Robbed hit of the week 4/12/21 - Dave Matthews Band's "Don't Drink The Water"...
"Don't Drink The Water" - Dave Matthews Band
from the album Before These Crowded Streets (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #50
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the Dave Matthews Band, whose second studio album Crash had scored a pair of top-40 pop radio hits with "Too Much" and "Crash Into Me", the latter reaching the top-20 on that component of the list in the summer of 1997. Later that year, the band released the live collection Live At Red Rocks 8.15.95, which went to #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and sold over two million copies.
The rock group returned the following year with their ambitious release Before These Crowded Streets. The lead track promoted to radio was "Don't Drink The Water", which was miles away from the fraternity-ready jam-rock that they became popular for. A deep, dark, exploration into racial injustice from Matthews' birth country of South Africa's apartheid to America's stained history with Native Americans. With a sludgy beat that takes John Fogerty's bayou-rock into even deeper grooves, the song has the demeanor of freestyle jazz rather than mainstream rock and roll. It was a daring choice to open the record to the public, who thankfully responded favorably...
While "Don't Drink The Water" climbed to #4 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart, and #19 on their Mainstream Rock format list, the single stopped at the midway point on the pop Hot 100 Airplay component of the official pop chart in America in April of 1998, no doubt hindered by the lack of sales of a commercial single. Internationally, the single climbed to #21 in Canada. The Before These Crowded Streets album, released that same month, was the one that finally sank the Titanic soundtrack after its 16 week run at #1. The set was the band's first #1 album, going on to sell over four million copies.
(8/10)
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Here's the band performing "Don't Drink The Water" in concert on their Listener Supported live album in 1999...
and lastly, Matthews and Tim Reynolds from Radio City Music Hall in New York City, adding the populist hymn "This Land Is Your Land" to it...
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