Songoftheday 2/18/21 - 'Cause someday you're going to get hungry and eat all of the words that you just said...

 

 

"32 Flavors" - Alana Davis

from the album Blame It On Me (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #37 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 3

 

Today's song of the day comes from pop singer/songwriter Alana Davis, who grew up in New York City. The daughter of a jazz musician, Alana signed with Elektra Records in the late 1990s. Her debut album Blame It On Me was released in September of 1997, but it wasn't until months later that her breakthrough single from the record hit radio. Eleven songs from the set were written by Davis, but the lead single was the sole cover, albeit an obscure one for mainstream audiences. "32 Flavors" was written by alternative rock hero Ani DiFranco, who included it on her 1995 album Not A Pretty Girl. A play on the Baskin Robbins ice cream chain slogan, it's meant to imply that the singer was even more interesting and delicious than that. Davis added a new chorus and tweaked some lyrics in the song, but took no credit in songwriting, giving DiFranco her sole radio hit. Her additions are welcome and don't disrupt the message of the song, which basks in its embrace of the "different", and Davis' smoky and understated voice carries it off well...

 

 

Davis' take on "32 Flavors" became her one and only hit on Billboard's official Hot 100 pop chart, reaching the top-40 in January of 1998. The song also climbed to #17 on their older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart. Internationally, the single rose to #16 in Canada. Her Blame It On Me album spent seven weeks on the Billboard 200 sales chart (not bad for an "adult pop" record), peaking at #157.

Alana's followup to this was her own composition "Crazy", which she co-wrote with co-producer Ed Tuton (I really like this song more). The track missed the pop chart, but landed at #29 on the Adult Top-40 format list. Since then she recorded one more album for Elektra, Fortune Cookies, that slipped under the radar, then two more records independently, the most recent being Love Again in 2018, which offered a remake of "32 Flavors" as a bonus track.

(7/10)

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Here's Alana appearing on Conan O'Brien to promote the single...

 

 

Next up, here's Ani DiFranco performing her original live in concert...

 

 And lastly, Alana's acoustic version from her Love Again release in 2018...

Up tomorrow: Silicon Valley bro-rockers take a very hot hike.