Songoftheday 3/29/21 - Hangin' round downtown by myself, and I had so much time to sit and think about myself...

 

 

"Sex and Candy" - Marcy Playground

from the album Marcy Playground (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 22

 

Today's song of the day comes from the alternative rock band Marcy Playground. Named for the part of the childhood school of leader John Wozniak in Minneapolis, the group first came together in the mid-1990s with Wozniak, bassist Dylan Keefe, and drummer/guitarist Jared Kotler. Although Kotler would leave in the middle of recording their self-titled debut album, replaced by Dan Rieser, Jerod plays bass and drums on what would be the lead single off the set, "Sex And Candy". Written by Wozniak alluding to a remark made by a girl in college, the slinky post-grunge track straddles the line between the hard edges of Nirvana with the snaky turns of phrase of mid-career Red Hot Chili Peppers. The title certainly grabbed the attention of many, and pop radio gave it a big go-ahead after rock radio made it the biggest song of the year...

"Sex and Candy" became Marcy Playground's first and only pop hit, reaching the top ten in America in April of 1998. The song was massive on rock radio, spending fifteen weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart (a record at the time), and peaked at #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart. It also crossed over to the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format at #4 as well. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Canada (#2), Iceland (#4), and Australia (#8), and placed in the top-40 in Norway (#15), Sweden (#21), Austria (#24), and the UK (#29). The Marcy Playground album crested at #21 on the Billboard 200 sales tally in the U.S., going on to move over a million copies. 

 

Despite the massive success of "Sex and Candy", mainstream radio mostly ignored the trio's next single "Saint Joe On The School Bus". It was a decent hit at rock stations, though, hitting #8 at Alternative Rock and #30 on the Mainstream Rock list.  The song's shocking lyrics and gruesome music video didn't help much. 

The trio returned in 1999 with their sophomore effort Shapeshifter. The only song from the set to get some radio play was "It's Saturday", which rose to #25 on the Alternative Rock chart, and the album didn't even make the Billboard 200, and Capitol Records soon dropped them. Since then, the band has released two more studio albums, the most recent being Leaving Wonderland...in a fit of rage in 2009, while they put out a collection of odds and ends three years later.

(6/10)

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Here's the trio performing live on Conan O'Brien in 1998...

Next up, live at Woodstock '98...

and lastly, on an industry gig in 2010...

Up tomorrow: A rapper tries to come for Mr. Smith.