Songoftheday 6/19/21 - Hold it now and watch the hoodwink as I make you stop think, you'll think you're looking at Aquaman...
"One Week" - Barenaked Ladies
from the album Stunt (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16
Today's song of the day comes from the Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies, who were started up by friends Ed Robertson and Steven Page in the Toronto suburbs in the late 1980's. Eventually bringing on brothers Jim and Andy Creggan and drummer Tyler Stewart, the group released a few tapes independently before getting their big break by contributing the first track on a tribute album to Canadian rock hero Bruce Cockburn. The result, a cover of his "Love In A Dangerous Time", landed the Ladies a top-40 hit in their homeland at #16 in 1992. That success, paired with buzz from being excluded from a New Years gig that caused their Yellow Tape release to become a surprise top ten hit on the Canadian Albums chart, helped get the band signed to Sire Records that year. Their major-label debut in 1992, Gordon, topped the albums chart in Canada, and eventually went on to sell over a half million copies in America. The second single from the set, "Enid", went all the way to #2 on the Canadian Singles chart, one of six tracks from the album to make the list. Two years later, they returned with Maybe You Should Drive; though landing a second top ten hit locally with "Jane', at #3, the sales were a slump from their debut in Canada, but in America they did place on the Billboard 200 sales tally for the first time at #175, albeit spending a single week on the list. Andy Creegan left after that, with the group replacing him with Kevin Hearn to tour behind their third opus, Born On A Pirate Ship. That record scored a third Canadian top ten hit with "Shoe Box" at #10, while in America the second single, "The Old Apartment", would place on the pop Hot 100 in Billboard magazine at #88 while placing at a respectable #40 on the Mainstream Top-40 radio list.
In the summer of 1997, the Barenaked Ladies put out their first live album Rock Spectacle, which truly was their key to success in the U.S. From it, the live version of the Gordon song "Brian Wilson", named for the Beach Boy they admired most, became their first pop Hot 100 hit at #68, and also popping on to the Adult Top-40 (#37) and Alternative Rock (#23). The album rose to #86 on the Billboard 200, spending over a year on the chart and selling over a million copies.
"Brian Wilson" crested at American radio at the beginning of 1998, and six months later they emerged with their fourth studio set Stunt. Lead single "One Week" had quite an opening, crashing in with the wall-of-sound chorus that firmly implanted in your brain, before the stream of consciousness spoken-sung verses arrived. In fact, the chorus is the plot of the song, with a guy mapping out chronologically a lovers spat, while the verses are random name checks to everything from 50's orchestral pop giant Burt Kaempfert to teen country music star LeAnn Rimes to actor Harrison Ford to the Swiss Chalet chain of restaurants to Snickers candy bars to anime legend Sailor Moon. It made absolutely no sense and all the sense, keeping the listener gripped to the hilarious words (in one instance, insisting that vanilla is the finest of the flavors), as the jovial polar opposite to R.E.M.'s "It's The End Of The World As We Know It". It was ingenious, and worked like a charm, hypnotizing the American public to follow along. Only at the bridge do they attempt to work the synergy, with Ed confessing that he's just a scatterbrained socially misadjusted dork, with the "I'm the kind of guy that laughs at a funeral" tagline...
"One Week" kept its titular promise and spend one week at #1 on the American pop chart in October of 1998. The song was huge on Alternative Rock radio, topping that chart in Billboard for five weeks, while taking three weeks at #2 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Canada (#3), the UK (#5), and Iceland (#5), and made the top-40 in Australia (#16) and Ireland (#29). The Stunt album, released in July of that year, spent a week at #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over four million copies. At the 1999 Grammy Awards, "One Week" was nominated for Best Duo/Group Pop Performance, losing out to former Stray Cat Brian Setzer's neo-swing revival of "Jump Jive And Wail".
Follow-up single "It's All Been Done", an equally amazeballs song, became their first and so far sole #1 hit in their native Canada. In the States, while the track rose to #9 on the Adult Top-40 radio chart and #15 at Alternative Rock stations, the single stalled right below the Hot 100 pop Top-40 at #44. It did make the top-40 in the UK at #28. That was followed by the stunningly beautiful and pensive "Call And Answer", which was another top ten success in their homeland at #10, while in America it got to #17 on the Adult Top-40 list, and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #121, and stopping at #52 in the UK. Lastly, the raucous party track "Alcohol" popped on to the Alternative Rock chart in the U.S. at #33, and was a minor hit in Canada at #73. The Ladies will return to this series.
(10/10)
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Next up, live at Farm Aid in 1999, where before "One Week" they create the highlight of the entire show...
Here's the Ladies live at their own show...
Robertson and Page put out this "bathroom sessions" version of the song; one year later, Page was gone from the band...
In 2020, the band performed "One Week" on a TV benefit for first-line responders in the COVID crisis, with drummer Tyler Stewart taking over Page's part...
They also did another COVID-era quarantine clip that same year...
And finally, let's dial it back a couple years to 2018, with Page reunited with the band for their Juno Awards performance of "One Week" as well as their classic nugget "If I Had A $1000000"...
Up tomorrow: Alabama soul singer scores with a song about Los Angeles.
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