Robbed hit of the week 5/31/21 - The Dave Matthews Band's "Stay (Wasting Time)"...

 

 

"Stay (Wasting Time)" - Dave Matthews Band

from the album Before These Crowded Streets (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #44

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the Dave Matthews Band,  whose progressive third album Before These Crowded Streets had already scored a top ten rock radio hit with the bayou groove of  "Don't Drink The Water", which just scraped the top half of the pop airplay chart in the spring of 1998. The second song from the set promoted to radio would be the jam rock nugget "Stay (Wasting Time)". Written by Matthews with bassist Stefan Lessard and sax player Leroi Moore, the song and the music video recreates the wandering joy of New Orleans culture, with the melody and chord changes venturing off in many directions as Dave sings about romantic times with his girl in the hot, sticky lazy days of summer...

Since like "Don't Drink The Water", "Stay" wasn't released commercially as a retail single, it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official pop Hot 100 chart. However, the song got enough mainstream radio love to just miss the top-40 on the airplay component of that tally in August of 1998. The track climbed to #8 on their Alternative Rock radio chart, and hit #35 on the Mainstream Rock airplay list. It even crossed over to #20 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single peaked at #31 in Canada. 

A third offering from the record, the laid back jazz groove of "Crush", went to #11 on the Alternative Rock radio chart, and #20 on the Adult-Top-40 list, and placed at #75 on the pop Hot 100, after rules allowed album tracks to place on the list after December of 1998. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1999 for Best Duo/Group Pop Vocal Performance, which went to Stray Cat Brian Setzer for his neo-swing throwdown "Jump, Jive & Wail". 

(7/10)

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Here's the Band on their tour behind the album for their Listener Supported live album release in 1999...

and again in their Live In Central Park release in 2003...

and lastly, at a show in Piedmont Park in Atlanta in 2007....