Songoftheday 7/23/20 - Warm sun feed me up and I'm leery loaded up, loathing for a change and I slip some boil away...

                                    

"Swallowed" - Bush

from the album Razorblade Suitcase (1996)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #27 (one week)

Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 12

Today's song of the day comes from the British "grunge" rock band Bush, whose debut album Sixteen Stone broke open the genre to bands outside of the Pacific Northwest, and landed five top five rock radio hits. Two of those, "Comedown" and "Glycerine", topped the Mainstream Rock chart and reached Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 top-40, while a third, "Everything Zen", made the top-40 on the airplay component of that tally. In 1996, the group, led by guitarist/lead singer Gavin Rossdale, returned with the first radio single from their upcoming second album Razorblade Suitcase. "Swallowed", written by Rossdale and produced by Steve Albini (Nirvana's In Utero), continued their streak of successes on rock radio, and later on, mainstream stations...

Since "Swallowed" wasn't released as a physical commercial "single", it was unable to place on Billboard's official Hot 100 pop chart. However, the track got enough mainstream radio love to make it to the top-40 of the airplay component of that tally in November of 1996. The song was huge on rock radio, being their best showing on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart, spending seven weeks at #7, while taking two weeks at #2 on their Mainstream Rock format list. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Canada (#5) and the UK (#7), while it was a top-40 hit in Australia at #25. The Razorblade Suitcase album became their sole disc to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 sales list, going on to sell over three million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 1998, "Swallowed" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance, losing out to the Smashing Pumpkins for their "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" (their second win in a row).

The second song from Razorblade Suitcase to be promoted to radio was "Greedy Fly", which again made both the Alternative (one week at #3) and Mainstream (#5) rock format charts, but since it also wasn't released as a single, it didn't make the Hot 100. However, it just missed the top-40 on the airplay portion of that list at #41. (It made the top-40 in the UK at #22 and Canada at #38.) While in Britain, that was followed by the single "Bonedriven" that went to #49 there, the rest of the world was served "Cold Contagious", which did a little better on Mainstream Rock stations (#18) than Alternative (#23) in America, while being a minor hit in Australia and Canada. The album also included the track "Mouth", which was reworked in 1998 for the mix album Deconstructed as well as for the movie An American Werewolf Goes To Paris. The result went to #5 at Alternative Rock, #28 at Mainstream Rock, and #63 on the Hot 100 Airplay list.

Bush came back in 1999, reuniting with their debut disc producers Alan Winstanley and Clive Langer, for the more electronica-tinged third effort The Science Of Things. Lead single "The Chemicals Between Us" topped the Alternative Rock radio chart for five weeks, and made it to the Hot 100 (which by then didn't require a physical release anymore) at #63, their most recent hit there. However the album itself just missed the top ten on the Billboard 200 at #11, selling a million copies in total. With their label Interscope folded into Atlantic Records, the band returned in 2001 with Golden State, but with the first single, "The People That We Love (Speed Kills)" just nicking the top ten on Mainstream Rock at #10 (possibly hurt by its release around 9/11), the band split up, releasing a hits set and a live album to fulfill their contract.

Rossdale proceeded to assemble a new band, Institute, which included Bush touring guitarist Chris Traynor. But their sole radio hit, "Bullet-Proof Skin", only got to #26 on both the Mainstream and Alternative Rock airplay lists in Billboard, while their album Distort Yourself stalled down at #81. Rossdale disbanded the group shortly after, and went on to release a solo album, WANDERlust, in 2008. The lead single from the set, the power-ballad "Love Remains The Same", returned Rossdale to the top-40 on the Hot 100 for the first time since Bush's debut album in 1996. He also guested on Finnish symphonic metal band Apocalyptica's single "End Of Me", which topped Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart in 2010.

That same year, Rossdale reformed Bush with original drummer Robin Goodridge, Traynor, and new bassist Corey Britz. From their fifth studio album The Sea Of Memories, track "The Sound Of Winter" became the band's most recent #1 Alternative Rock radio hit in 2011. They have released three studio sets since then, with their most recent, The Kingdom, just coming out last week (July 17, 2020). The second single from the record, "Flowers on A Grave", so far has gotten to #12 on the Mainstream Rock chart in Billboard, and sits at #13 there this week.

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Here's the band performing "Swallowed" live for MTV Europe...

...next up, live in concert in California in 1999...

Lastly, we have Rossdale performing the song for guitar magazine Kerrang! for their "Lockdown Sessions" this past May...

Up tomorrow: Las Vegas R&B group get metal on their first lead hit.