Robbed hit of the week 9/7/20 - Better Than Ezra's "Desperately Wanting"...

 

 

"Desperately Wanting" - Better Than Ezra

from the album Friction, Baby (1996)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #48 (two weeks)

 

This week's 'robbed hit' come from the alternative rock band Better Than Ezra, who had landed a top-40 pop hit in the summer of 1995 with their #1 rock radio single "Good". In the year following, with new drummer Travis McNabb and lead guitarist James Arthur Payne Jr, the band returned with this next album Friction, Baby. The lead track promoted to radio, "King Of New Orleans", did well at rock radio again, reaching the top ten on both the Mainstream (#7) and Alternative (#5) Rock format charts, but since it wasn't available as a commercial single, it was unable to place on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart, and it got only enough airplay from mainstream stations to make it to #62 on the airplay component of that tally. The second song promoted to radio was released as a single, though. "Desperately Wanting", written by lead singer Kevin Griffin, is all nostaglic about an earlier time in our lives, when the possibilities were endless, but drugs and foolishness got in the way...

 

While "Desperately Wanted" again did well at rock radio, reaching #10 on the Mainstream Rock and #11 on the Alternative Rock list, the single stopped just above the halfway mark on Billboard's Hot 100 in February of 1997. The song was their first hit on the "Adult Top-40" format, making it to #37. The Friction, Baby album crested at #64 on the Billboard 200 sales chart. 

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Here's the band appearing on VH1's Hard Rock Live to promote the album...

And again in concert in 1998...

and lastly, on a acoustic radio gig in Philly in 2014...