Songoftheday 10/11/20 - I hate the world today, you're so good to me I know but I can't change...

 

 

"Bitch" - Meredith Brooks

from the album Blurring The Edges (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (four weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 25

 

Today's song of the day comes from singer/songwriter Meredith Brooks, who started her career as a part of the band Sapphire in Oregon in the early 1980s, before striking it out on her own by the middle of the decade. Releasing an unnoticed self-titled new wave album in 1986, Brooks gained more attention the following year as a member of Charlotte Caffrey's post-Go-Go's band the Graces, who scored a minor pop hit in 1989 with "Lay Down Your Arms" (#56). Leaving them in the early 1990s, Brooks signed with Capitol Records, where she released her second solo set Blurring The Edges in 1997. The lead single from the record was the brash declaration of independence "Bitch". Written by Brooks and Shelly Paiken, who would go on to have quite a fruitful writing career with songs for artists like Christina Aguilera and Brandy, and produced by punk rock veteran Geza Gedeon, the track was undeniably hook-filled but risky in its unabashed curse as its title. Nonetheless, like "The Bitch Is Back" from Elton John two decades before, radio seemed to get on board again...

"Bitch" became Brooks' first and only top-40 pop hit, going all the way to the runner-up spot in July of 1997. The song also rose to #14 on Billboard magazine's Adult Top-40 radio chart, while getting to #4 on their Alternative Rock format list. The remixes of the track helped it place on their Dance Club Play tally at #34. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Canada (#2), Australia (#2), Iceland (#3), New Zealand (#4), Norway (#5), Austria (#5), Belgium (#5F/#28W), the UK (#6), and Switzerland (#10). The Blurring The Edges album, released in May, peaked at #22, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 1998, "Bitch" was nominated for two awards, losing Best Rock Song to "One Headlight" from the Wallflowers (coming up really soon), and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, which went to Fiona Apple for "Criminal".

The second American single from the record, "What Would Happen", made it halfway up the Adult Top-40 list at #21, and peaked at #15 at Mainstream Top-40 radio (where "Bitch" topped the list), but stalled short of the top-40 on the official Hot 100 pop chart at #46. That song made it to #49 in the UK, preceded by "I Need", which made the British top-40 at #28. Lastly, "Stop" slipped on to the Mainstream Top-40 radio list at #40. 

Brooks returned in 1999 with her third proper studio album Deconstruction, but the set was ignored here in the U.S., with only a left-field cover of early 1970's singer Melanie's "Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)" with Queen Latifah becoming a minor hit in Germany. With that set tanking, Capitol let Brooks go indie, where she released her first indie record Bad Bad One. With that she at least got back to Adult Top-40 radio, where "Shine" made it to #35. Her most recent album, If I Could Be, was released in 2007.

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Here's Meredith appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno promoting the album...

and live in concert at Lilith Fair...

Three years after the success of "Bitch", Australian comic Chris Franklin reworked the song into "Bloke", and ended up going all the way to #1 in his homeland (topping her version by a notch)...

Lastly, here's Brooks live at Hard Rock Cafe...

Up tomorrow: Dylan's son might be pulled over by the cops.