Songoftheday 3/15/20 - Everbody wants to live like they want to live, and everybody wants to love like they want to love...
from the albums Go Slow Down (1993) and Party of Five (Original Soundtrack) (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15
Today's song of the day comes from the indie country-rock band BoDeans, who were started by Wisconsin schoolmates Kurt Neumann and Sam Llanas in the early 1980s. Adding drummer Guy Hoffman and bass player Bob Griffin, the group were signed to Slash Records, a Warner Bros-distributed label most famous for Tex-Mex rockers Los Lobos. With producer T-Bone Burnett (who also helmed Los Lobos' biggest albums), they released their debut album Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams in 1986. While none of the songs got major radio action, critics raved about the set, and it charted on the lower half of the sales tally in Billboard magazine at #115. A year later, they returned with the louder but not necessarily better Outside Looking In. Produced by the Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison, nevertheless the change in sound got rock radio on board charting two singles, with "Only Love" rising to #16 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, and the album cracking the top half of the chart with their best performance at #86. However, Hoffman left the band to raise his child, having studio aces fill in on that album as well as their 1989 work Home. That set produced their biggest rock radio single, "You Don't Get Much", which rose to #15 on Alternative Rock and #20 on Mainstream Rock. After another album with Prince band member David Z, the BoDeans returned to T-Bone Burnett to help with their fifth studio album Go Slow Down in 1993. A return to their simpler country-rock-ish sound, the set's first single "Feed The Fire" popped on to the Mainstream Rock radio list at #34 at the start of 1994. But it was another track from the album that would end up being their biggest overall success. In 1996, the Go Slow Down track "Closer To Free" was used as a title theme for the young adult drama TV series Party Of Five. Starring Neve Campbell, Scott Wolf, and Matthew Fox, the orphaned-family show became a big hit among the kiddos, who started to request the song on the radio. Re-released as a single along with a live version that was on their 1995 live set Joe Dirt Car, it became the biggest TV hit since the Rembrandts did Friends. And of course the cast were featured on the music video...
"Closer To Free" became the BoDeans first and only hit on Billboard's pop Hot 100 chart in America, hitting the top 20 in March of 1996. The song was a bigger hit on "easy listening" radio, going to #26 on the Adult Contemporary radio list before spending two weeks up at #3 on their Adult Top-40 format chart. Internationally, the single topped the Canadian singles chart for a week, while hitting #11 in Australia. However, the Go Slow Down album itself didn't really take off, topping out at #127.
Later that year, the BoDeans came back with a new album, Blend, which featured new drummer Nick Kitsos. While it managed to almost match the peak of Go Slow Down on the albums chart at #132, the single "Hurt By Love" spend a little over two months on the Adult Top-40 list going to #33. Dropped by their label and fighting with their first manager, it took eight years for their next studio set Resolution to arrive. They have sincc released six more studio records, with Llanas leaving the band after 2010's Mr. Sad Clown. With just Neumann left from the orignal lineup, the act's most recent work Thirteen arrived in 2017.
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Here's the band performing the song live at Farm Aid in 2010...
And finally, here's the original video from the song's first release in 1993...
Up Tomorrow: Canadian diva gets "Up Close And Personal" with the number one spot.
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