Songoftheday 10/2/20 - When I was young I knew everything, and she a punk who rarely ever took advice...

 

 

"The Freshmen" - The Verve Pipe

from the album Villains (1996)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 29

 

Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock group The Verve Pipe, who were assembled by singer/musician Brian Vander Ark in Michigan in the early 1990s.  The band released their debut album I've Suffered A Head Injury in 1992, followed by a second effort, Pop Smear, a year later. But it would not be until their third release Villains, after signing with RCA Records, that the group would get national attention. The first track from the record to be promoted to radio, "Photograph", became a decent hit at rock stations, climbing to #6 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock chart, and #17 on the Mainstream Rock list in the spring of 1996. But since it was not released as a commercial single, the song wasn't able to place on the trade bible's official Hot 100 pop chart, getting to #53 on the airplay component of the tally. A second track from the set, "Cup Of Tea", was able to get to #35 on the Mainstream Rock chart that fall. The third offering from the record was the bleak ballad "The Freshmen". Written by Vander Ark and produced by Jerry Harrison, the song described a girl who went on to take her life, and the guilt and pain left behind by that. The rawness of the emotion in the lyrics struck a nerve with Americans, who ended up making the song the band's breakthrough and biggest hit song...

 

"The Freshmen" became the Verve Pipe's first and only top-40 pop hit in June of 1997. The song was a big success on rock radio, spending three weeks at #1 on Billboard's Alternative Rock chart and hitting #9 on their Mainstream Rock list. It also crossed over to the Adult Top-40 format tally at #7. Internationally, the single peaked at #6 in Canada and was a top-40 hit in Australia at #28. The Villains album crested at #24, going on to sell over a million copies.

The fourth and final track from the record promoted to radio was the title track "Villains", which reached both the Alternative (#22) and Mainstream (#24) charts, but failed to get enough attention for the pop Hot 100 Airplay list. 

The band returned in 1999 with their self-titled fourth album, which delved further into darker and grunge-style rock. While rock radio took to the more upbeat lead single "Hero" (#17 Alternative, #38 Mainstream Rock), pop stations left the set alone, which spend a single week on the Billboard 200 albums chart at #158. Two years later, Vander Ark and the Pipe released Underneath, which did better with the older crowd, putting single and jangle-rock nugget "Never Let You Down" up to #20 on the Adult Top-40 format, with five months on the chart. Leaving RCA, since then the band has released fourth more studio sets independently, the most recent, Parachute, coming out in 2017. Also, Brian has put out some solo and collaborative work, including Simple Truths with actor Jeff Daniels in 2016.

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Here's the band performing the song on Letterman in 1997...

and in concert from the year before in Michigan...

Finally, at a show in 2015...

Up tomorrow: L.A. rappers get the hood revolving.