 3/23/20 - Alice In Chains' "Heaven Beside You"...
from the album Alice In Chains (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #52
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the Seattle rock group Alice In Chains, who had ridden in to success on the wave that brought us Nirvana and Pearl Jam as well. Selling millions of albums through the early 1990s, in the spring of 1994 their song "No Excuses" reached the top half of the Hot 100 Airplay chart, while topping the Mainstream Rock radio list in Billboard magazine. However, lead singer Peter Staley's drug addiction became so bad that he had to enter rehab right when they were going to embark on a tour behind the album. Despite having another radio hit at the time - "Got Me Wrong" from the soundtrack to the movie Clerks - the band broke up. Staley went and joined the supergroup Mad Season with Pearl Jam's Mike McCready for one top ten album and a radio hit "River Of Deceit", which reached the top ten on both the Mainstream and Alternative rock charts in Billboard. But by the end of the year, Staley reunited with Alice In Chains to record another studio album, which came out in the fall of 1995. The lead track, "Grind", which featured guitarist Jerry Cantrell on lead vocals, climbed to #7 on the Mainstream Rock chart, and #18 on the Alternative Rock list. It also was a top-40 hit in Britain at #23. The song would get a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock performance in 1996, which would go to fellow Seattleites Pearl Jam for "Spin The Black Circle". The second release from their eponymous album, also written by Cantrell who again took center stage on vocals, was "Heaven Besides You", which became a big rock hit before getting enough airplay on mainstream stations to make the radio chart, with its country-rock easiness more compatible to pop airwaves...
Since "Heaven Besides You" wasn't released as a commercial single, the song was unable to place on Billboard's official Hot 100 pop chart, but it rose to just about the halfway mark on the airplay component of the list in March of 1996. The song made the top ten on both the Mainstream (#3) and Alternative (#6) Rock charts in Billboard as well. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the UK at #35. A third promo single from the record, "Again", peaked at #8 at Mainstream Rock and #36 on the Alternative format. Led by co-writer Staley, it scored another Grammy nomination for Hard Rock Performance in 1997, which was won by the Smashing Pumpkins' "Bullet With Butterfly Wings". The Alice In Chains album became their second to reach #1 on the Album Sales Top 200 after their Jar Of Flies EP.
Later that year Alice In Chains recorded a successful episode of MTV Unplugged, with the resulting album reaching #3 on the sales chart, and radio single "Over Now" rising to #4 on the Mainstream Rock list. However, after opening for KISS for a few shows, Staley overdosed but didn't die, putting the group on hold again. Cantrell released a solo album, Boggy Depot, which made the sales top-40 and spun off two top ten rock radio hits with "Cut You In" (#5) and "My Song" (#6). The group tried again to reunite in 1998, recording a couple of songs for a box set compilation, with "Get Born Again" leading at #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart and nearly making the Hot 100, "bubbling under" at #106. It would get another nomination for a Hard Rock Grammy, won by Metallica's "Whiskey In A Jar" from their Garage Inc album, which ironically Cantrell and Sean Kinney from the band played on. A live album produced what would be the final chart single with Staley, a concert version of their first rock radio hit "Man In The Box", which popped in at #39 on the Mainstream Rock chart in 2000.
Unfortunately, the time for Layne Staley was up, overdosing for good in the spring of 2002, a couple months before the release of Cantrell's second solo set Degradation Trip, which got Jerry another top ten rock radio hit with "Anger Rising". After the death of Staley, Alice In Chains, temporarily defunct, were dropped by their label in 2004. Through the 2000s, the Cantrell, Kinney, and bass player Mike Inez occasionally played together with guest vocalists filling in, until their hired on singer/guitarist William Duvall as a permanent member. With a second guitar providing a new dynamic to the sound of the group, and Duvall's voice as different from Staley's as it was fitting to the music, the band first toured before setting down to record a new studio album Black Gives Way To Blue, which was released in 2009. That set was well received by critics and fans, and scored a pair of #1 Mainstream Rock radio hits in "Check My Brain" and "Your Decision". The former not only got Alice In Chains their first true hit on the pop Hot 100 at #92, but was again nominated for a Hard Rock Grammy, which was won by AC/DC's "War Machine" in 2000. A third track from the record, "A Looking In View", went to #12 on Mainstream Rock and got the Hard Rock nom the next year, which Them Crooked Vultures took home for "New Fang". The new lineup returned in 2012 with The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, which went to #2 on the albums chart and spun off another two #1 Mainstream Rock radio hits with "Hollow" and "Stone". The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Engineered Non-Classical Album, which they lost to Daft Punk's disco rock of Random Access Memories in 2014. Their most recent studio album, Rainier Fog, came out in the summer of 2018, landing two top ten hits with "The One You Know" and "Never Fade". The third single, title track "Rainier Fog", is their most recent charting hit at #20 on Mainstream Rock. The Rainier Fog album was up for a Grammy for Best Rock Album, which went to Greta Van Fleet's From The Fires. With three big albums under their belt, it seems like the Duvall lineup of the band has proven to be a worthy entity of its own.
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Here's Alice in Chain performing the song on the MTV Unplugged episode in 1996...
and live in London in 2009...
And lastly, in concert in Berlin in 2018...
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