Songoftheday 2/6/21 - Well you got your reasons and you got your lies, and you got your manipulations they cut me down to size...
"If You Could Only See" - Tonic
from the album Lemon Parade (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #11 (one week)
Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 49
Today's song of the day comes from the rock band Tonic, who came together in Los Angeles in the early 1990s.. Lead singer Emerson Hart and guitarist Jeff Russo, longtime friends, hired on drummer Kevin Shepard and bass player Dan Rothchild to complete the band, who signed to A&M, where they recorded their debut album Lemon Parade, which was released in 1996. Lead single "Open Up Your Eyes" was picked up by rock radio, where it rose to #2 for three weeks on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock radio chart, and #22 on their Alternative format list. But confusingly at the time, mainstream radio left that decent song alone. The second song promoted to radio, the loud and brash "Casual Affair", made the top ten at Mainstream Radio at #8 but got ignored everywhere else. That changed with the album's third offering, "If You Could Only See". Written by Hart and produced by Jack Puig, the mid-tempo rocker gave shades of the band Live's work, with chugging guitars underneath Hart's slightly gruff delivery as he pleads to whoever he's singing to to understand why he's in a relationship that may or may not be wrong...
Since "If You Could Only See" was not released as a commercially available "single", it wasn't able to place on Billboard's official Hot 100 pop chart. However, the song got enough radio love to just miss the top ten on the airplay component of that list in December of 1997, spending a whopping 63 total weeks on the tally. It spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, and took five weeks at #3 on the Alternative Rock list. The track crossed over to their Adult Top-40 format round-up, peaking at #7. Internationally, the single hit the top 20 in Canada (#18) and Australia (#20). The Lemon Parade album, released in July of 1996, ended up peaking at #28 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, going on to sell over a million copies.
The band re-released "Open Up Your Eyes" to pop radio as the followup, and this time it did a little better, reaching #68 on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart at #33 on the Adult Top-40 format. But by the time "If You Could Only See" hit big, both Rothschild and Shepard had exited Tonic, to be replaced by Dan Lavery and Pete Maloney replacing each respectively. In 1999, the band contributed a song to the soundtrack to the movie American Pie. The result, "You Wanted More", did well at rock radio again, spending two weeks at #3 at Mainstream Rock and cresting at #10 on Alternative radio, while spending a half a year on the Adult Top-40 chart peaking at #26. However pop radio, which had moved on to dance-pop and rap, didn't really touch the single, which only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #103. It also served as the lead single for their second set Sugar, which landed at #81 on the Billboard 200 chart. Follow-up "Knock Down Walls" was a moderate Mainstream Rock radio hit at #20.
In 2002, Tonic reemerged as a trio minus Maloney (with a studio drummer instead) with their third disc for A&M, which had been folded into Universal Records, Head On Straight. Lead track "Take Me As I Am" popped on to the Adult Top-40 chart at #36, and despite not reaching Billboard's rock radio chart, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Duo/Group Performance in 2003, which went to Coldplay for "In My Place". Also, the album was up for Best Rock Album, which Bruce Springsteen took home for The Rising.
After a break and a departure from the record company, Hart, Lavery, and Russo reunited in 2010 for a self-titled independently-released album. Tonic produced their most recent Adult Top-40 hit, "Release Me", which made it to #34. Their most recent release was an acoustic remake of Lemon Parade from 2016.
(9/10)
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Next up, a live gig for Dutch radio in 1997...
and finally, the trio with just acoustic guitars in 2014...
Up tomorrow: Philly soulsters serenade their parent.
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